POSSIBLE 2026: Fandom Is Becoming Something We Do Together

Sports and fandom are shifting.

Fans aren't just watching.

They're showing up. Creating. Sharing. Travelling. Joining communities. Meeting athletes. Meeting each other. Participating in brand experiences. And carrying those relationships from one experience to the next.

Looking through the agenda for POSSIBLE 2026, that shift shows up again and again.

Across conversations about athletes, major sporting moments, youth sports, and the Super Bowl, one idea stands out: Sports isn't just something we watch anymore. Fandom is something we participate in, and that changes what a fan relationship looks like.

The sporting moment is becoming a cultural moment

In Going for Gold: How Defining Moments Create Brand Power, Olympic gold medalist and professional hockey player Matthew Tkachuk joined Jeremi Gorman, CRO of Fanatics Advertising, to explore what happens when a major sporting moment extends beyond the game.

For us, the interesting part is what happens around those moments. A championship isn't experienced only on the field or ice; it's experienced at watch parties, in group chats, bars and streets, through brand activations, selfies, videos and celebrations between people. The game might create the moment, but fans turn it into culture, and increasingly, brands want to be part of those moments rather than simply advertise beside them.

Athletes are helping build the world around the sport

Another conversation we're watching is Building the Next Era of Women's Sport, featuring Olympic and World Champion sprinter Sha'Carri Richardson and Alexis Ohanian, founder of Seven Seven Six and ATHLOS.

There's something important happening here. Athletes are no longer only participants in a sports property. They're becoming creators, investors, storytellers, and community builders themselves. And that changes the relationship between athlete and fan.

A fan may discover an athlete through competition, follow their story online, attend an event they're involved in, meet other fans there, interact with a sponsor, and then show up again somewhere else. The athlete becomes part of a much larger ecosystem of relationships.

Some of the most powerful fandom happens on the sidelines

Then there's The Youth Sports Effect: Why the Sidelines Are Your Brand's Most Powerful Growth Channel, featuring David Young, VP of DICK'S Media, and Sarah Marzano, Principal Analyst, Commerce Media at EMARKETER.

We love the idea behind this one because fandom isn't confined to stadiums. Think about a Saturday morning soccer tournament: parents, athletes, coaches, siblings, friends, volunteers, sponsors, and local businesses all showing up week after week. They take photos, celebrate wins, travel together, introduce people, create traditions and, along the way, build relationships.

The community is part of the experience.

And those smaller, recurring moments can tell us as much about fandom as a massive championship game.

Fans are becoming participants, not audiences

The fourth session that caught our attention is How We Turned a Super Bowl Ad Into an AI-Powered Entertainment System, with Beau Avril of MrBeast, John Zissimos of Salesforce, and Zoe Ruderman of ADWEEK.

The title itself says a lot about where things are heading. Instead of thinking about a Super Bowl campaign as something millions of people simply watch, what happens when you create something they can actually participate in? That's a very different relationship with a fan. The audience doesn't just receive the experience.

This is the part we're thinking about at fenel

At fenel, we're interested in what happens when fans, athletes, and brands can share event photos and videos with each other, bringing moments of fandom into one shared visual world.

Over time, those shared moments start to tell a bigger story: who experienced something together, who keeps showing up, and how one event connects to the next. The event ends. The world keeps growing.

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