Top 10 Fandom Events of 2024 Part 1: Cultural Shifts, Movie Trends, and Viral Stars Welcome to the Fanalytics Podcast with Mike Lewis, a Professor at Emory University in Atlanta. In this episode, Mike kicks off his annual top 10 countdown of the most impactful fandom events of 2024. Covering events from Joe Rogan's podcast with Donald Trump, the Deadpool and Wolverine movie, to the Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift relationship, and viral social media stars like the Costco guys, this episode delves into key cultural trends and their significance. Tune in for an insightful discussion on how fandoms are evolving and what it means for marketing and cultural engagement.
00:00 Welcome to the Fanalytics Podcast
00:07 Top 10 Fandom Events of 2024: Introduction
01:16 Joe Rogan and Donald Trump: A Cultural Realignment
04:50 Deadpool and Wolverine: The Power of Established IP
08:11 NFL Quarterback Strategies: Cowboys vs. Steelers
12:25 Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift: A Cultural Unifier
15:15 The Costco Guys: Viral Fame in the Social Media Era
19:17 Recap and Conclusion: Fandom Events 10 through 6
22:38 Closing Remarks and Where to Find More Content
Alright everyone, welcome to the Fanalytics Podcast. My name is Mike Lewis, Professor at Emory University in Atlanta. Okay, every year I like to end the year by doing a top 10 countdown of the most impactful fandom events. My belief is that fandom, well fandom by my definition is cultural engagement.
Cultural passion. So fandom is something that is well worth studying, no matter who you are. If you're a marketing person, totally relevant. If you're just someone interested in the culture, interested in where the world is going, understanding where passions lie, what people are fans of. Also really both interesting and important.
So I've got a top 10 list and you know, let's get right to it. So we'll do this in, uh, do this in two parts. So I'll go 10 through 5 this week. Sorry, 10 through 6 this week and 5 through 1 about a week later. Number one on my list, and again, this is not going to be a sports specific list, there's going to be some sports, but it's going to be sort of a broad look at the culture and where passions, where passions are and how passions are changing over time, how fandom is changing.
So at number 10 on the list, I've got the Joe Rogan podcast with Donald Trump. Now this also led to an endorsement of Donald Trump. Now I, you know, again, lots happened since the election, but this was really, and look, and I think the idea, the question of do endorsements matter is a very legitimate question.
And we'll get to, we'll get to something related to that later in the list, but the Rogan podcast with Trump. Was something that was much more than an endorsement, right? The Rogan podcast with Trump was bringing Donald Trump into, and again, people might scoff at what I'm about to say, but into an intellectual movement, into some form of counterculture or alternative press.
When you look at the American media, If you're going to be realistic about it, you have to realize that there, there, there's a very significant cultural split. Um, there's a lot of, many of the cultural organizations in the United States are dominated by people that are more progressive or more left wing politically.
There has been over time, A great shift to alternative media outlets via the internet and Joe Rogan with his Rogan experience podcast finds himself is essentially the key player in the alternative media. Now, again, this is a complicated discussion because a lot of folks might say, well, Rogan isn't true alternative media, but for them, because he's so mainstream for the bulk of Americans, the Joe Rogan experience, uh, where he brings in all sorts of guests from varied, across the political spectrum.
Long form conversations. Rogan is really the key element to, you know, the non New York Times, non CNN none, Fox News. he's something different. He's the key voice in what is evolving to be the new counterculture media. Given Rogan's importance, Trump's appearance that by all accounts went very well, that it was sort of an ideal format for Trump long form conversation, getting to pontificate and tell stories for three hours, was potentially, I mean, and there's some other aspects of this as well, you know, Elon Musk's embrace of Trump as well.
Look, Musk is an important part of this counterculture as well. That what we really saw with Rogan was a key moment in a potential cultural realignment. So left wing progressive politicians have always enjoyed support from, you know, like you see the DNC, it's Beyonce, uh, Harris had Lizzo on stage, uh, Megan Thee Stallion, really folks that are mainstream and popular culture.
The Republicans have always had Scott Pilgrim. Beyo, Kevin Sorbo is their stars. But in this election, suddenly things shifted. And you had Joe Rogan, you had Dana White, Jake Paul, Mike Tyson, Sylvester Stallone. So it was a very male oriented group of stars. involved in a cultural realignment towards Donald Trump.
Now, I might, I went back and forth on whether or not this moment should be number 10, or this moment should be number 1. I put the moment at number 10, because my suspicion is that this is not a permanent realignment. This is not a cultural shift towards Republicans, this was a cultural shift towards Donald Trump.
At number nine on the list, I have something from the movie industry. I don't think we think a lot about the movie industry post COVID, but you know, historically, the movie industry has been Perhaps the main engine for creating the characters and the narratives that really dominate popular culture. But at number 9, I've got the Deadpool and Wolverine movie.
Looking at the box office for 2024, uh, Deadpool and Wolverine seems to be number 2, following, um, essentially a kids movie, Inside Out 2. Uh, Deadpool and Wolverine is Really interesting in a couple of in a couple of ways It's interesting in and of itself what made it successful Again, it's a sequel.
It's the third Deadpool movie. They're leveraging Not just Deadpool they're also live leveraging the Wolverine character. So leveraging established Intellectual Property, Established Characters. Critically, they're also leveraging the actors that made the characters tremendously popular in Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds.
Now, this isn't, and so this is the way the movie industry has looked. You look at the box office, For the last, really the last decade, it's almost all sequels and established intellectual property. Hollywood is creating very little that is new. Now, if you look at, um, the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, though, you see, you see what appears to be an almost near collapse, an almost total collapse, following the, the Avengers Infinity War saga.
Uh, some other Marvel movies in the last, in, in 2023, Ant Man was number 15 at the box office. The Marvels was, uh, number 35. So the franchise has struggled tremendously as they have moved away from, and again, I don't think you can separate the characters from the actors, as they have moved away from Iron Man, Robert Downey Jr.,
Captain America, Chris Evans. I think one of the things that, so Wolverine and Deadpool says, if you want to be successful, you have to rely on the formula of established IP and the actors that people know and know and love.
Moving forward in 2025, I'm really eager to see what happens with the Marvel Cinematic Universe when they relaunch a new Captain America. It's, you know, it will be the first time they've gone through with one of their mainstream, one of their top tier characters with a new air, with a new character, not the guy that built the role, Chris Evans.
Okay, so number 10 on the list. is cultural alignment. Pop culture potentially shifting to towards right wing politicians away from being dominated by left wing. Number nine on the list is something from the movie industry. So again, the entertainment, the entertainment sector. Um, the lesson there being something about the importance of established IP, uh, both in terms of the characters and in a way in terms of the, the established actors.
Fandom is something that is. General, in general, hard to shift. So both of those stories are about the difficulty in shifting fandom, um, from one thing to to another. At number eight on the list, I've got a story from sports that seems very different at first. Well, I think, well, I actually think it is very different from the numbers 10 and number nine, and that is a comparison between the Cowboys quarterback strategy.
And the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback strategy, right? And so that seems like it came out of, it came out of nowhere. The Cowboys have struggled this year. Uh, the Cowboys quarterback is a guy named Dak Prescott. Prescott, as most top level quarterbacks do, signed a record setting deal when his contract was, was up and it's essentially kind of fallen off the, the wheels have come off for the Cowboys.
Now, the challenge in something like the NFL, again, it's a fandom business, but in the NFL, you really get to see the relationship between investment decisions and fan outcomes, because how you allocate your salary cap, who you decide to pay, how you allocate across positions has a huge impact on winning, so the Cowboys sort of, they're in a dilemma with Prescott.
He's a good quarterback, and the way the NFL quarterback market works, like I said, is the guys always get the, the next guy up always gets the premium deal, you know, plus or minus 2 percent from what the last guy got. So the Cowboys end up in a position where their fans expect them to try and win, so it's hard for them to move away from Prescott, and so even though Prescott.
Again, you could argue regular season looks like a top 5 guy, post season his numbers make him look more like a top 15 guy. But they give him the big money, they also sign the wide receiver, and suddenly you're in a situation where 40 percent of your salary cap is going towards two guys who have not proven that they can win, but suggest that they have the potential that you can win.
On the other side of the equation, Pittsburgh Steelers, having a really solid season, 10 3 at this point, went for Essentially kind of finding loopholes in the NFL quarterback salary market. They got Russell Wilson playing for about a million dollars a year. Um, a guy that's been chased out of Seattle and Denver, but an established veteran, right?
And so a guy with a ton of experience. Their other player is Justin Fields, a guy that didn't make it as a rookie for the Bears. So they've got two guys on relatively low quarterback. Prescott makes 60 million a year, 23 percent of the cap. The Steelers, two quarterbacks, make 1. 7 percent of the cap.
Now, Fields was winning, but Fields got pushed out when Wilson became healthy. The way I think you have to look at this is the Steelers get two shots. They get two potential quarterbacks that can play, um, Dallas gets really one shot, and the Steelers get to invest their other dollars in wide receivers, and linebackers, and really the rest of the roster.
And so this strategy of going for more of a cost controlled approach seems like it might be something to look into in the NFL if you do not have a guaranteed top five quarterback. Don't pay a guy that seems like he's a 12 quarterback top of, top of the market, top of the market money. For the larger lesson in Fandom, uh, the NFL in sports really illustrates especially when there's a salary cap, that investments are incredibly important when you are trying to build something.
Putting the right dollars into the right operating system. Actors into the right musical, uh, into the right musical stars is absolutely key for building fandom in 2024. And this stuff is getting more and more, uh, we're we're finding more capability to actually measure the relationship between investments and fandoms.
So number eight on the list. The quarterback payroll strategies of the Dallas Cowboys and the Pittsburgh Steelers. I also like this one because you could argue that the Cowboys and the Steelers are really two of the top five NFL brands. So you can look at this as an investment in brand building. Number 7 on the list. Travis Kelsey and Taylor Swift relationship, right?
So, the best tight end, sort of the number 2, the number 2 lead on the top NFL franchise at the moment, right behind Patrick Mahomes. and the biggest pop star in the world, their romance, blending pop music culture with NFL culture. Every time Taylor shows up, the ratings skyrocket. I remember, you know, going into, look, the past, the last Super Bowl hit 123 million viewers.
That's up from 114 million in 2023. Now, that may seem like a small amount, but 114 million viewers, this dwarfs any other television program. So the Super Bowl was already the closest thing we had to a cultural unifier. You add Taylor Swift to the equation, a great musical guest, or a popular musical guest as well.
And you go to 123 million, right? In a increasingly fragmented culture, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, Chiefs in the Super Bowl, Taylor Swift in the building, is as close as we're going to get to something that is truly unifying, that everyone should be. So this is number seven on the list because, you know, this issue of the rarity of unifying culture is an important one for both marketers and for Americans.
We don't have much of a shared culture in 2024 and going into 2025. So if marketers, if Americans want to talk to each other about something, if marketers want to talk to all of America, It's really hard to find things. Um, and Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce, brought the NFL to new heights. And look, it also introduced Taylor Swift to a bunch of other folks, right?
So NFL fans that might not care about popular music, well suddenly there's this big story about Taylor Swift and her popularity increases as well. Um, now the reason I've got it as number seven is I think there might be a little bit of fool's gold here. Right, the NFL has truly embraced Taylor. They love the idea of getting this additional cohort of fans from popular music, this young female fan.
I suspect that this is just temporary. So one of the, one of the other things about fandom, right? Is fandom is, tends to be something that's pretty stable, right? And so I think they're showing the, Taylor's fans are showing up to the NFL because they're just interested in, in seeing Taylor in a new environment.
I don't think we're converting a lot of Taylor Swift fans into folks that are going to be watching the NFL for the next 50 or 60 years. At number six on the list, I've got the, I've got the, maybe the dumbest, uh, fandom event, or the dumbest fandom trend going on in 2024. I've got the Costco guys. Right? So, AJ, Big Justice, and The Rizzler. These are the guys, and look, if you're not spending your time on social media, on TikTok and Instagram, maybe you don't know about these guys.
Though they have started to, they have started to cross over into more mainstream media. Now, the Costco guys, Starting point, and so if you don't know the background, it's a father son duo. They would go to Costco and essentially do catchphrase based reviews of Costco products. The big ones are Double Chunk Chocolate Cookie and the Chicken Bake.
And they would do them on a Boom or Doom scale. The Costco guys went viral with, uh, Essentially catchphrases. Now what's interesting about this from a bigger picture, a marketing standpoint, a cultural standpoint, we have always had catchphrases. Go back to the 1980s. You got Wendy's with the little old lady talking about where's the beef.
Think about the Simpsons, you have Bart Simpson, Eat My Shorts. Uh, Budweiser has been known for developing catchphrases from the guys going, What's up! To frogs that just, that just ribbit. So it's an important part of the culture and it's an important part of marketing, this ability to get A catchphrase out there that everyone knows.
And so the Costco guys illustrate that if you're going to develop a catchphrase in 2024, social, the social media space is probably where this is gonna, where this is gonna get done. Now we could come up with other, with other examples of catchphrases. I think the Hawktua girl, Hayley Welch, is a, is, you know, if the Costco guys are 6A, then Hayley Welch is 6B.
She's managed to take the phrase, spit on that thing, to a podcast. And recently, A very suspect, uh, digital coin, uh, digital cryptocurrency, the hot coin. So we're seeing more and more of this on social media. And like I said, I suspect that if you want to develop a catchphrase, and a catchphrase is really an example of something going viral, that the old model of doing it via advertising, or doing it via a traditional piece of media like the, like the Simpsons, It's no longer possible that this stuff now has to be done in the social media space where phrases essentially decide to go viral based on some combination of viewer engagement and some combination of the algorithm.
Now, I also ask the question though, because again, this is the Costco guys and Hayley Welch are also this kind of prime example of people that are famous for being famous. I don't know that the Costco guys have any actual fans. Is this something that is just out there like, you know, talking about the Super Bowl, Travis Kelce, uh, Taylor Swift?
Are the Costco guys just a product of being famous for being famous? Now I did mention that they've also begun to, to get some crossover. I think they've made some of the late night, uh, Talkshows. Now again, 2024, I don't know that anyone's really watching this stuff. So the question becomes, you know, from those guys point of view, so I mean, to me the critical lesson is that catchphrase kind of going viral, this stuff has got to be done in the social media space.
For those folks that do go viral, how do you monetize that? Do the Costco guys actually have any fans, or is this just something that's going to disappear fairly, fairly quickly? Um, might be a great lesson of how to monetize. Fame for the sake of fame. All right. That's numbers 10 through six and my impactful fandom event countdown for 2024, just to re uh, reiterate some of the key points. Number 10, Joe Rogan podcast with Donald Trump. Story here is about cultural realignment. It's not about the endorsement of Rogan, but it's about the culture. of Rogan, Elon Musk, the UFC, aligning itself with Donald Trump.
Um, all these things, culture, entertainment, politics, entertainment, sports, these things tend to be related. So how they tend to align with each other ends up being really important. Number nine, Deadpool and Wolverine, a reflection of American character based fandom. To succeed at the movies right now, seems like you have to have established IP and established well known actors associated with those characters.
It's hard to do something creative in the movie space. Again, it's a, it's an observation for 2024, something really important for the movie sector to think about moving forward. Number eight, Sports fandom and the importance of investing correctly. The investment decisions by the Steelers and the Cowboys have led to very different results for those teams.
Now they're both premier NFL brands that have longterm, very strong fandoms. But if you're building a fandom, let's say you're not the Steelers and you're not the, uh, the Cowboys, if you're the Titans or if you're Jacksonville, or if you're the Arizona Cardinals, you really have to think about it. Think through investing in quarterbacks, how you invest your money and talent to build fandom over the long haul.
Number seven, we've got Travis, uh, Travis Kelsey and Taylor Swift. This is a great fandom story in terms of being something that really illustrates the maybe temporary power of crossovers. You can think about, like, these are two people and it's two sectors, music and sports. But in some ways, this is just the greatest brand partnership going.
The NFL brand combining with the Taylor Swift brand to set records in terms of attendance. Um, caveat to number seven though is, of course, is something like fandom something really permanently transferable. At number six, Kind of the perfect story for 2024 where social media is really becoming the dominant form of media, especially for younger folks, is the Costco guys and their content based on nothing beyond saying double chunk chocolate cookie in a funny voice, but they are essentially the biggest stars of social media at the moment.
It's an interesting thing. It's an interesting event in a couple of ways. One, it shows that if you want to go viral, if you want to develop a catchphrase, social media is the place where you've got to do it. And number two, if you are successful, if you're the Costco guys, if you're the got it guy, the right wing got it guy, or you're the, the, the, the woman that says scram, or you're Hayley Welch, how do you monetize that fame?
When you got fame based on fame, how can you turn it into a long term, sustainable. Okay. So that is, uh, that's the countdown 10 through six, uh, check back probably in about a week. I will release the countdown of the top five through number one fandom events of 2024 and the marketing lessons. Thanks guys.
This is the fanalytics podcast. You can always find more content at WW. You can always find more content at www. fandomanalytics. com. You can also check out my book. fandomanalytics by Michael Lewis, available at Amazon, Barnes Noble, and all those good places. Thanks guys. Talk soon.