With NFL season in full swing, all eyes once again turn to the biggest live game broadcasts: “Sunday Night Football,” “Monday Night Football,” holiday games, the playoffs and, of course, the Super Bowl. There’s simply nothing bigger in the world of American sports, and nothing more unifying in American culture. But in recent years, with the rise of professional sports “shoulder businesses” such as podcasts, betting, new fantasy games, social media clips and highlights, questions have emerged about whether the main attraction might fragment. Has the impact of the “beyond the broadcast” sports ecosystem been misunderstood?

To answer that question, our team at National Research Group (NRG) conducted weekly surveys of 2,500 sports fans for five weeks last spring, for a total sample of 12,500 fans. Our resulting report, The Attention Game, aimed to better understand how the expanding sports attention ecosystem is affecting the world of live sports. What we found gives reason for........

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