Sports Market Research Services

Touchstone Research is a leading sports market research company helping teams, leagues, brands, and sports organizations understand their fans, athletes, and audiences. We deliver clear, data-driven insights that support better decisions across engagement, product development, content strategy, and sports media performance. Through qualitative, quantitative, and UX research, our team helps clients across the U.S. and global markets stay competitive in a fast-changing sports industry.

Sports Market Research Expertise You Can Rely On

The sports industry changes fast. Fan behavior shifts across platforms, athlete expectations evolve, and new digital experiences are redefining how people connect with sports. Teams, leagues, brands, and fitness organizations need research that captures these changes in real time so they can make confident decisions. Touchstone Research delivers the insights needed to understand fans, athletes, and sports consumers across today’s dynamic landscape.

Sports Market Research That Connects with Fans and Athletes

Fan and Athlete Insight Expertise: Experience across professional sports, college athletics, youth sports, sports media, and fitness categories.
Support for Fast-Moving Sports Markets: Research programs built to keep pace with seasonal cycles, rapid content timelines, and shifting audience behaviors.
Comprehensive Methods for Sports Audiences: Quantitative, qualitative, and UX research that uncover motivations, engagement patterns, and content performance.
Global Research Reach: Access to diverse sports audiences across international markets for cross-cultural and multi-region insights.
Trusted by Sports and Fitness Leaders: Long-term partner to major sports organizations, fitness brands, and media companies.

Sports Market Research Services We Provide

Touchstone Research delivers full-service sports market research solutions that help leagues, teams, brands, and fitness organizations understand fans, athletes, and sports consumers. Our methods support fast decision-making in a competitive sports landscape.

Qualitative Research

Explore fan motivations, athlete behaviors, and sports consumption habits through focus groups, in-depth interviews, ethnographies, and online discussions. Our qualitative research uncovers the “why” behind engagement, loyalty, and performance.

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Quantitative Research

Measure fan sentiment, brand perception, participation trends, and viewing behavior with large-scale surveys and advanced analytics. Our quantitative research provides clear, data-driven insights to inform strategy and content decisions.

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Recruitment & Fieldwork

Access high-quality sports audiences including fans, athletes, parents, and fitness communities. Our in-house qualitative recruitment team delivers reliable, targeted research participants for sports and wellness studies.

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Qualitative Recruitment & Fieldwork Services

UX Research

Evaluate digital sports products, streaming platforms, fantasy sports apps, wearables, and fitness technology. Through usability testing and journey mapping, we help you create intuitive and engaging user experiences.

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Communities & Panels

Gather continuous insights from sports fans, athletes, and wellness consumers with custom online insight communities and ongoing panels. Ideal for fast feedback, iterative testing, and season-based research cycles.

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Dial Tester

Capture moment-to-moment reactions to sports media, advertising, highlight reels, promotional content, and commentary. Dial Tester provides real-time emotional and engagement data to improve content performance.

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Secure Content Testing

Protect unreleased sports media, sponsorship materials, product prototypes, and marketing assets with Secure Content Testing. Our technology safeguards confidential content while collecting reliable feedback.

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Sports Market Research Audiences We Reach

Touchstone Research connects sports organizations with the fans, athletes, and communities who shape today’s sports landscape. Our in-house qualitative recruitment team engages diverse, high-quality research participants across traditional sports, emerging sports, and wellness categories to ensure your insights reflect the audiences that matter most.

Sports Fans
Casual Viewers
Fantasy Sports Participants
Esports Fans
Youth & School Sports Participants
Live Sports Event Attendees

Sports Media Subscribers
Fitness & Wellness Enthusiasts
Sports Brand Loyalists
Sports Gamers
And many more!

Sports Market Research Audiences We Reach

Sports Market Research FAQs

What is sports market research?

Sports market research is the process of understanding fans, athletes, and consumers across the sports industry. It helps teams, leagues, and brands measure engagement, test creative, evaluate products, and identify opportunities to grow audience reach.

What is market research in sports used for?

Organizations use sports market research to evaluate sponsorship impact, refine marketing campaigns, optimize fan experiences, guide product development, and understand viewing, participation, and purchasing behaviors.

Why is sports market research important?

Sports market research provides data-backed insights that help brands stay competitive. It supports decisions around content strategy, fan engagement, athlete experience, platform usability, and overall brand performance.

Who participates in sports market research studies?

Participants can include sports fans, casual viewers, athletes, coaches, parents, esports players, fitness app users, youth sports participants, sports gamers, and multicultural audiences. Participant recruitment is tailored to match your target segments.

What methods are used in sports market research?

Touchstone Research uses qualitative and quantitative methods including interviews, focus groups, surveys, diary studies, UX testing for sports platforms and apps, insight communities and online panels, and tools like Dial Tester and Secure Content Testing.

Does sports market research include esports and digital sports?

Yes. Our capabilities cover both traditional sports and digital-first categories, including esports, fantasy sports, interactive gaming, streaming audiences, and emerging virtual sports experiences.

Can sports market research be conducted globally?

Yes. Touchstone conducts sports market research in more than 60 international markets with translation, localization, and cross-market analysis to ensure culturally accurate insights.

Can Touchstone support testing of promotional or pre-release sports content?

Absolutely. Our Secure Content Testing (SCT) platform protects confidential sports media, campaigns, and prototypes while still enabling meaningful feedback.

Trusted by Global Sports and Entertainment Brands

Touchstone is Your Top Sports Market Research Company

With the knowledge gained in our user research efforts with Touchstone, we have been empowered to make more data informed decisions about our product by keeping user behavior and motivation at the forefront of our work. Along with being flexible in our partnership model, Touchstone has supported this effort by offering a dedicated team that continues to learn about our unique product and business needs and provides quick turnaround for recruitment, facilitation, and topline reports.

Senior Digital Product Manager
Ed-Tech Company
Touchstone Research has been an invaluable partner in our product design process, helping us reach a hard-to-reach population (K-12) students, and upholding the highest standards around safety and accessibility for participants. … Having worked with other research panels in the past, Touchstone has the best customer service, and panel quality. We plan to keep working together for the foreseeable future!

UX Researcher
Ed-Tech Company
My team has collaborated on a number of quantitative projects, and Touchstone has consistently delivered high-quality analysis and maintained excellent communication throughout the project. Their insights have directly contributed to shaping our team’s strategy and we plan to continue working with them in the future.

UX Researcher
Music & Video Streaming Company