VAB, the Video Advertising Bureau, today released a 41-page deck that sorts fan behavior around premium TV, streaming and cinema into eight linked activities, from voting on reality shows to buying merchandise. According to VAB, the material illustrates why premium video "sits at the center of culture."

In Short

VAB, a trade group for TV and streaming companies, today published a slide deck saying that people who love TV shows, movies and sports do much more than watch: they vote, gather, make things, buy merchandise and recruit friends. That matters to anyone who buys or sells video advertising, because the deck is built to back VAB's argument that premium TV, streaming and cinema sit at the center of culture. The deck carries no buying guidance and no advertising results; its numbers all come from other research firms, and some are years old.

What VAB published

The full title is "The Fandom Flywheel: 8 Interconnected Ways Fans Engage With Their Favorite Premium Video Content." VAB, a trade organization whose members include premium multiscreen TV providers and distributors, offers it on its website as a PowerPoint file and a PDF. Pages carry a notice that the information is "exclusively provided to VAB members and qualified marketers." Jason Wiese, Karolina Guillen and Amanda Cashman of VAB are credited as creators.

The deck holds no fieldwork by VAB itself. Every statistical slide cites an outside source, among them Ipsos, Deloitte, Ogilvy, Tubi, Comcast Advertising, Kantar, Cinema United, Tumblr, ESPN, Market Glass and SBRnet. The oldest cited item is a 2018 Washington Post article about The West Wing; the newest is a case study dated August 25, 2026. Each of the eight activities gets three pages: an introduction, real-world examples built largely from social media screenshots and photographs, and statistics.

How VAB defines premium video

VAB lists five pillars: professionally produced, long-form content; high emotional engagement; a brand-safe environment; cross-platform accessibility; and transparent ad placements. Premium video, according to the deck, "has long been defined by high-quality storytelling delivered in transparent, brand-safe environments across TV, streaming and cinema."

Consumer input comes from a Comcast Advertising survey on what makes video premium. High-quality audio and video led at 82%, followed by professional production at 67%. Length above 20 minutes, the closest match to the long-form element of VAB's first pillar, ranked last of nine attributes at 17%, and neither brand safety nor ad transparency appears among them.

A second slide, citing a March 2023 Kantar publication, argues that "Emotion is the new premium." According to the deck, premium content "has primarily been related to the cost of production," while premium "has more to do with the emotional connection viewers have with their favorite content." The deck does not say how that connection would be measured across inventory.

The fandom baseline

The framework rests on a headline figure from Ipsos: 92% of Americans say they are a fan of something. According to the deck, the survey ran from January 31 to February 3, 2025, among 1,112 US adults, and it counted fandoms in entertainment, sports, politics, social causes, brands and professions, not only in video. Among adults 18 and older, 71% say they are fans of TV shows or movies, against 42% for pop culture, 33% for video games and 18% for specific social media influencers. For adults 18 to 34 the figures are 72% for TV and movies and 33% for influencers.

Citing Ogilvy's December 2025 study Fandom in Flux and the Ipsos survey, the deck says 86% of Gen Z identify as fans of entertainment such as films, sports, fashion and music. Among adults 18 to 34, 73% agree that being a fan is "a positive part of my life," 67% say they have met close friends through fandom, and 63% report "a sense of belonging" in fan communities. Reid Litman of Ogilvy Consulting is quoted: "For Gen Z and Gen Alpha, fandom is a way to explore themselves, to connect with other people, to find belonging."

Streaming is where the deck first attaches money to fandom. Citing Deloitte's 2026 Digital Media Trends report, published on March 25, 2026 and based on 3,575 US consumers, it says 92% of fans adopt SVOD services, against 77% of non-fans, and that fans "reportedly" spend $71 a month on an average of four services, against $56 on three for non-fans. A Tubi survey published on March 17, 2026, of 2,500 US adults who stream at least an hour a week, supplies the sentiment: 73% say streaming services make them feel seen when they suggest content from genres or creators already loved, and 68% feel seen when a service helps them find a new fandom or niche.

The eight parts of the flywheel

The deck calls the flywheel "a continual cycle" that runs across episodic dramas, competition shows, reality series, sports, news, comedy specials and theatrical releases. Its eight components follow, in the order VAB presents them.

Devotion

Devotion covers fans who treat viewing as appointment television, whether live, on demand, binge-watched or on opening weekend. The slide's headline figure is 51 more minutes a day spent on media and entertainment by fans than by non-fans. A chart sourced to Deloitte and to a 2023 Amazon Ads and Harris study of 10,080 US respondents shows 91% of adults rewatching content one to three or more times and 79% watching new content on TV or streaming within a week of release. For households with children, where parents answered about their children, weekly rewatching of previously released content scores 44%, against 25% for adults.

Participation

Participation takes in voting, polls, predictions, fantasy leagues and brackets. The deck cites Peacock internal data that Love Island USA Season 7 drew more than 1 million votes in its first six minutes and more than 3.5 million unique voters across a 2.5-hour window, and states that American Idol Season 23 crowned a winner after 26 million record votes. The sports figures are 53 million people in the US playing fantasy sports (SQ Magazine, June 2026) and an estimated 60 million to 100 million NCAA tournament brackets submitted annually across platforms (ESPN, April 1, 2026).

Community

Community collects forums, subreddits, watch parties, conventions and fan gatherings. Citing Tubi, the deck says 65% of surveyed streamers feel part of a community based on the movies and shows they watch, a figure the slide marks as up 15% year on year. Convention estimates include Comic-Con in San Diego, with four-day tickets at $319 to $383 and attendance put at 135,000 in 2025; D23, Disney's fan expo in Anaheim, with tickets from $99 to $2,599 and more than 100,000 fans; and BravoCon, with three-day tickets from $673 to $1,464 and 30,000 fans.

Extensions

Extensions is the category for spinoffs, webisodes, video games, docuseries and companion podcasts. The podcast figures carry the numbers. Office Ladies, a companion to The Office, is listed at over 500 million downloads, with the count sourced to an episode of the show dated June 3, 2026. Wicked: The Official Podcast shows 11.7 million combined reach across podcast and social posts in its first 11 weeks, alongside over 186,000 downloads. The West Wing Weekly is estimated at over 1 million downloads a month from launch, sourced to a 2018 Washington Post article. A Sounds Profitable study from October 2025 supplies the demand side: 53% of US consumers are very or somewhat likely to listen to a podcast about a favorite TV show or movie.

Creation

Creation is meant to capture memes, fan art, fan fiction, reaction videos and highlight edits. The figures come from social platforms. Cinema United's Built by Fandom report from April 2026 is cited for 6.5 million film and TV posts a day on TikTok alone and more than 3 million #FilmTok and #MovieTok posts in 2025, up 54% year on year. Tumblr's 2025 Year in Review is cited for more than 1.3 million original posts tagged #fanart, which generated 195 million engagements. A Fandom x Carat study dated September 25, 2025 puts the share of respondents who create content around their fandoms at 42%, and at 50% for Gen Z, which the deck describes as a 10% increase on 2019.

Experiences

Experiences covers pop-ups, themed venues, theme park attractions, tours and concerts. The deck's list includes Netflix House, World of Barbie and Avengers Campus at Disney California Adventure. Stranger Things: The Experience has drawn over 850,000 fans across cities worldwide, and the FRIENDS Experience more than 1 million visitors. In an Ipsos question put to 1,027 US adults, 55% of those 18 and older rated attending in-person events important or very important to expressing their fandom, as did 66% of those 18 to 34, 62% of those 35 to 54 and 41% of those 55 and older.

Purchases

Purchases is where the deck attaches a dollar total. Its slide title reads: "In 2025, over $85 billion was spent by fans on TV, movie and sports merchandise and apparel." The sum is built from two estimates from different publishers: $63.1 billion for the US TV and movie merchandise market, from a Market Glass Inc. report dated May 1, 2026, and $22 billion spent on licensed sports apparel in the US, from a 2026 SBRnet report. The 2023 Amazon Ads and Harris study supplies ownership data: 73% of adults own at least one franchise-related product and 24% own eight or more, against 92% and 33% for households with children.

Advocacy

Advocacy covers word of mouth, clip sharing and reviews. Ipsos data from 1,020 US adults who are fans of anything show that 36% are drawn in and stay engaged because they like talking about it, and 22% started as fans because family or friends recommended it. Separately, 71% of adults 18 to 34 say following and sharing content on social media is important to expressing their fandom. The examples page shows posts on Instagram, TikTok and X about titles including Love Island and The Odyssey.

What VAB tells marketers

The closing slide states that the eight activities show premium video to be "a driving force behind culture and at the center of the affinity economy." Among four takeaways, the deck says the flywheel creates "more meaningful opportunities for brands to engage passionate audiences" and that premium video platforms are home to fandoms "that shape the trends and spark the conversations that drive consumer engagement." An opening page states the commercial point: "For marketers, this creates opportunities to connect with highly engaged audiences across the many ways fandom lives on beyond the screen."

What the figures can and cannot show

Because the deck is a compilation, its strengths and limits both follow from the sources it picks.

Scope of the base. The 92% figure covers fandoms of every kind, including politics and brands, so it does not measure attachment to video; the video-specific share in the same survey is 71%. The slide title says TV shows and movies are "much more likely to inspire passionate connections" than pop culture or video games, but the chart measures the share who say they are a fan, and its footnote defines pop culture to include music, movies, TV, art and fashion, so the categories overlap. The Tubi feeling-seen figures sit on a slide headed as being about fans, while the Tubi sample description covers all surveyed streamers.

Association rather than cause. The spending figures compare fans with non-fans through survey averages. On the deck's rounded numbers, $71 across four services works out to about $17.75 a service for fans, against $18.67 for non-fans across three, so the gap comes from the number of subscriptions and not the price of each. The word "reportedly" marks the figure as relayed from Deloitte. The $85 billion headline adds two estimates from different publishers that, as far as the deck shows, cover different scopes; the sum is VAB's.

Age and origin of sources. The ownership and viewing-habit charts draw on a 2023 study, and the households-with-children bars come from parents answering about their children. The Devotion slide does not say which bar comes from which source. Peacock's voting numbers are, in the deck's words, "according to internal data." The Wicked podcast's 11.7 million combined reach sits beside 186,000 downloads, and the two measure different things.

Where the activity happens. The Creation and Advocacy examples run on TikTok, Tumblr, Instagram and X. The deck attributes that activity to premium video, but the data show volume on those platforms, not how much of it would exist without a given show. Beyond one chart placing TV and movie fans (71%) ahead of fans of specific social media influencers (18%), it does not compare fandom around premium video with fandom around other video. Nor does it follow any of the eight activities through to an advertising outcome. Its opening page calls premium video "powerful for capturing attention, building trust and driving measurable outcomes throughout the consumer journey," yet no slide reports ad recall, brand lift or sales.

Who compiled it. VAB's members sell premium video, and the choice of surveys, and of what counts as premium, was made by the trade body. PPC Land noted the same structure in its coverage of VAB's August creator study, whose headline figure measured stated intent on a five-point scale, not observed behavior.

Where the deck sits in VAB's 2026 output

The release continues a run of VAB material that PPC Land has covered since August: a creator study with Hub Entertainment Research on August 11, a World Cup advertising report on August 25, a video podcast report on September 15 and an analysis of box office share held by smaller films on September 27. A closing page of today's deck lists six earlier VAB reports, among them the podcast, creator and World Cup releases.

The emphasis has moved. Earlier VAB work leaned on viewing behavior: co-viewing on premium platforms ran at 60% against 45% for YouTube on connected TV, and sessions lasted 1 hour 18 minutes against 52 minutes, in a February study with TVision. The fandom deck turns from how people watch to what they do around what they watch. In March, PPC Land covered VAB's earlier fandom material, which identified eight fandoms among viewers aged 18 to 44: horror, anime, gaming, comics, animation, performing arts, books and millennial nostalgia. The Tubi feeling-seen figures, published in March, also featured in PPC Land's June coverage of streaming viewer preferences, so part of the deck's evidence predates it.

The Extensions category folds companion podcasts into the flywheel, and measurement of that content lags its audience. PPC Land reported in September that episodes streamed inside closed apps such as Netflix, Disney+ or Tubi sit outside the standard download-counting framework, and that IAB Tech Lab's dedicated streaming video podcast guideline, version 3.0, is not planned until 2027. Download counts such as those in the deck are therefore a partial view of how many people watch a companion show.

For the marketing community, the deck offers a shared vocabulary for behaviors usually reported piecemeal - votes, brackets, downloads, ticket sales, merchandise - and attaches a dollar figure or survey share to each. What it does not supply is a method for tying any of those behaviors to advertising results, which is the question the framework leaves open. For publishers and platforms outside VAB's membership, including creator-led video and social networks, the deck's own examples place a large share of the fan activity on their services.

Timeline

  • January 31 to February 3, 2025: Ipsos fields its What The Future: Fandom survey among 1,112 US adults, the base for the deck's 92% figure.
  • November 24 to December 2, 2025: Tubi fields its survey of 2,500 US streamers.
  • December 2025: Ogilvy publishes Fandom in Flux, cited for the Gen Z and community figures.
  • February 24, 2026: VAB and TVision report premium platforms ahead of YouTube on co-viewing, session length and sustained attention on connected TV.
  • March 2026: PPC Land covers VAB's earlier fandom material identifying eight fandoms among viewers aged 18 to 44.
  • March 17, 2026: Tubi publishes The Stream, the source of the community and feeling-seen figures.
  • March 25, 2026: Deloitte publishes its 2026 Digital Media Trends report, the source of the $71 and $56 monthly spend figures.
  • May 1, 2026: Market Glass publishes its TV and Movie Merchandise Report, the source of the $63.1 billion estimate.
  • June 15, 2026: PPC Land covers streaming viewer preferences, citing VAB's Staying Current on Streaming report and Tubi fandom figures.
  • August 11, 2026: PPC Land covers VAB's creator study with Hub Entertainment Research.
  • August 25, 2026: PPC Land covers VAB's World Cup advertising report.
  • September 15, 2026: PPC Land covers VAB's video podcast report and the measurement gap for streamed episodes.
  • September 27, 2026: PPC Land covers VAB's analysis of box office share held by smaller films.
  • September 29, 2026: VAB releases The Fandom Flywheel deck.
  • 2027: Earliest planned date for IAB Tech Lab's dedicated streaming video podcast guideline, version 3.0.

Summary

Who: VAB, the Video Advertising Bureau, a New York trade body whose members include premium multiscreen TV providers and distributors. The deck credits Jason Wiese, Karolina Guillen and Amanda Cashman.

What: A 41-page deck, "The Fandom Flywheel: 8 Interconnected Ways Fans Engage With Their Favorite Premium Video Content," that groups fan behavior into Devotion, Participation, Community, Extensions, Creation, Experiences, Purchases and Advocacy. Every statistic comes from outside sources, including Ipsos, Deloitte, Ogilvy and Tubi.

When: Today, September 29, 2026. The cited data range from a 2018 newspaper article to a case study dated August 25, 2026.

Where: On VAB's website at theVAB.com, as a PowerPoint file and a PDF, with pages marked for VAB members and qualified marketers. The figures concern US audiences.

Why: According to VAB, the deck illustrates why premium video sits at the center of culture and gives marketers opportunities to reach highly engaged audiences. The deck reports no advertising outcomes, and several inputs are survey averages, third-party estimates or company-reported counts.