Entertainment fan engagement has shifted from passive consumption to active participation, with fans increasingly engaging through creation, interaction and shared cultural behaviour across digital platforms.

According to Carat, 87% of fans participate in activities surrounding their interests – whether that's creating memes, fan art, videos, and more.

These moments are now driven by a "fandom-first" movement, where 75% of fans find engaging in the culture surrounding an event just as, or more, entertaining than the event itself.

While this participatory shift creates scale and momentum, it also fragments fan relationships across walled gardens. Entertainment brands are left dependent on third-party platforms that only expose surface-level metrics, such as views, likes, and impressions.

What's missing is visibility into real fan behaviour, such as how audiences actually interact with content, what captures attention, and which experiences drive action before, during and after key moments.

Without first-party behavioural data for entertainment brands, teams are left struggling to understand who their fans really are, what content works, and how to sustain engagement and outcomes beyond the event itself.

This is why many teams are now questioning why owned fan experiences outperform social media in terms of insight, control, and long-term value.

Why this problem matters now

This creates increasing pressure on entertainment teams to prove ROI from engagement as budgets tighten. The industry is moving away from vanity metrics toward outcome-driven performance insight, where likes and impressions are no longer sufficient to justify spend.

Fans are adding to that pressure, with growing expectations for seamless, connected experiences that span social, web and live environments. These interactions generate meaningful behavioural signals, not just engagement noise.

At the same time, while social platforms deliver scale, they are structurally poor at supporting long-term fan relationships. Attention is fragmented, competition is relentless, and behavioural insight remains trapped, and brands have little control over who they reach or retain.

As a result, first-party behavioural data is becoming a serious advantage. By capturing how fans actually interact with content, what they tap, explore, skip or return to, entertainment brands gain the clarity needed to personalise experiences, foster loyalty and understand which content drives sustained engagement over time.

Eurovision's challenge

The Eurovision Song Contest generates vast volumes of content across social platforms from artists, fans and partners. While this creates global attention, the content is distributed across multiple platforms, disjointing fan engagement and limiting Eurovision's ability to activate that content in a structured, owned way.

The majority of fan interaction takes place on third-party platforms, restricting visibility into real behavioural signals, including how fans actually interact with content, what captures attention, and which specific moments drive action.

As a result, high levels of excitement and engagement were not consistently connected to measurable commercial outcomes such as merchandise sales.

And without an owned activation layer capturing first-party behaviour, much of the value created during Eurovision remained outside Eurovision's control, limiting both insight and long-term commercial impact.

Centralising content to capture insight

One example of this approach is how Eurovision worked with Amondo to centralise content into a single, owned experience directly within the official Eurovision app and website.

Using the Amondo Gallery to pull content in from Instagram, Twitter and TikTok, the Eurovision brought together fan reactions, artist moments, partner content and official coverage into a live feed, enabling Eurovision to retain audience engagement while capturing first-party behavioural data.

This activation kept fans inside Eurovision's owned environment, which retained the energy of social, while providing the team with actionable insight into audience interactions and highlighted which content actually drove engagement.

Turning engagement into measurable revenue

Of course, excitement doesn't always correlate directly to sales and revenue.

Eurovision realised this and used its content hub to connect hype to merchandise sales with interactive Click-Through Tiles, which allowed fans to move seamlessly from content engagement to merchandise purchases – turning the buzz into revenue.

This approach gave Eurovision direct visibility into how fan and artist content drove commercial outcomes.

Over 10 million impressions were combined into a single owned experience, with 11% of interactions showing fans taking meaningful actions, providing behavioural insight that other platforms don't show.

Eurovision could finally see what works, why, and what to scale, turning audience engagement into measurable revenue.

Key takeaways for entertainment brands

• The Eurovision team captured first-party behavioural data unavailable through third-party platforms, revealing how fans truly engage with content

• This meant they gained clarity on which content resonated most, enabling data-driven decisions to boost engagement and loyalty

• They built a repeatable model for future Eurovision events, laying the foundation for predictive content intelligence

• Strengthened partner value and personalisation strategies by linking fan behaviour to measurable outcomes

• Demonstrated how content can drive long-term fan value and higher lifetime value (LTV), moving from guesswork to knowing what works

Summary

Moving forward, entertainment brands need to consider more than traditional social reach and surface-level metrics and choose to shift towards owned engagement. Simply relying on third-party platforms is becoming unsustainable and less effective.

With owned media platforms, brands can access valuable, first-party data that outperforms social media and provides visibility into real behavioural signals, including how fans actually interact with content, what captures attention, and which moments drive action.

See how more brands are doing this here.