The ROAR Podcast: Lauren Adams

<p>When the final whistle blew at World Cup matches this summer, fans weren't ready to go home. Where the stadium gave them a place to gather, they stayed. Where it didn't, the party moved elsewhere, sometimes miles away.</p><p>Adam sits down with Lauren Adams, Global Director of Lifestyle Research at Gensler and lead author of <i><em>The Fandom Effect: Sports Urbanism 2026.</em></i> It's a three-part study from the Gensler Research Institute, Oxford Economics, and ROAR, and the research tracked fans before, during, and after the 2026 FIFA World Cup. It combined a baseline survey of fans across the U.S. and Canada, real-time social listening tied to every host stadium, and a post-tournament survey of host-city residents. Together, those show how a global event shaped the way fans felt about their venues, their districts, and their cities.</p><p>Lauren and Adam unpack the study's headline finding. Fans used words like "we" and "us" 70% more often when posting from the public spaces outside the stadium than from inside the bowl. When they used awe words like "goosebumps" and "electric," that collective language jumped 189%. They also cover "afterglow," the spontaneous celebrations after a match, and what it means when a stadium ringed with parking sends that energy somewhere else.</p><p>00:00 Intro: The afterglow that went to Times Square<br />01:55 Welcome, Lauren Adams<br />02:17 Inside The Fandom Effect: before, during, and after the World Cup<br />04:41 The loneliness crisis and the stadium as the new town square<br />06:45 The scale of the study<br />08:09 Voice of the Fan and AI-powered language analysis<br />10:00 "We" vs. "I": collective language outside the bowl<br />11:41 Designing for awe: lessons from Rockefeller Center<br />13:52 From crowd to community: access and programming<br />16:21 The "awe-free zone": entry, ingress, and safety<br />18:50 Inside the bowl: whistle-to-whistle documentarians<br />20:59 What is afterglow?<br />23:07 How ROAR measured afterglow<br />24:50 New York / New Jersey and the afterglow catcher's mitt<br />28:26 Families, locals, and superfans<br />32:45 A catcher's mitt for everything: zoned programming<br />33:30 Collective effervescence explained<br />35:09 What's next for Gensler and host cities<br />37:52 Lessons for everyday game days<br />40:22 Expanding the fan base beyond the core<br />41:34 Designing for the next 5–10 years<br />43:36 Wrap-up</p>