Could the Phillies’ World Series run attract younger fans to baseball?

The narrative has been repeated for years: Baseball has a youth problem.

The sport’s fan base is aging, pundits say, and the game is too slow to attract today’s young people — particularly those in Gen Z, who fall between the ages of 10 and 25 and likely grew up on a steady diet of social media and screen time.

But as an energetic Phillies team secured its first trip to the World Series since before some Gen Zers were born, young people were among the crowds celebrating at Citizens Bank Park and on streets and light poles across the city.

The memories that teens and young adults have created over the last few weeks may represent more than a passing Phillies fad. Gen Z experts say the experiences — be they inside the ballpark, watching games with family and friends, or just taking in “Dancing on My Own” mash-ups and Miles Teller videos on repeat — could translate into stronger fandom for years or even decades to come.

“Gen Zers are in their most formative years, whether they are teen Gen Zers, college Gen Zers, or adult Gen Zers,” said Mark Beal, an assistant professor at Rutgers University School of Communication and Information who has written three books on Gen Z. “Things that take place in their lives now could have a long-lasting impact, including the fact that as a Gen Zer my hometown team had an improbable run to the World Series.”

“It matters that they’ll have a baseline World Series to remember,” said Joel Maxcy, the department head for sport business and general business at Drexel University. “They’ll say, ‘That was the year, I remember what I was doing.’”

Nationwide, members of Gen Z have been less inclined than prior generations to call themselves fans of any sport.

Just over half of Gen Z respondents to a 2020 Morning Consult survey said they’d consider themselves a casual sports fan, compared with 69% of millennials, 66% of Gen Xers and 61% of Baby Boomers.

Even fewer followed the MLB, according to the survey, with only 32% of Gen Zers identifying as casual or avid fans of professional baseball compared with 50% of all adults.

Beal said he wasn’t aware of more recent polling on Gen Z fandom, but he cautioned against writing off the generation and its baseball inclinations. In 2020, when he gave the keynote lecture for the “Major League Baseball Speaker Series,” he shared his Gen Z expertise with more than 100 league executives and all 30 teams.

In the years since, the league and its teams have been sharing more content on Gen Z-favored social media sites such as TikTok, he said, and invited them into the fold with campaigns such as an influencer contest launched in 2021. At the same time, Beal noted, the expansion of legal online sports betting — the popularity of which soared early in the pandemic — has led to more young fans becoming invested in games.

“This generation may not sit down and watch a telecast of a Phillies game for three-plus hours,” Beal said, adding with a laugh: “In fact, they probably won’t.”

They may tune in, however, if they’ve placed even a small wager on the outcome, he said. They also may follow the team through YouTube highlight videos, he said, or be drawn in to viral videos or content shared by friends.

For Gen Zers attending games or celebrations, they value an “Instagrammable experience” that “goes beyond the winning and the losing,” Beal said.

“In fact,” he added, “most of the content that gets the engagement is off-field content, the celebrating on the streets,” photos and videos of which make other young people want to be part of the celebration next time.

Maxcy said he thinks baseball may not be that unpopular among young people, especially in Philadelphia. His Drexel students have been buzzing about the Phillies, he said, with an excitement similar to students’ reactions when the Eagles won the 2018 Super Bowl.

Students who grew up in the area have a special affection for the Phillies, with some having gotten hooked when they went to games as kids, he said. For families and college students, regular-season tickets are affordable, too — at least relative to Eagles tickets, he noted.

“The Phillies as well as anybody have done a good job of courting and understanding that younger generation,” Maxcy said.

During this playoff run, the Phillies have been putting out more content on the team’s TikTok page, and hundreds of thousands of people have shared those clips. This young charismatic team and its storybook, come-from-behind success have made it easy to capture moments fans want to relive.

“A World Series run was not planned and because it was not planned, it is so organic,” Beal said. “It is mobilizing this movement of fans and future fans who maybe weren’t following as closely during the regular season or weren’t sharing their fandom. Winning the World Series would only take it up to another level.”