FAN Communications Global spoke at a session at CONTENTS UNIVERSE KOREA 2026 in Korea, introducing a business strategy centered on fan data and the concept of superfans.
At the “Fandom Economy” session at CONTENTS UNIVERSE KOREA 2026, held in Korea on 16 October 2026, Hayashi Masamoto (林真元), Director and COO of FAN Communications Global, said that fans are drivers of growth rather than consumers, and explained the direction of a business centered on fan data.
The session identified 5 ways fans continually take action: voting, purchasing, participating, sharing and creating. It noted that superfans are differentiated by the number of actions they take because they like something. It also addressed the cultural differences between fandom in Korea and oshikatsu in Japan, explaining that although the forms of support differ between the 2 countries, the structure in which the reasons for supporting something translate into sales underpins the Superfan Economy.
In a case study of global fan voting at a large-scale K-POP festival operated by JK Fandom, fans from around the world participated, but the results were generated by a small number of superfans. From a data perspective, the session explained that voting and sales are driven not by the entire fan base, but by the behavioral data of people who take action.
As a future outlook, Hayashi said the company would use retained sales data to create new content and events, thereby attracting new fans and expanding the fan base, in order to build a cycle that does not depend on a small number of superfans. The company views fandom as a partner in IP development and has proposed treating it as the starting point for planning.