Women as Sport Spectators
According to Major League Baseball, women make up 46% of its fan base.
The league has admitted that it needs to do a better job appealing to
women, and marketers are trying to develop ideas to expand the league’s female
fan base (Yerak par. 4). One idea
being actively pursued is the possibility of joining with the Women’s Pro
Softball League. Many Major League
Baseball officials believe that the time is right to invest in professional
sports that put women on the field, however speculation about a lack of profit
has caused the league to pursue this possibility very cautiously.
According to Women’s Pro Softball Commissioner John Carroll, who has
been involved in ongoing discussions with top executives in baseball, there is
some mutual agreement that “the perfect solution could be for each Major
League Baseball team to have a sister team” (Yerak par. 16, 18).
While it remains unclear when and if a joint venture between the two
leagues will happen, the possibility alone shows that Major League Baseball has
realized the importance of the female fan base.
Former Atlanta Braves executive Bob Hope acknowledged, “For years it
was the mentality that ‘Men play and men watch,’ but with the evolution of
sports and entertainment you wake up and find a lot of fans are women and not
that much has been done [by the league to satisfy this segment of the
audience]” (Yerak par. 8). The
fact that professional sports leagues have recognized females as a significant
part of the overall fan base represents a step in the right direction in terms
of maximizing economic opportunities.
Most of the National Football League’s attempts to attract the female
audience have come in the form of more advertising and broadcasting geared
toward this audience segment during games.
The NFL acknowledges that its research has found that 40% of the total
viewers who make up the NFL’s weekly television audience are women.
In addition, nearly half of this female segment consider themselves to be
avid fans (Kane par. 5). Combined
with the fact that women purchase 46% of NFL-licensed merchandise, the NFL has
become much more committed to appealing to women (McCarthy par.22).
One way the NFL has tried to attract more women is through commercials.
For example, the NFL first employed this strategy in December 1999 when
they introduced a commercial for the league that depicts the coming of age of
the female football fan. The
commercial, which spans from the 1960s until today, follows a couple watching
football together. Over time, the
woman becomes more knowledgeable about the game than the man. Providing explanation for the logic behind this particular
commercial, Howard Handler, senior vice president for marketing and fan
development for the NFL’s in-house marketing unit, said, “Women have been
part of our audience for some time, but they’ve clearly evolved from detached
and less knowledgeable to far more involved and connected (Kane par. 4-5).”
In addition to commercials, the NFL believes that providing more
human-interest stories will also appeal to the female audience.
The NFL has worked with Lifetime to attempt to expand their female
viewership. The main way they have
done this is by developing excerpts about certain players to broadcast during
time-outs and other breaks in the games. For
example, during Super Bowl XXXV in January 2001, viewers saw stories about a
deaf cheerleader and an assistant coach who had recently adopted a baby boy
(McCarthy par. 10-13). Stories such
as these greatly appeal to female viewers, the NFL believes.
Finally, another attempt made by the NFL to attract more female viewers
was the creation of a ladies-only
website, launched in October 2000 (Yerak par.
7). These commercials and in-game
features clearly show that the NFL has acknowledged the female fan base and is
devoting great effort to trying to expand this audience segment even more.
Research exposing the prevalence of female sports viewers has also
changed the face of much of the advertising seen during televised broadcasts and
at stadiums. No longer are a
majority of the commercials advertisements for beer, cars, or shaving products
that are clearly aimed at men. Instead,
more and more companies are trying to develop advertisements that appeal to both
sexes. Some commercials introduced during sporting events are even
specifically developed with women in mind (Kane par. 10-14).
Advertisers say that after seeing professional leagues’ research citing
the enormous number of female fans, developing commercials that will appeal to
women makes sense. Elizabeth
Silver, an advertising executive at Visa, explained that developing a commercial
depicting women as football fans was “a very easy step” after seeing the
NFL’s research that there are over 40 million women in the weekly television
viewing audience (Kane par. 13-14). Another
driving factor for advertisers is the fact that women are thought to influence
80% of household consumer purchases (McCarthy, par. 3).
Therefore, in targeting women during sporting events, advertisers are
also targeting a segment of the audience that has enormous buying power.
Southwest Airlines spokeswoman Melanie Jones said, “Putting women in
ads appeals to a group of people that are often ignored in sports campaigns.
These days, a lot of women are sports fans and they watch those games. And they’re our customers, too, and we wanted to reach
team” (Kane par. 10-11).
Perhaps the greatest evidence to show advertisers’ efforts to reach women is the fact that companies are willing to pay huge feels to advertise during the Super Bowl. For Super Bowl XXXV in January 2001, CBS required companies to pay $2.3 million per thirty-second commercial (McCarthy par. 17). Companies such as Visa, Southwest Airlines, Anheuser-Busch, and Breathe Right all paid large amounts of money to broadcast commercials during the Super Bowl that were clearly geared toward both men and women. In addition, during the premiere of Survivor: The Australian Outback immediately following Super Bowl XXXV, Reebok launched its first commercial featuring tennis star Venus Williams, who signed a multiyear $40 million endorsement deal with the company. Williams’ agent says that this deal shows that “companies are finally seeing women as credible, strong spokespersons. They’re realizing female athletes are the link to female buying power” (McCarthy par. 20-25). The recent trend towards advertising that appeals to both sexes proves that advertisers have realized that they can reach the female audience during sporting events.