It was just a few years ago, where sports marketing is targeted and focused on only one gender -MALE.
But from recent observation and insights from market industry, it has proven that sports marketing has evolved quite a bit. This time we can see that there is significant recognition that women do watch and play sports for the same reason as men.
Yet, brands often ignored the potential of female sports fan contribution towards the overall sales and purchase decision. There is one interesting article on this topic, excerpt as below:
Yet analysts said the sporting-goods world remains chiefly concentrated on and controlled by men, an outgrowth of a decades-long lack of focus on female athletes and the broader gender gap that still haunts modern sports. About 40 percent of American athletes are female, yet only 4 percent of media coverage goes to female sports, according to the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota.
Women have “been vastly underserved by the industry. Sporting goods is a guy industry, and men dominate the executive ranks,” said Matt Powell, an analyst with industry researcher SportsOneSource. “Even today we don’t see brands making a ton of women’s sporting apparel. With footwear, for example, they still tend to be female versions of a man’s shoe.”
You can read the full article here
For more interesting details on why brands should also focus on a female-centric sports marketing campaign, take a look the infographic below, prepared by UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School MBA program. We hoped that there will be a more localized research done in this subject, preferably with infographic as well.
