How Promoting Female Athletes Will Equalize the Game
“Parents of boys have a job, too. It’s my job to make sure they watch women in sports,” Mary Zambri, Advisor at GoodSports, said at a #SeeHer event in May 2019, adding that “All I see is an opportunity. There is hope.” Marketing, she believes, can change lives and equalize the playing field, both literally and metaphorically.
There is a misconception that women’s sports aren’t popular; it’s not that they aren’t popular or desired; female athletes just aren’t getting the attention they deserve from the media — which are two different distinctions. Several companies and organizations that attended #SeeHer In Sports in May shared data and statistics that proved this, illustrating that “disinterest” in women’s sports is a marketing issue, not a demand issue.
Fox Sports believes promoting women in sports is a movement “demanding change.” For instance, in 2015, the women’s final game in soccer during the Women’s World Cup received the highest rating in history. Since then, Aly Wagner, a former soccer player, became the first woman to call a FIFA Men's World Cup game on U.S television. ESPN, similarly, reported that people spent 13,000 hours watching women’s sports live last year, and 500 million minutes of women’s sports streamed across ESPN, which demonstrates the scale and commitment from fans. People want to consume women’s sports — and see themselves represented.
Surprisingly, women’s sports see a 50 percent higher audience engagement than men’s sports, and a 46 percent higher engagement for women’s college softball than its male counterpart in college baseball. Gymnast Simone Biles, for example, was named ESPN’s Most Dominant Athlete of 2018. These statistics also point to a surprising reality: Men watch women’s sports as much, if not more, than women.
Further, WWE saw a huge ROI when promoting women along with men. The company rebranded its women’s division with a new championship belt and title (they would be called Superstars, like male wrestlers) after the hashtag #GiveDivasaChance gained traction on social media. As a result, women started headlining main events — and WWE Evolution, its women's professional wrestling pay-per-view event, trended as the number one broadcast for two hours on NFL Sunday this year.
Globally, things are changing as well; WWE women made history in 2017 as Alexa Bliss and Sasha Banks had a Raw Women’s Championship match during a Live Event in Abu Dhabi. In doing so, they became the first women to wrestle in the United Arab Emirates. During the event, women and men alike chanted, “This is hope.” This really is hope.
Stephanie McMahon, Chief Brand Officer at WWE, wants to keep leveraging media platforms and create stories that make a difference. She said that she “very rarely sees women featured in highlight reels across most platforms. This is a simple actionable thing a platform can do: Make sure one play features a woman. Women’s sports aren’t featured prominently on websites. This is easy to change. If you don’t see a woman’s story, you don’t see her, so then why do you care? We need to give people reasons to care about women’s stories.”
McMahon also went on to say that it’s not about brands competing but about helping each other and leveraging different platforms: There’s no rivalry between brands when there’s a positive impact, especially in how girls and women are perceived and perceive each other. It’s up to marketers to help change their lives.
As one attendee suggested, women’s stories can’t just be amplified when it’s traumatic either. Sexual abuse in sports, for instance, is an important story to highlight, but not the only story. Marketers, PR firms, and media outlets need to focus on female athletes’ successes, as well as compelling stories about women that aren’t always popular names. This gives all women the platform they deserve. More collaboration between the people representing the athletes and the people telling the stories can only help raise awareness.
It’s not just about sports, either, but gaming. Gaming is a sport unto itself, and Twitch, a live streaming video platform, is changing how boys and girls interact with themselves and each other, thus, changing the gender landscape. Boys, for instance, are reported to use “women’s skins” or avatars more and more, promoting a profound sense of gender equality.
Women are actually the fastest growing segment of gamers (and 55 percent of League of Legends fans are women, according to Mastercard) — illustrating the opportunity in this space to empower and segment women, especially as gaming is also a gateway to sports and tech.
But it’s not just about what consumers see, but about what they don’t see. Behind the scenes marketing teams are crucial to the kinds of campaigns that happen; Anheuser-Busch made it a mission to create a more inclusive team; its marketing department is now 50 percent women, explaining that its “GEM score helped make this a mandate, and not just a check box.”
Creating internal advocates and training teams to change from within to ultimately change outside perception, is crucial as a first-initiative to change. NBC established internal boot camps to train staff, especially its creative team. One of its missions focuses on promoting a better portrayal young female Olympians to inspire a younger audience.
According to NBC, women Olympic athletes are projected to bring home 60 percent of medals in the 2020 Olympics. Besides partnerships and promotions, strategic content development and promotional development need to be prioritized to tell their stories and narratives.
In addition, the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) repositioned itself to change its image problem, as golfers are typically portrayed as men. To encourage young girls to participate and watch the sport, it needed to identify a current gap and weakness. The company is now combating how female athletes are treated when they become pregnant. In the past, many athletes’ contracts were terminated upon becoming pregnant. This is not the case anymore, however.
Now the organization honors contracts when women become pregnant, hoping to set an industry standard. As the company asked: “Do you want to lead or follow? What do you want to be remembered for? That’s what all businesses should ask themselves.”
Source
"How Promoting Female Athletes Will Equalize the Game." ANA, 2019.