Only a Fifth of Sports Revenue is Generated by Women – They’re Sports’ Biggest Untapped Revenue Opportunity
Women will purchase 85% of all consumer goods this year, but only account for 19% of revenue generated by sports properties. It’s time women were better served by sports.
A range of metrics – attendance, sponsorship revenue and media rights values – point toward women’s sports as the fastest growing sector of the sports industry in developed markets. Two Circles is proud to be at the heart of driving this growth globally, including plans for even greater waves in 2023.
However, there is an irony in how women’s sports are turning interest into profitable business lines. Enhanced media deals, new sponsorship agreements and increased ticket sales are relying – in almost all cases – on diverting or increasing fan attention from existing (men’s) sports or attracting new fans who will have engaged only passively with sports to date.
Women are one key group. Almost without exception, all major men’s sports have an audience that skews more male than female, and all major women’s sports have an audience that skews more female than their male counterpart – not just the result of women finding inspiration and relatable role models through female athletes, but the legacy of sports’ poor job of engaging women full stop.
• @FPLFamily • @OliviaBuzaglo • @julesbreach • @AnitaNnekaJones • @KellySomers •
Five female broadcasters discuss their passion for #FPL, and the growth of women managers in recent years 📈
➡️ https://t.co/RSWSfSolBb#InternationalWomensDay pic.twitter.com/ofz7SrzVFY— Fantasy Premier League (@OfficialFPL) March 8, 2021
This relates directly to the commercial fabric of sports. According to our data, there are 20.1 million female sports fans in the U.S. – only 15% of the total fan base – and of the approximately $55 billion value generated by the U.S. sports industry annually, only 19% comes from women.
When you consider women control more than 60% of all personal wealth in the U.S. (Virginia Tech); women make 85% of all consumer purchases in the U.S. (Forbes); and women are twice more likely than men to purchase a ticket to a women’s sporting event (Two Circles) – the commercial opportunity for sports properties to better engage with women is clear.
Female Fan Engagement
Some sports properties, such as the Premier League, are looking to capitalize on this opportunity.
The league’s official Fantasy Premier League product, through which it is building a direct, engaged and owned fan base internationally, has a player base north of 10 million globally and has seen huge growth in female engagement.
The Premier League has actively sought to encourage women to take part in a game that is equally accessible to them as it is to men and has done so by creating content that better resonates with women – and via female broadcaster and influencer voices.
Fantasy Premier League’s player base has more than doubled over the last five years, and since the 2017-18 season the number of female players has grown by 112%. This is compared to a 65% growth in male Fantasy players across the same period.
Another Two Circles client – a U.S.-based but globally-renowned annual sports event that for decades has significantly skewed towards a male audience – increased its focus on engaging new fans in 2022 by attracting a higher share of women fans into the event ecosystem. This resulted in large increases in the number of female users accessing content on owned and operated platforms in 2022 – Facebook up by 21% and website by 35%. On YouTube, the total share content consumed by women increased from 6% to 13% between 2021 and 2022, and the total content views from women increased 250% compared to 50% for men. Small but significant progress.
The Secret Sauce?
Two Circles and their client developed content specific for newer and female audiences, including content focused on lifestyle, event traditions, and rules and formats. This content, accessible to women, complemented the sports’ highlights content, the main type produced for owned and operated channels (which under-indexes in female consumption).
Female engagement on digital and social channels was also translated directly into premium hospitality growth. On average women currently make up less than 20% of the fan base, however transaction data for 2022 showed that hospitality packages marketed to women saw three times the purchase rate than packages marketed to male fans. This indicates an opportunity for substantial revenue growth by scaling the offering, and designing tailored strategies to reach more women.
The Future
The current and future investors of sports are attracted by its audience size and brand reach. Media companies want rights that have broad appeal to be able to sell advertising and subscriptions, and those same advertisers and sponsors want wide audiences to market to – not simply men.
For too long sports marketing has been undermined by societal bias and marketing blind spots, resulting in a fan base that is unrepresentative of society. Not only does this make sports inaccessible, but it also leaves large pools of people unengaged with sports.
Laura Andriani (VP Consulting) and Hope Puzzanghera (Consultant) are based in New York and specialize in driving audience growth and engagement for Two Circles’ international client base.
Note: In this article ‘female’ and ‘women’ are used interchangeably to encompass everyone who identifies as a woman
