Sports are not Just for Men
In our experience of placing tens of millions of dollars in media every year, we sometimes find myth and/or personal preferences have influenced past decision-making.
I remember a local car dealership owner emphatically telling me that “no one listens to country music around here.” I believe “around here” meant in his car, office and home. At the time, the country music station was the No. 1 radio station in the market by a landslide.
But the biggest myth is that women don’t watch sports. The fact is that women are a growing audience for sports and sports products. The NFL estimated that roughly 45% of football fans were female. Women typically constitute nearly 50% of Super Bowl audiences. It’s the reason the NFL now has women’s sizes and cuts for all its jerseys.
According to Shareable, one-third of all sports engagement on social media is women. And a majority of Olympics engagement comes from women. Here are the top sports that women are engaging with on social media:
- Baseball
- Hockey
- Soccer
- Basketball
- Football
Even for ESPN, women are starting to become more and more an audience segment to watch and to target. And it’s this growing target audience that will become more and more valuable to advertisers and sports franchises.
How often do you watch television shows or video content from ESPN?
Mark Mathis
Mark wrote his first direct-mail fundraising letter in 1981 for the University of Iowa Center for Advancement. The effort raised a few million dollars in undiscovered wills and legacy gifts. From that day forward Mark discovered a love of the big idea that moves the needle.
After 12 years at KWWL, Mark became a business owner as a co-founder of ME&V — rebranded as AMPERAGE in 2015. After 25 years of leading creative teams in video production, graphic design, PR, writing and web development, Mark transitioned out of ownership in 2021. Today he serves in an employee role as special projects consultant.
He is creatively ambidextrous — son of an artist and engineer — and famous for distilling complex ideas down to a few words and a few visuals. Mark is a writer. When he found that many nonprofits struggled with complex branding puzzles, he wrote the book, “NonProfit-NonMarketing .” He also wrote a novel called “Reenactment.”
Mark is an active blogger OneMinuteMarketer® with nearly 1,000 readers each week on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. One of his most popular YouTube videos is on “How to Look Good on Zoom.”
One of Mark’s fondest business memories was being named to INC 500 two times and attending the INC 500 conference with other winners. Mark is considered by some a Civil War expert (and that explains his novel). Mark also served as an adjunct professor in the business and in the communications departments at Wartburg College.
Mark is a graduate of the University of Iowa and is currently vice president of the University of Iowa Journalism and Mass Communications Advisory Board.
Mark is married to state Sen. Liz Mathis, and the two love to travel, even when it means being trapped by a volcano in the Czech Republic for three weeks.