Courting Women Using Sports Marketing: A Content Analysis of the US Open

Abstract

As surprising as it may sound, sales to the female sports market are almost equal to sales to the male sports market. Also, an increasing percentage of viewers of various broadcast sports events consist of females, even in male-dominant sports like football and baseball. Couple these with the increasing role that females play in purchasing decisions for a variety of products, and sports marketing emerges as an effective vehicle to reach this lucrative market. To investigate the extent to which marketers are taking advantage of this promotion strategy, a two-step project was conducted. First, gender differences with regard to advertising were delineated based on an extensive literature review. Second, a content analysis of commercials shown during the men's and women's tennis final in the 1990 US Open was performed. The results of the content analysis were contrasted with the expected findings indicated by the literature review. Only one product was found to be specifically targeted to women. Moreover, very few differences were found between the advertising strategy in both finals. The results indicate that to a large extent, marketers are not taking advantage of sports marketing targeted to women, and continue to use sports marketing to target the traditional male sports fan.

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