Sports Innovation Lab: 83% Of Brands Plan To Increase Their Investment in Women's Sports Media in 2024
Highly-anticipated women's sports report "The ROI of Women's Sports: A Blueprint for Value Investing" aims to end a vicious cycle that is limiting brand spend on women's sports media
PRESS RELEASE - BOSTON, OCTOBER 18TH 2023
Following a year of remarkable valuation growth for women's sports teams and properties coinciding with rising global consumer interest, a new report released today from fan intelligence company Sports Innovation Lab found that brands are increasing their media investment in women's sports year-over-year but are still underinvesting in relation to the potential high-return revenue opportunity.
The report titled The ROI of Women's Sports: A Blueprint for Value Investing finds there is a vicious cycle at the root of this behavior in which underinvestment is causing a perceived lack of audience interest, resulting in an incorrect measure of media value that deters greater investment. To break the cycle, Sports Innovation Lab's data-backed guidance calls for all executives to categorize a spend on women's sports as a value investment, referencing nine recent case studies showcasing how women's sports routinely outperform traditional options.
The stat-packed, 41-page report is available to download for free on Sports Innovation Lab's website. This is the third annual report Sports Innovation Lab has released on the state of the women's sports industry as part of its internationally acclaimed The Fan Project series.
"Since launching our first women's sports report in 2021, The Fan Project, we've been using data to tell the industry why investing in women's sports was a smart business decision," said Angela Ruggiero, co-founder of Sports Innovation Lab. "This report is the how. It's providing a blueprint to both maximize the ROI of a brand's marketing investment in women's sports, while at the same time breaking down barriers inhibiting the industry's growth."
In March 2023, Sports Innovation Lab formed the Women's Sports Club powered by Ally to solve the issues preventing deal flow of women's sports media inventory. Bringing active media buyers and sellers together at key sports industry events, the Club is responsible for facilitating a number of headline sponsorships that have occurred between the Club's 300+ curated executives.
Researchers interviewed Women's Sports Club members - including representatives from Fortune 500 brands across industries including, but not limited to, CPG, insurance, travel, and technology - and found:
On average, brands were spending 9% of their total sports media investment on women's sports
Eighty-three percent of brands plan to increase their investment in women's sports in 2024, but a majority (2/3rds) are targeting an increase of 10% or less
In further analysis, Sports Innovation Lab found three main barriers to prohibiting brands from investing more in women's sports: Reach, Experience, and Discoverability.
Reach is being restrained by undesirable time slots, a lack of quality women's sports content, and poor advertising inventory packaging. Despite this, fans of women's sports are 20% more likely than fans of men's sports to spend on sports streaming platforms
A lackluster in-person experience is holding back the potential of a fan market that is clearly hungry for live entertainment: 53% of fans of women's sports paid for ticketed events in 2022 (compared to 38% of fans of men's sports), and fans of women's sports are about 3x more likely to spend toward live ticketing platforms than the general population
Discoverability is an issue as fans struggle to find where to watch their favorite teams and leagues, yet Roku shows what happens when platforms cater to women's sports fans: Users of Roku's women's sports hub spent a median of 12.7x more hours streaming the 2023 FIFA World Cup vs. all Roku World Cup streamers
Sports Innovation Lab is hosting a live webinar on November 8th to provide a report read-through and data deep dive, which can be accessed by registering here.
About Sports Innovation Lab
Sports Innovation Lab is a fan intelligence and market research company that helps the world's leading sports organizations acquire the fan of the future - the Fluid Fan™ - and maximize their value. We collect and analyze observational data on what fans buy, watch, and how they behave, then provide analysis and strategic interpretation of that data to world-class clients such as the NFL, NHL, FIFA, Google, Facebook, Coca-Cola, Visa, and Puma. Learn more at sportsilab.com.
PR Contact
Anthony Baldini; Sports Innovation Lab
617.480.7089
anthony@athletestrategies.com