What is it about?
Football, and in particular, fantasy football has always been considered a man's territory. However, more and more women are playing fantasy football. This study explored the motives behind this growth. In general, two female motives are similar to male motives. They play for fun and to socialize with friends, family, and/or co-workers. However, they also play for new reasons, such as to connect more deeply with NFL players and to enhance the time spent engaging in NFL activities. Most importantly, women play to challenge and defeat male opponents on their ground (spectator sport).
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Why is it important?
Women dominate the consumer economy and they represent 50% of all professional sports fans. For fantasy football, they are the fastest-growing demographic. Therefore, understanding why they play is crucial. For many years, sport marketers have used the "pink it and shrink it" strategy when creating products for female fans. In other words, they would take a masculine product (e.g., a jersey) make it smaller and pink. This study's results suggest this population of female fans have their own identities and reasons for fan engagement. Therefore, new opportunities to connect with female fans likely exist.
Perspectives
Fantasy football continues to grow in popularity; however, most of the research has only examined male participants. This is the first study to only explore women. It was an inductive study, so nothing was borrowed from previous work on male populations. The findings are unique to this population, and represent an important first step in understanding female sport fans.
Brendan Dwyer
Virginia Commonwealth University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Challenge Accepted: Why Women Play Fantasy Football, Journal of Sport Management, June 2018, Human Kinetics,
DOI: 10.1123/jsm.2017-0313.
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