The sports women watch

Shocking new finding ... wait for it ... women watch sports. News to rock your Monday folks, courtesy of the researchers at Nielsen Media. 

Anne Flore Marxer, snowboarder ... wonders at the genius of these boffins

Stephen Master, head of Nielsen Sports is quoted in this Forbes mag article as saying: "I don’t think people realize how big a percentage (of viewers) is women."  I tried to find the original report but none of the online articles link back to it (sloppy) and I don't have access to the Nielsen site but the stats generally reported point to women in the US making up to 1/3 of the audience for sports classed as 'male' like the NBA Finals, World Series, Daytona 500, and Stanley Cup Finals. 

You'd think that looking around the stadiums and stands for those games especially the football and the racing would give advertisers and media outlets a clue but apparently not. Masters also says in that interview that this 'trend' has been around for the best part of a decade. 

The report points out that women's sport is watched by more men than women, again not sure why this is new as you anecdotally you could predict that more men than women are interested in sport overall. But it's exciting to see American viewers tuning into the women's world cup in record figures even when compared with the male game.

What I'd like to see is advertisers and sponsors taking note of stats like these. The standards in women's sports is rising all the time - you can see the difference money and training makes. A little bit more of both and we can keep on narrowing the gap between the boys and girls.

Have you noticed any change in the audiences for your sport over the last few years?