MANY FANS BELIEVE female athletes lack the skill, speed, strength, and overall entertainment value that males display. And women’s pro sports are partly to blame for this perception, as they originally marketed their players more as role models than great athletes. Understandably, it’s hard to sell a product widely perceived as inferior. But it’s not impossible.
Marketing expert David Schmittlein, dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management, suggests light beer as a case study. “When light beer was invented, it was terrible,” he says. “If anything, it was for girls, because real beer drinkers didn’t drink light beer. Ironically enough, that changed with football players like John Madden characterizing it not as light but as less filling. . . . The challenge for light beer was to create a distinctive value for the product. That is to some degree the challenge for women’s sports.
“What makes it a different and, in some respects, a better kind of experience than the men? How is it better? I don’t think women’s sports leagues are very diligent about asking that or knowing the answer to that.”
Even if they could identify what makes women’s pro sports superior, Schmittlein recognizes that changing perceptions and building an appetite likely will take generations.
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