How the NFL is aiming to broaden its appeal to women

Article content

At this year’s NFL draft, some of the league’s top prospects were asked a few questions they weren’t used to.

Article content

“What is a skort?” an interviewer asked. Travis Hunter made his best guess.

Article content

Article content

“What is primer?” she continued. Shemar Stewart wasn’t totally sure.

Article content

The questions were part of a social media video asking players about women’s products. It was created by Betches, a media company that caters to a young female audience, and garnered 1.5 million views on Instagram. While it might not be traditional NFL content, it’s resonating and building on the league’s push to attract young women through partnerships with women-centered media outlets.

Article content

Article content

The league partnered with Betches last December, and finalized a partnership with The Gist, a female-fan focused sports site and newsletter, in August. The NFL has long seen women as key to their efforts to broaden the league’s appeal, a push that gained extra momentum after Taylor Swift began her highly-publicized relationship with now-fiance Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs.

Article content

Article content

“As we want to connect with this audience, authentic, real storytelling is absolutely key,” said Marissa Solis, the senior vice president of global brand and consumer marketing at the NFL. “So rather than doing targeted ads that really don’t connect … you give access to (Betches and The Gist) but they tell the story in their own point of view, being there, front and center. And I think that connection is something paid advertising can’t do.”

Article content

Both outlets receive access to NFL tentpole events — the Super Bowl, the draft and the combine, to name a few — to create articles and content for their platforms, alongside additional league content. Betches, for example, kicked off a tailgate tour series as part of its partnership, and The Gist debuted a free game for predicting each week’s winners.

Article content

Article content

The partnerships are all in pursuit of growing and engaging the league’s large female fanbase, a demographic that has often been underestimated or overlooked. A September poll by Ipsos found that 41% of American women were NFL fans.

Article content

That translates into the potential for big business, leading the NFL to turn to outlets that already have deep connections with women.

Article content

“We center women in everything that we do. It’s not an afterthought, it’s not like you are adding the W to the end of ESPN,” said Jacie deHoop, who co-founded The Gist with Ellen Hyslop and Roslyn McLarty in 2017. “More data and research on women is showing what an underserved and huge audience and fan base this is.”

Article content

In addition to traditional game reports and on-the-field breakdowns, a large part of the strategy around appealing to women _ and to a new generation of NFL fans more broadly — is human-centric content. Through an approach aptly dubbed “helmets off” by the NFL, the league and their partners are focusing on content about the players themselves, looking to forge stronger connections by using more personal storytelling.