SportaPolis

Column - "The New P.E. & Sports Dimension" - # 8 March 2002

The column that opens your day by opening your mind

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The 2002 Winter Olympics have just concluded in Salt Lake City and millions were enthralled by the performances of female athletes. Sarah Hughes, Jamie Sale, Kelly Clark, Yang Yang (S), as well as, the Canadian and United States women's ice hockey teams performed and competed in Olympic sports such as figure skating, snowboarding, short track speed skating, skiing, skeleton, bobsled, curling, and ice hockey. As these women and other female athletes return to their home countries an opportunity presents itself to celebrate their accomplishments and find ways to contribute to the growth of women's sports worldwide.

However, these opportunities are also coupled with many challenges. Athletes, coaches, administrators, and marketers must navigate a competitive sport and entertainment landscape to find a place for women's sports. On a global basis, the difficulties are magnified by cultural and religious differences in the way female athletes are perceived and embraced in their own countries. The SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis presented here focuses primarily on women's sport in the United States to demonstrate that opportunities and challenges abound.

In the United States, federal legislation in the form of Title IX has been credited with increasing the number of women participating in sports. According to National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) figures 150,185 women participated in collegiate sports in 1999-2000. This figure is an increase from the 1981-82 school year when 74,239 women participated in NCAA sponsored sports. The number of girls participating in high schools sports has also increased during the same time period from 1,810, 671 in 1981-82 to 2,746,181 in 2000-01. Additionally, the number of women participating in the Olympic Games has increased. At the 1900 Summer Olympic Games in Paris 11 women participated and 100 years later in the 2000 Sydney Olympics, 4,069 women participated in 132 events sports.

Unfortunately, participation numbers have not translated into similar opportunities for women as coaches and administrators of sport. According to Acosta and Carpenter (1990) there has been a dramatic decline in the number of women coaches and administrators since the inception of Title IX in 1972 when 90% of all coaches of women's teams were females. The total percentage of female coaches in NCAA Division I is presently at an all-time low of 42%. The numbers are even smaller for NCAA collegiate administrators where women constitute 9% of college athletic directors of Division I schools, and 21% of college senior athletic administrators (associate and assistant athletic directors) in Division I (Lapchick & Matthews, 2001).

More encouraging are the number of women coaches in women's professional basketball where 44% of the head coaches in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) are female, as is the commissioner of the WNBA, Val Ackerman. Women hold 43% of the administrative and professional positions in the United States Olympic Committee (Lapchick & Matthews, 2001). Further, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has committed itself to increasing female representation in the Olympic Movement. The goal is to increase the number of women in leadership and administrative positions within National Organizing Committees, International Federations, and sport bodies to at least 20% of decision-making positions by the end of 2005.

Participation rates and the success of women's sport events have generated increased media and broadcast coverage in the last decade. In the U.S., this increased coverage was driven by the accomplishments of the USA women's basketball, soccer, and softball teams in the 1996 Summer Olympic Games, as well as, the success of the 1999 women's World Cup. The 1999 women's World Cup was held in sold-out stadiums across the U.S. and included 64 hours of soccer coverage on ABC/ESPN over the three-week tournament. There were 90,000 people in attendance for the championship game between the USA and China and another 40 million watched the game on television. The NCAA Women's Final Four championship game has attracted over 20,000 fans in each of the last two years.

The increased exposure of Olympic and collegiate women's sport has helped expand professional opportunities for women. The WNBA began operations in 1997 and the Women's United Soccer Association (WUSA) in 2001. The WNBA has had success in its first five years of existence, and the average attendance for the league's 16 teams was 9,075 in 2001. Additionally, the WNBA is broadcast to 167 countries in 23 languages and 60 international players participate in the league. The WUSA has 8 teams and 16 international players signed to contracts. This year the league signed a cable television contract with PAX TV to televise 22 WUSA matches for the 2002 season.

Despite increasing participation rates and media coverage, there are some distressing signs that the growth of women's sports is being threatened by a philosophy of sport that embraces "winning at all costs" (Coakley, 2000). Female athletes at all levels are beginning to mirror their male counterparts in terms of rules violations, decreasing graduation rates, and violence in sport. Recently UCLA recruited an Australian softball player who played for one semester and then dropped out of school after helping UCLA win the NCAA fast pitch softball championship in 1995. Several female Olympic athletes have been suspended or required to return medals because of doping violations (Irish swimmer, Michelle Smith deBruin, Russian cross-country skier, Larissa Lazutina). Graduation rates for female collegiate basketball players in Division I, which had declined in the last several years, rose slightly this year to 65% from a low of 63% the previous year. Additionally, women are beginning to leave school early to enter the professional ranks (i.e. Deanna Nolan, University of Georgia entered the WNBA draft as a junior and now plays for the Detroit Shock).

Another distressing sign that the continued progress of women's sports in the marketplace may be disrupted, is the use of female athletes as sex objects. Often the female athletes that grace the covers of sport magazines and appear in advertising campaigns are not the most skilled athletes but the sexiest. Witness the case of Anna Kournikova, professional tennis player, who has yet to win a WTA Tour title, yet ranks among the top female athletes in terms of endorsement dollars. Some would even argue that the most famous player on the USA Women's soccer team, not named Mia Hamm, is Brandi Chastain, best known for taking off her jersey to celebrate the US win in the 1999 Women's World Cup. An overemphasis on the sex appeal of female athletes detracts from and trivializes their accomplishments.

The previous SWOT analysis demonstrates that females are participating at higher rates in sport at the recreational, high school, collegiate, Olympic, and professional levels. In addition, female athletes are benefiting from increased media coverage and exposure. Despite these positives there are reasons to be concerned about the continued growth and promotion of women's sport. The business of women's sports is at a crossroads and building on the strengths and opportunities present in the marketplace and minimizing the current weaknesses and opportunities can generate a long lasting place in the sports arena for women's sports. Here are a few proposed strategies:

• Support of grassroots programming to aid in the development of women's sport
• Formalized mentoring programs for female athletes, coaches, and administrators
• Increased support and training opportunities for female athletes and administrators
• Continued corporate sponsorship of women's sports at all levels
• Marketing and promotion of the athletic accomplishments of female athletes worldwide

The goal of this article was to begin a conversation about the future of women's sports worldwide. Now is the time for sport administrators and marketers to be passionate and to be part of the ongoing discussion because "business as usual" may not work in the long-term. Readers are encouraged to send in their comments and suggestions regarding strategies for managing and marketing women's sports on a national and international basis.

Acosta, R. V. and Carpenter, L. J. (1990). Women in intercollegiate sport: A longitudinal study-thirteen year update, 1977-1990. Unpublished manuscript, Brooklyn College.

Coakley, J.J. (2000). Sport in society: Issues and controversies. Boston: McGraw-Hill Higher Education.

Lapchick, R.E. & Matthews, K.J. (2001). Racial and gender report card.

1. What is the best model for managing and marketing women's sports and why?

2. What are additional strategies for contributing to the growth of women's sports worldwide?

3. What can we learn from the Olympic marketing concept?

4. Is the professional sports marketing concept that promotes individual players the only way to sell the product?

5. What makes women's sports unique?

6. Would women playing on or coaching men's teams help or hurt the marketing of women's sport?

7. Is the global community ready for a "star" female athlete to compete in a sport (i.e. basketball or soccer) that is predominately for men?

8. Should women compete in separate divisions for sports such as bowling and billiards?

9. Is it time to rate how well the sport industry is developing female administrators and coaches?

- just copy and paste the above questions into your e-mail program and submit your answers to: guy.vandamme@skynet.be

- he collects your replies.

- The author reads your ideas/reactions and if needed will add his feedback.

- This all - your reactions and feedback - will be posted again onto the list.

April 2002 - Dr. Mike Perko will start with a new article.

Have a good discussion,

co-ordinator

Guy Van Damme