Sports Marketing 2.0 | Pat Coyle

I’m still wrestling with Excel, trying to find ways to dig into the data. Thanks to my DBA, and sister, Maureen, now I can break down each answer by age and gender. The following graph shows a top line view of gender splits in each age range we captured.

Remember that the overall gender breakdown of survey takers is 75% male, 25% female. I would think that any segment showing gender skewing significantly over or under the 75/25 split may be worth watching. So I went looking for those.

You’ll notice that I’ll highlight often the female responses. This is mainly because it is easier to see spikes in the female data. For the most part men answered the questions fairly predictably, whereas certain groups of women, while smaller in size, showed distinct preferences for certain fan network features.

Following are very rough notes from my initial reading of the data.

1. Have you ever created a myspace profile?

Of those answering yes, ages are spread evenly 18-44. One spike I noticed, women make up 43% of the 18-24 group. This group of younger women will show up quite a bit. They seem to be quite active. In fact, no women 18-24% said “no” to this question whereas women 45-54 were twice as likely to say “no”. Women 18-24 are also likely to have updated recently.

2. How often do you visit the Fan Forum at colts.com?

Those same young women who say they are active in social networks are NOT visiting our forum. 75% of the folks answering “never visit the forum” are 18-24 female. Overall, women were much more likely to answer “never”, but some women do visit the forum. Men are the regular users (90% of the “daily” visitors are male), but as visits get less frequent, women appear to be holding their own – about 25% of people who report using the forum once in a while are female – a number on par with overall gender mix.

3. Have you ever created a blog?

Again, women 18-24 represent 50% of respondents who said they have created a blog. All other age groups revert to 75/25 split. (Note: IN terms of volume, the 18-34 age group seems to be emerging as the most active across all social networking questions).

4. Are you involved with a Fantasy football league this season?

Heavily dominated by men as expected, 90% of positive respondents are male.

5. Do you have text messaging service on your phone?

Men and women seem equally likely to have text messaging.

6. Do you own an iPod or similar device, and have you ever purchased and downloaded music?

There was a slight increase in the % of women (36%) who answered yes to both owning and downloading.

7. Have you ever uploaded photos to a photo sharing site like Flickr?-

Again, women represent 40% of the “yes” – seems like women are more actively engaged in the more “social” of the social networking features.

8. How often do you play video games (like Madden NFL) and have you ever played multi-player games over the Internet?-

While women report using “once in a while,” men dominate the frequent use and the multi-player internet categories.

9. Have you ever uploaded video to YouTube or similar site?

Positive responses seem to follow the 75/25 (male / female) average

10 Have you watched a Colts game on TV while visiting colts.com this season?

Men were more likely to have said “yes”, but only by a small margin

11. Which Colts Network feature is most important to you?

- Building personal profile – 90% male (This is #3 most popular feature)

- Communicating with friends - 100% female (very low total number of responses)

- Finding other Colts fans near me - 75/25 (this is #2 most popular feature)

- Get Insider access – most popular overall feature, split evenly (note: this is only unique feature that fans can’t get on any other site, so it makes sense that it’s most popular)

- Upload photos - Positive responses were 2 to 1 female

12. Where do you watch Colts games?

Most respondents (male and female) watch at their homes (as opposed to friend’s homes or public places), which leads me to wonder:

Are these the fans that organize the parties? Plan the meals? Are they the Centers of influence? Or do most people watch at their own homes?

13. How big of a Colts fan are you on a scale of 1 to 10?

While fewer women took the survey, those who did are just as likely to rank themselves 10s. While 25% of all Avid NFL Fans are women, the avid women seem to be just as avid as the avid men. However, the women seem to skew younger, more social and more active on-line.

Here’s another view of the age graph