The Reality of Fantasy Sports Participation

The start of the 2009 NFL season also marks the start of fantasy football season, which for some devoted fans is the highlight of their football experience.

The Fantasy Sports Trade Association estimates that nearly 30 million people are playing fantasy sports across North America – scanning the waiver wire, analyzing injury reports, watching six games at once and cheering for fourth-quarter scores by teams down by 28 points.

Most marketers may assume fantasy participants are the stereotypical 18-24, beer-guzzling, jersey-wearing, single male, and this perception may be causing many brands to miss out on what is actually a much broader and passionate audience.

Based on research provided by our friends at Scarborough Sports Marketing, marketers may want to take a deeper look at engaging more with fantasy sports participants after all.

According to Scarborough, 83.9% of fantasy participants are male; however, women have increasingly become more interested in fantasy sports, with a 36% increase since 2007 – bringing females to 16.1% of participants in 2009. And though 84.2% are white, Hispanics have been the fastest growing ethnic group, increasing 27% since 2007.

If those figures aren’t surprising enough, 37.4% of fantasy participants have a household income over $100,000 (61% more likely than a member of the general population = 161 index), 38% have a college degree (147 index), most own their own home (73.2%) and 59.2% of participants are married.

And while 50% of participants are ages 18-34 (164 index), the fastest growing age demographic is the 60+ group who has increased 28% since 2007.

Meanwhile, what markets are the hotbeds for fantasy activity? The top 5 DMAs for fantasy sports participants (in order) might surprise you: Milwaukee, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati.

So, if you are evaluating if fantasy participants are an attractive audience for your brand, consider ways to go beyond online ad units to engage this audience. The power of fantasy sports is in the connections within the thousands of communities who play. Create ways to help them get together, interact and share statistics and information, and you can score big for your brand.

State of Baseball is Strong

In an attempt to gauge the “real” state of the economy in the sports and entertainment industry, the 2009 baseball season has been a much-anticipated yardstick. And, despite the doom and gloom emanating from empty front row seats in New York, the business of baseball is still booming.

Through the first three weeks of the season Major League Baseball attendance was down just 3% vs. 2008, according to research by CNBC.com. Given the economy and the fact that baseball depends so greatly on single-game ticket sales and walk-up ticket sales, this is a positive sign.

ESPN did its own research and found that when you omit attendance figures from the two New York teams (who both moved into new, smaller ballparks this year), the average attendance for MLB games for the month of April was down a mere 287 fans per game. Even with the New York teams included, attendance is down only 2.9 percent, from an average of 29,783 to 28,917 per game. If the trend continues more than 76.3 million fans will attend MLB games in 2009, down from a record 79.5 million in 2007.

In addition, baseball has been strong on TV through the first three weeks of the season, with ratings increases for both the FOX Saturday Baseball Game of the Week and ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball vs. 2008.

NASCAR has billed itself as the U.S.'s top spectator sport, which is true based on average attendance per race. But when you consider that less than 5 million fans attend NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races each year, it's clear the real winner is baseball. Combine the yearly attendance of the NFL (17.5 million), NBA (21.3 million) and NHL (21.4 million) and you still do not come close to the total number of fans who stream through MLB's turnstiles each year. And, that doesn't include the more than 40 million fans who attend Minor League Baseball games each year.

What does this mean for marketers? Baseball is still a good buy (at the right price).

Those 75 million+ attendees guarantee a lot of potential brand interactions, and inventory is more plentiful than in past years. In addition, field-level signage such as outfield wall signs is visible to television audiences during marquee post-season games, unlike the NFL and NBA.

And although baseball season is already underway, it's not too late to get into the game.