15 No-Brainers To Increase Women's Sport Revenue
Increase Your Women’s Sport Club & League Revenue
15 No-Brainers To More Women’s Sport Revenue
FIFA just released a first of a kind FIFA Benchmarking Report For Women’s Football that includes a thorough and comprehensive analysis from 30 top-tier football leagues and 282 clubs.
While it only applies to women’s football, I think much of the learning can apply to many other women’s sports too and offers insight for other women’s sport clubs or leagues about how to increase revenue.
I inspected the 52 page report to provide you with 15 No-brainers to increase women’s football (and sport) revenue:
1. Offer season tickets
- 167% more revenue (and 40% more attendance)
2. Write a women’s strategy
- Clubs with a written women’s sport strategy had double the revenue and double the attendance of those without one (as well as being more profitable)
3. Negotiate broadcast rights separately from men’s
- 7 X higher revenue
4. Get social
- Sponsorship revenue correlated to the number of Instagram followers
5. Get 1000 people to attend
- Games with crowds of over 1000 people had significantly higher club revenue than those with under 1000 attendees
6. Get access to the CEO
- 150% more revenue when the women’s authority had a reporting line to the CEO (rather than multiple layers between)
7. Get financial controls and a licensing system in place
- Leagues with both a club licensing system and financial controls had triple the average revenue than those without
8. Focus efforts on sponsorship revenue
- Higher revenue generating clubs had a significantly higher proportion or revenue as sponsorship
9. Negotiate sponsorship deals for the women’s team only
- Double the sponsorship revenue than those clubs that didn’t
10. Get a title sponsor
- Leagues with a title sponsor reported higher sponsorship revenue than those without a title sponsor (USD 2.2m v. USD 1.8m)
11. Cosy up with the financial sector
- 66% of leagues have a title sponsor and 37% of them are in the financial sector. Telecommunications, F&B and Utility / Energy companies also feature heavily so make friends with them too
12. Don’t be scared of dilution
- Clubs that had revenue over US$1m had an average of 19 sponsors vs 4 for revenue under $1m
13. Invest to make money
- The highest revenue-generating clubs spent significantly more on marketing
14. Get a dedicated women’s department
- Correlated with highest revenue generating clubs
15. Give women’s clubs control / independence from men’s
- Stand-alone clubs generated 110% of the average club revenue in their league compared with 98% for affiliated clubs. While this is a complex issue the research suggests that even if women’s clubs are affiliated with men’s they should have some independence of control
For all the detail, caveats and more night time reading, check out the full report HERE. Many thanks to FIFA and their partners for producing this report which has benefits to many stakeholders across football and afar.