Women's consumption of men's professional sport in Canada: Evidence of the ‘feminization’ of sports fandom and women as omnivorous sports consumers?

Abstract

Women sports fans have been substantially understudied compared to their male counterparts. While a growing number of studies seek to redress this, there remains a stark absence of quantitative approaches that would allow investigations regarding patterns of women’s sporting consumption and historical trends in the potential growth of this fandom. Using large-scale survey data from Canada from 1990 through to 2015, and employing quantitative methods of latent class and regression analysis, this study seeks to redress these issues by testing the ‘feminization’ thesis of increased women’s sporting fandom over the past three decades. In addition, we consider whether women’s fandom has become increasingly ‘omnivorous’ over this time period and the nature of this consumption today. Results show support for the feminization thesis. These findings are significant as through the use of quantitative methodologies we evidence the narrowing gender gaps in professional sports following between men and women, and women’s increasingly omnivorous consumption of sports. However, we find substantial gender gaps and inequalities in omnivorism by which the evidence suggests increased socio-economic and cultural barriers to omnivorous consumption of sport for women. We suggest that these women omnivores may be able to utilize their sporting knowledge in an instrumental way for benefits in various social settings, especially workplaces. It is hoped that this article will pave the way for further quantitative studies on women sports fans across different contexts.

Sports fans' socialization, team identification and gendered differences between sport consumption

“…This may result in shaping a greater interest of women in watching men's sports competitions (Farrell et al, 2011;Melnick & Wann, 2011;Parry et al, 2014;Theodorakis et al, 2017). Thus, while contemporary longitudinal research (e.g., Gemar & Pope, 2022;Meier et al, 2017) indicate an increasing interest in watching sports among women and the feminization of sports audiences, it mainly concerns man's sports. This might be the result of accepting the higher status of men's sports in the process of sports consumption socialization (Whiteside & Hardin, 2011) and the traditional masculine fandom culture rules and expectations when entering the sports fandom (Kossakowski et al, 2022).…”

“…Sports fandom has been studied for many years, with a strong focus on sport consumer loyalty and fan team identification analyzed from the perspective of psychology, sociology and sports marketing, management, economics, and consumer behavior (Bodet & Bernache-Assollant, 2011;Melnick & Wann, 2004Theodorakis & Wann, 2008;Wann et al, 2001Wann et al, , 2021. Less attention has been paid to female fandom and women's sport in sports media but this gap in research has been also already increasingly filled (e.g., Dietz-Uhler et al, 2000;Farrell et al, 2011;Gemar & Pope, 2022;Havard et al, 2016;Koch & Wann, 2016;Kossakowski et al, 2022;Organista et al, 2021;Ridinger & Funk, 2006), and less involved sport fans, in other words, sport consumers, their mundane sport-related consumer practices (Crawford, 2003;Gemar, 2020) and changing their styles of media use (e.g., Chan-Olmsted & Xiao, 2019).…”

Inclusive, inviting, inspiring: Insights into the experiences of women's football fans in Australia and Germany

“…Experiences like this, of not being equally accepted as a woman fan, are reported both in the stadiums and in online sports fan communities (see Gemar and Pope, 2022). In social media, which offers the possibility of collective social interactions and fandom experiences, women are also often confronted with sexism, so they tend to become passive users, i.e.…”

Cultural and outdoor activities in Canada: Who does what?

“…Ethnicity appeared to be also an increasingly main determinant of cultural differentiation (Bryson, 1997; Trienekens, 2002). In contexts where women's performance largely surpasses men's in higher education, it was shown that women tended to have more highbrow cultural practices (Bihagen & Katz‐Gerro, 2000; Purhonen et al., 2011), to be less voracious (Katz‐Gerro & Sullivan, 2010) and to engage in traditionally more masculine cultural domains such as sport (Gemar & Pope, 2022).…”