Video Case 3.

National Football League:

The King of Professional Sports

1. Marketing research can play a crucial role in helping NFL to determine the
needs of the women that are relevant to professional sports and to determine how best
NFL can meet those needs. It can also determine the potential response of women to
proposed marketing programs of NFL, thereby enabling NFL to more effectively
market the league to women.
2. The management decision problem is: “What actions should the management take to
increase the percentage of female fans in the NFL games in the US?”

3. The greatest issues of competition in all aspects (internet popularity, television

ratings, sales) seem to rotate around the inevitable schedule of the allocated sports
seasons. The seasons for the “Big 4” are as follows:

Preseason Regular Season Play-offs

NFL September ~
August ~ September January ~ February
December
MLB April ~ September October
NBA November ~ April April ~ June
NHL October ~ April April ~ June

The following tables and explanations from Nielsen Research Group demonstrate the
internet popularities based on a monthly study:

“NFL Internet Network’s peak Web traffic last season was in January 2006, with 12.7
million unique visitors to the site (see Table 1). Online interest increases as the Super
Bowl approaches and office pools heat up. Similarly, the NBA Internet Network
experienced its heaviest Web traffic during basketball’s 2005-2006 season finale, the
NBA Playoffs in June, with 4.3 million unique visitors.”

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 “Increases in online advertising share overlap with, but are not identical to, these
peaks in Web traffic. In the past year, NFL.com enjoyed its greatest share of sports
and recreation online advertising in December 2005, with 4.9 percent of all image-
based impressions in that category (see Table 2). MLB.com had a nearly equal share,
4.6 percent, in June 2006. NBA.com’s advertising peak was also in June 2006, with a
1.8 percent share, while NHL.com peaked in October 2005 with 0.9 percent share of
sports and recreation image-based impressions.”

4. Marketing Research problem: The research problem focused on finding the different
factors that would lead to more participation of women in NFL. The broad level
Research problem was:
What are the factors that determine the women’s decisions to watch a particular
sport?
This broad statement is broken down into specific components.
a. What choice criteria do women use to evaluate professional sports?
b. What are women’s evaluations of NFL on the factors of the choice criteria?
c. What are women’s evaluations of competing professional sports, i.e., NBA, NHL,
and MLB, on the factors of the choice criteria?
d. What is the demographic and psychographic profile of women who prefer NFL to
other professional sports, NBA, NHL, and MLB?

5. The following research questions and hypotheses are proposed.

RQ1: What is the level of understanding and awareness of NFL among women? –
HI: Women do not understand the format & rules of the game.
RQ2: Do women follow NFL on television?
H2: Women are not aware of the names of major star players of past and present
associated with NFL.
RQ3: Do women prefer NFL to other professional sports?
H3: Married women whose husband’s are NFL fans prefer NFL to other
professional sports.

6. NFL will have to conduct its marketing researches in a phased approach. It should
conduct exploratory research first followed by descriptive research.

Exploratory research
In order to better understand the underlying factors that determine sports consumption
among women, NFL will have to start its research with an exploratory research.
Secondary data

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 NFL should start its exploratory research using internal and external secondary data.
It should search for data in publicly available domains like computerized databases
and also make use of syndicated data. These readily available secondary data will
help NFL in identifying in the demographics of the women that are interested in the
sports industry. It will help them gain a better understanding of the industry situation
and competition in the target segment. The data gathered through secondary data can
assist them in coming up with better conclusive research.

Qualitative research
As the problem that NFL is trying to address is a unique one, secondary data analysis
alone may not provide enough insight into the sports preferences of women. Hence it
is required for NFL to conduct research of their own that would help them better
understand the environmental context. The results of qualitative research together
with the results of secondary data analysis will enable NFL to come up with
appropriate strategies to conduct quantitative surveys.
NFL should adopt focus groups to obtain qualitative data. In this case, in-depth
interview of respondents is not required as we are more interested in group behavior
than in analyzing the individual behavior patterns. In order to focus groups, NFL
should identify the different target segments that they are interested in and divide
them according to the following parameters:
 Age
 NFL awareness level
 General sports viewership levels
 Income levels
A sample focus group discussion guide is given:
Preamble – 5 mins.
Intros and Warm Up – 3 mins
NFL game awareness – 5 mins
 Here the moderator would ask how the women were introduced to an NFL
game.
 Also questions about whether they watched a game on TV or an exhibition
game live can be asked.
First Impressions – 20 mins
 Here the moderator can ask about what the viewers’ first impressions of
watching the game were and whether they understood the game.
 He could also ask whether the commentator clearly explained the rules, the
nuances of the game itself.
Game viewing criteria 10 mins
 Moderator can probe a bit more about what factors prompt a user to see a game.
Closing exercise 10 mins
 Here the moderator could ask what they think would help them understand and
appreciate the game.

Descriptive Research
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 After gaining insight into the sports industry trends, NFL should conduct descriptive
research to obtain quantitative data that will help to arrive at conclusive results. The
information from descriptive research may be used to validate the initial hypothesis
and also to design appropriate marketing programs.
In this particular case, it is best to use a survey method as observation may not
provide us with insight on reasons of preference towards a particular game. Once the
quantitative survey is done, NFL can design appropriate marketing strategies based
on women’s preferences and their perception about NFL. The results will help them
reach this segment through the right channels and target the right set of women.
Promotional schemes can be used as a medium to increase NFL awareness levels and
can be used to rectify any wrong perceptions that women may have about the sport.
We recommend using multiple-cross sectional designed surveys. For example during
or after the N.Y Giants and Miami Dolphins game a personal mall-intercept type of
survey or a computer assisted personal interview(CAPI) could be done to understand
how the female fans reacts to an NFL game.
Personal interviews can also be done at malls around the country to understand how
the female sports fans react to certain games and what makes them involved in a
sport. This would help in understanding how to market the sport to these fans and
whether it is the technical aspects of a game they are interested in or are just casual
fans of a sport. This would also help in answering questions whether the women
would be passionate fans of the game
The need for personal interviewing through mall intercepts and stadium intercepts
arises in a women’s survey because the values, beliefs and attitudes of women may
vary significantly from men, and so it is important to interact effectively with the
respondents, note their reactions, be able to pose complex and diverse questions, and
to have control of the survey environment.

The following are the advantages of the personal interviewing method:

a. Flexibility of data collection: The flexibility of data collection will be high as the
respondents can interact deeply with the interviewer and the survey questionnaire.
As the respondent and the interviewer are face to face, many complex questions
can be administered, clarifications to the questions can be provided on the spot
and reduce response error and more importantly unstructured techniques may be
employed to extract insightful data about the value system of the respondent.
b. Diversity of questions: As the level of interaction will be high, a wide variety of
questions can be asked and ambiguities resolved on the spot.
c. Sample control: This method will allow the researchers to effectively control
which persons (women) to intercept.
d. Control of the data collection environment: As the respondents and the
interviewer are in direct contact, the interviewer can better judge the environment,
motivate the respondents to be more involved, and effectively control their
attention span and encourage them to be forthcoming in the survey process.
e. Physical stimuli: During the process of the interview, NFL merchandise like
clothing, video and computer games etc can be shown to the respondents and their
reactions and suggestions noted.

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f. Response rate: The response rates of personal interviews are the highest
(typically between 60 to 80 %) and so this method is justified.
g. Quantity and quality of data: The interviewer can record accurately the answers
to open ended questions, innovatively maintain the interest levels of the
respondents, provide aids to complex scales etc and thus ensure that the quantity
of data collected is large as well as the data are of high quality.

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