Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 8, 1993 TAG: 9309080027
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
A generational and gender revolution is quietly sweeping American sports.
Teen-age girls and their moms are leading the way, fueling much of the explosive growth in all sports and lifting figure skating and gymnastics near the top of the country's most popular spectator sports.
Those are some of the findings of National Sports Study II, the largest sports and lifestyle study ever conducted in America, released Wednesday by The Associated Press and Sports Marketing Group, a research-based consultancy in Dallas.
The study, based on 1,479 respondents to 64-page questionnaires, updates and broadens one conducted in 1990. It is weighted and balanced to represent all demographic groups in proportion to current U.S. Census data. It carries a margin of error of 1.7 percent to 2.6 percent.
Females of all ages are becoming fans, not only of traditional "women's sports," such as gymnastics and figure skating, but also "men's sports," such as football, baseball, basketball, hockey and auto racing.
Among women 18 and older, the total popularity of the NBA soared 70 percent since 1989, the NFL 45 percent and baseball 40 percent, the study said. During the same period among men 18 and older, the popularity of the NBA rose 10 percent, the NFL barely 1 percent and baseball 7 percent.
That surge of sports interest by women is closing the traditional disparity in spectator sports, according to the survey. In baseball, for example, fan appeal varies only about 5 percentage points between men and women in all age groups under 65. That contrasts with a difference of about 21 percentage points between adult men and women in 1989.
In some age groups, the popularity of the NBA, NFL and baseball is higher among women than among men. The NBA, for instance, is 4 percent more popular among 18- to 24-year-old women than it is among men the same age.
The trend cuts two ways. Boys and men are becoming greater fans of women's figure skating and women's gymnastics. They even like women's college basketball more than women do.
When it comes to the NFL and baseball, about three out of five men and two out of five women say they are among their favorite sports. Women's figure skating and women's gymnastics have nearly opposite ratios with women in the majority. But that still adds up to close to half the population being big fans of those sports.
"The next generation of women, 28 and younger, is actively involved or interested in many sports by 3-1 to 4-1 margins over previous generations," Nye Lavalle, chairman of Sports Marketing Group, said. "In some sports, their participation or spectator interest equals or exceeds that of boys. And when kids get involved in sports, their mothers get involved as well.
"What it all means is the sports demography landscape of America is shifting, and the majority of the industry isn't paying attention, including some advertisers, networks, newspapers, leagues and teams."
The top 10 most popular sports, according to Lavalle's study, are NFL football, women's figure skating, women's gymnastics and major-league baseball (tie), pairs figure skating, men's figure skating, pairs ice dancing, men's gymnastics, NBA basketball and college football.
The 10 most popular events in the study are Super Bowl, Winter Olympics, NFL playoffs, Summer Olympics, World Series, baseball playoffs, World Figure Skating Championships, U.S. National Figure Skating Championships, the NBA championship and baseball's All-Star Game.
That parallels closely the Nielsen ratings for 1992.
The NFL is still the No. 1 sport in total popularity, as it was in the same study three years ago. Nearly half of all Americans love the NFL or consider it one of their favorite sports, up from 39 percent previously because of the inclusion this time of youths 12 to 17 and the rise in female fans.
And what sports do Americans dislike most? Wrestling, boxing and golf, even though each also has avid followings. World Cup soccer is the next most disliked event - a bad sign for its arrival next year in the United States.
The high ranking of figure skating and gymnastics may shock some sports fans, but it comes as no surprise to CBS, which saw its figure skating broadcasts during the Winter Olympics last year trail only the NFL in Nielsen ratings of all sports programming.
"The traditional sports press," said Jay Rosenstein, CBS vice president of programming, "doesn't look upon figure skating as something that would be up there with baseball, basketball, football, hockey, boxing, that sort of thing. The fact of the matter is, it's there.
"We don't see women watching sports yet the way men do. They're higher than in the past, but the ratios are still, depending on the sport, 60-40, 65-35 male-to-female, even for women's sports. The Olympics are the exception. Women watch more of them than men do."
by CNB