It started four years ago at an IMG World Congress of Sports, when five female sports marketers in a Miami hotel lobby were looking for a watering hole nearby. Crossing a downtown street, they were joined by three more women. By the time they located a suitable tavern, the group had swelled to 12.
In a business where men usually outnumber women by a minimum of five to one, this gathering of a dozen women from across sports was enough of an anomaly that men from the industry at the bar noticed immediately and started asking “What’s going on?” Maybe they thought it was the start of a secret society.
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At cocktail hour: Thayer Lavielle of Wasserman Media Group, Lindsay Amstutz of Fox Sports Networks and Jill Gregory of NASCAR
Photo by: TERRY LEFTON / STAFF
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It’s a group sans agenda, but nonetheless, the Wasserman WCOS Women’s Cocktail Hour has grown steadily; this year’s in downtown Los Angeles had about 50 of the industry’s top ladies in attendance, including original members like organizer
Elizabeth Lindsey of
Wasserman Media Group,
Renie Anderson of the NFL and
Rachel Jacobson of the NBA. Normally, the female Forty Under 40 winners are also there. Among first-time attendees this year were a pair of new women CMOs: the NBA’s
Pam El and the NFL’s
Dawn Hudson.
“The number of women in this business is growing, but the ratio of men to women is still big,” said Jacobson, an NBA executive for 19 years. “This is our support group, and now we all know that it’s at 7 [p.m.] the first night of World Congress.”
While operating inside of sports’ leading boys club with a boys club, the NFL’s Anderson has consistently said that she disregards gender roles and testosterone while performing her job. “I don’t really think about being outnumbered, because I’ll test myself against anybody,” she said. “To me, this is about showing the way, because we have a responsibility to the younger women in this industry.”
The women in attendance told me that while they’ve seen an improvement in sheer numbers, too many of their own are too routinely slotted into the same familiar roles: consultancy, creative, events and hospitality. Things have changed, but they’re still too often the only woman in the conference room, they said.
“It’s not as much a gender issue as a diversity issue,” said Soccer United Marketing President Kathy Carter, whose tenure with MLS dates to 1996, the league’s first year. “We need more diversity of thought, and there is quantifiable evidence that diversity on a corporate board produces better results.”
> WE NEED TO DO BETTER: Four years after the original Women’s Cocktail Hour, there were only five female speakers, panelists and moderators out of 52 at the most recent World Congress of Sports, a paltry 10 percent. There were 132 women registered for this year’s WCOS out of 850, or 16 percent. This year’s Forty Under 40 class included eight women, or 20 percent, and the Forty Under 40 Hall of Fame has seven women out of 57 honorees, or 12 percent.
As one of those responsible for filling some of those WCOS panels, I’ll shoulder some blame. However, senior executive women of responsibility at teams, leagues and sports-centric brands, who are also willing to speak on panels, aren’t necessarily easy to find. (We acknowledge being challenged on this point by several of the ladies in this piece, but read on …)
So please help us by emailing any likely female candidates to the address below. We promise a better effort, but we could always use help — from either gender.
“Women will always be in the minority in this business — we all knew that when we started,” Lindsey said. “Certainly, it’s gotten better. But I’ll know we’ll have made real progress when there’s an all-female panel at World Congress — and it isn’t one about marketing to women.”
Terry Lefton can be reached at tlefton@sportsbusinessjournal.com.
