According to a report in the ORLANDO SENTINEL on this week's
ISMA conference on sports marketing for women, ads for beer,
razor blades, and trucks "are missing the most important emerging
sector of the sports consumer market -- girls and women." Nye
Lavalle, chair of Sports Marketing Group: "The total growth of
all major (spectator) sports for the remainder of this decade
will come from women. ... Women are coming into sports in equal
if not greater numbers than men did years ago." FACTS: Females
account for 44% of NBA merchandise sales; one out of five U.S.
teenage girls "owns or has bought a piece of NBA-sanctioned
clothing"; sales of women's athletic shoes increased 9% last
year; one in three high school girls takes part in varsity
sports; 8.2M U.S. girls and women play basketball, 8.5M run or
jog, and 3.8M play soccer. To broaden its own appeal, the NBA
"plans to begin producing a line of women's wear." Michele
Brown, the NBA's Dir of Women's Marketing, calls women an
"untapped market" (Rene Stutzman, ORLANDO SENTINEL, 10/6).
