Sports properties are missing a tremendous opportunity if they don’t engage women-owned businesses and women executives in business-to-business networking events.
According to Julie Weeks, president and CEO of Womenable, the number of women-owned firms in the United States continues to climb, at a rate of 1.5 times the national average, and is now estimated to have surpassed 9.4 million enterprises equating to 30 percent of all businesses in the country. Florida is ranked fourth for the most women-owned businesses in the nation. This growing trend is a huge opportunity for the sports industry. I recently challenged the women on the Orlando Magic’s premium-sales and corporate-partnership team to create a B2B networking event targeted at women business owners, corporate executives, community leaders and prospects.
As I reflected on B2B events that we had hosted over the past few years, I realized that our efforts had inadvertently resulted in male-centric events. Recently, we hosted our top premium suite holders at a local award-winning golf course. Despite the Florida heat, our clients were thrilled to spend the day out of the office to join us for 90 minutes of speed networking and five hours of golf. After the 18th hole, I looked around the clubhouse and realized that even though we had key decision-makers and CEOs from 25 companies, not one of our female clients had attended the event.
Unfortunately, this was not an isolated occurrence and reinforced the need to add diversity to our B2B event offerings to engage this significant segment of our clientele.
I reached out to my colleagues across multiple sports properties asking them what B2B platforms they had created that specifically targeted women. A few had experimented with female-centric programs but had achieved mixed results. Programs such as Basketball 101 for Ladies and Hoops for Heels yielded some success, but primarily in selling ticket packages targeted at female fans. They fell short in engaging business owners and executives.
In our quest to create the perfect women’s B2B event, the team came up with four basic criteria:
1. Create a compelling hook to drive attendance.
2. Provide a networking experience and facilitate introductions among clients.
3. Engage the women leaders and staff to participate in the event.
4. Find a time that is convenient for women executives to attend.
The team delivered. We hosted more than 100 women representing 63 different companies. The diversity of companies represented was amazing. We hosted women executives from banking and financial services, engineering firms, law firms, accounting firms, insurance companies, beverage companies, theme parks, telecommunications companies, health care services, nonprofit organizations, and educational institutions. The blend of premium customers, corporate partners and community leaders was the perfect recipe for success.
So why did it work?
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Fidelity National Title Group’s Mary Pat Dunleavy, TLP Engineering’s Yassi Myers, Disney’s Maribeth Bisienere and the Magic’s Catherine Carlson at the team’s women’s B2B event.
Photo by: GARY BASSING / ORLANDO MAGIC
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First, we selected an inspirational keynote speaker: Maribeth Bisienere, senior vice president, Downtown Disney, ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex, water parks and mini golf. Maribeth captivated the audience as she shared insight into her amazing career journey to her leadership role at the Walt Disney Co. Yassi Myers, president of TLP Engineering, commented that hearing Maribeth’s life story and her success in business were extremely inspiring and reminded us all that it takes perseverance and believing in yourself to be successful in business.
The scheduled five minutes of Q&A at the end of the event turned into 25 minutes. “It was raw and honest, and real connections happened in that atmosphere,” Maribeth said. “Women networking events bring such value to leaders in our community by serving as a platform for us to learn outside of our own company and create relationships with other female executives in the community. I find that successful networking events have that combination of learning or inspiration along with the opportunity to make those business connections.”
Second, we selected a central location and decided that we would have a better response rate if we hosted a breakfast event rather than an evening event. This minor detail garnered overwhelmingly positive feedback from a room full of busy corporate executives.
Third, we engaged the women leaders at the Magic to proactively facilitate introductions between attendees. Jennifer Lastik, vice president of events of Central Florida Sports Commission, shared that “the event provided multiple levels of interactions and networking with other women in attendance.” The added bonus of an event like this was the bonding of women staff members. As one staff member stated, “I left the networking event feeling inspired.”
And finally, if you are wondering if there is a business case for hosting a women’s business-to-business event, the answer is yes. Apart from creating a business platform to facilitate connections between women executives, our sales staff closed a corporate partnership deal that day, and they have renewed multiple premium and corporate partner accounts.
Mission accomplished — for now. We are only scratching the surface on what is possible in the future.
Catherine Carlson (ccarlson@orlando-magic.com) is vice president of corporate partnership and premium activation at the Orlando Magic.
