Marketing sport and fitness to women and girls
This guide has been designed to help you identify key steps and tools in planning a successful marketing campaign to attract more women and girls into the sport and fitness you provide. It will help you consider some important questions around: who to target, what to offer and how to communicate your message.
Sweat in the City
Sweat in the City (SitC) was an innovation research project to help to find out why 16- 24 year old women are half as active as men of the same age. With the help of a feminine brand, celebrity ambassadors and a chance to discover a ‘fitter and healthier you’, over 2000 young women across London were recruited and provided with a three-month free and mentored gym membership.
Basketball
Basketball participation overview
Basketball is currently the 17th most popular sport for women, but the 4th most popular team sport.
There has been a considerable decline in the proportion of women – around 30,200 women took part in basketball at least once a week in 2009-10, compared to 40,700 in 2008-09.
Basketball remains predominantly a male sport with approximately fou
Creating a nation of active women: A framework for change
Creating a Nation of Active Women provides the framework to address the crisis detailed in It’s time. But it’s more than a strategy for change. It is a stark call-to-action for those with the power and responsibility to effect that change.
A national target has been set for two million more people to be more active by 2012, of which at least one million should be women. But with 24 million women not doing enough physical activity, that should be only the beginning.
With practical recommendations, the strategy provides a framework, compromising three key imperatives, for those who develop policy and design, and who deliver and promote sport and exercise for women and girls.
Celebrating Silver, Going for Gold
Celebrating Silver, Going for Gold marks WSFF's 25th birthday with a look back at a quarter century of records from women's sport.
From Tessa Sanderson winning Olympic gold in 1984, to the IOC's decision in 2009 to add women's boxing to the London 2012 programme, the report charts both administrative and athletic milestones. Its pages are brought to life through a striking spread of photography and montage of memories from leading figures in sport.
In the report you will find both stories of WSFF and the past 25 years of women’s sport – presented in a way which we hope fulfils two objectives; firstly, to explain who we are, where we came from and where we are heading and secondly, to give you goose bumps.
We want you to feel the same shiver which travelled down our spines when we relived moments like Tessa Sanderson standing proudly atop the medal podium at the 1984 Olympic Games, Dame Kelly Holmes’ wide eyed shock at winning the second of her two gold medals in Athens, and the moment when England midfielder Jill Scott rose above a crowd of defenders to send England into the final of a major championship for the first time in 25 years.
While looking back fills us with joy, it is looking forward which really excites us. We are now operating in a time when more doors are being opened for women in sport and the amount of people working towards that same goal is growing. So while we’re proud to be celebrating our 25th birthday this year, we are already planning for the years ahead which we hope will bring even more reasons to be proud and of course, more goose bumps.
Sweat in the City: How 2000 young women discovered the positive power of exercise
This report details the innovative research project Sweat in the City which project provided over 2000 inactive 16 – 24 year old women a three month free and mentored gym membership and followed their journey.
The project was designed to gain a better understanding of how to motivate women to become more active. Today, 16 year-old girls leave school half as active as their male counterparts, often with a negative attitude to sport and fitness and with critically low levels of confidence. This programme set out to create a fitness experience that would appeal to this audience, change their attitude to exercise and lead to a more active and healthier way of life.
SitC was designed and delivered by a partnership between the Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation (WSFF) and the Fitness Industry Association (FIA).
Key elements of the programme were personal mentoring and opportunities to ‘meet’ other participants through group sessions and via the SitC website. The young women were successfully recruited with the help of a feminine brand and celebrity ambassadors who fronted a tailored PR campaign. All that was asked in return was for the women to share their highs, lows, aches and pains with us through surveys, focus groups and online diaries.
The results surpassed even our highest hopes:
• Six months after completing the programme, 72% of participants are more active than they were before
• Before the programme, 63% of participants were worried about what they looked like when they exercised. This dropped to just under half
• 88% of participants agreed that ‘SitC has reminded me how good it feels to be active’
• Three-quarters of the young women now have increased confidence to go on and try new activities
“There is no way that I am giving exercise up again now, I feel so much better in myself – better mood, lots more energy etc. Even though I don’t always want to go to the gym, I know I’ll feel so much better once I’ve actually been!”
