Playing the long game: Why first-party data is integral to women’s sports

Imagine: it’s 2025 and women’s sports teams are leading the charge in digital innovation and first-party data. 

Women’s Sports fans are more active online than the general population. Full stop.

We left off last time discussing the sponsorship gap in women’s sports, a gap that’s influenced by their relatively shorter existence. But, there are two sides to a coin. Gaining popularity during this digital age gives professional women’s teams two unique opportunities:

1. Their audience is more online - presenting a golden opportunity to harness data and specialize their marketing strategies.
2. They don’t have bloated and disjointed ecosystems yet, meaning they can start from the get-go with a more organized, data-centric, and addressable fan point of view.

With the rise of first-party data, women’s sports teams can become leaders in understanding their addressable audience, collecting information on watching and spending habits, and using fan data effectively. So, let’s get into it.

The road so far

The fluid fan

In a 2021 report, Sports Innovation Lab outlined the concept of a “fluid fan”. These fans are digital-first and community-based; They don’t just follow their local teams, their interest spans the globe; They consume and create content across multimedia platforms and connect not only with teams and leagues but also individual athletes. 

The report suggests that although the start of the 2020s marked the beginning of the fluid fan era, women’s sports fans have exhibited these traits for years.

The nature of women’s sports–especially before 2024’s boom–is that they were forced to be largely online:

• Fans of women’s sports were (and remain) more active online than the general population 
• Many leagues’ games were only viewable through streaming platforms rather than traditional broadcast
• Athletes made themselves much more accessible on social media and gained their followers separate from their teams and leagues

While this digital-first approach has positioned women’s sports leagues ahead of the curve, it also means that their data is scattered across multiple platforms and channels. In 2025, consolidating this data is the opportunity - so that women’s teams and leagues can pinpoint specific groups of fans, optimize audiences, and ensure that they’re making the most of their digital channels. 

The big wins

Women’s leagues and teams are particularly skilled at using social media.
Take the NWSL, a league that came into existence in the 2010s when Instagram was taking off. The league as a whole, and its teams have seen success on the platform over the past 12 seasons:

• The most followed team is the league’s current champions, the Orlando Pride, with 316k followers
  • Given their notoriously poor on-field track record before this year, we can likely attribute a lot of this success to the social team capitalizing on individual players (like legends of the sport, Alex Morgan and Marta). Winning isn’t everything! 
• Angel City FC places second with 296k followers
  • Considering the team just capped off their third season of existence, this is incredible growth in such a short amount of time  

The talent these teams have with leveraging social media is an opportunity for them to turn semi-anonymous Instagram followers into addressable fans. Fans that are reachable with emails and phone numbers they can use off-platform and outside of their regular social scheduling. Fan profiles where they can see all behaviour in one place (i.e. this group of fans has purchased merch, but have never attended a game even though they’re in-market).

Social strategy and data collection can, and should, work side by side. If you’re able to translate even 10% of your social media following into addressable fans, you’ll see far more value from the same base of fans.

Ways to leverage social media to earn more first-party data:

Leverage high-intent moments to get fans off the platform and into your database. This includes contesting, access to exclusive content, or “drops” like new merch. The key here is making that “A” to “B” transition from fans as seamless as possible. They should be able to click on a link within a story, Instagram DM you for access, or access the link within your profile. The fewer steps, the less drop-off.

Why collect data:
examples of how others have implemented a data strategy

Let’s look at two examples of sports organizations’ strategies for collecting, and harnessing first-party data.

The collector:

A report from the lead-up to the EUFA Euro 2024 showed that the French Football Federation (FFF) had the most robust data-collection strategy amongst participating federations

• The FFF identified that every online interaction was an opportunity for data collection. Their key drivers were an SSO (single sign-on/universal login) for all digital touchpoints that they owned, and a focus on ‘owning mobile’
• • • This included their website, mobile app, e-commerce and ticketing portals, streaming service, and in-app games

• Given their widespread fanbase, the FFF ensured that they collected first-party data not just on ticket purchasers and the fans in stadium, but also on their global fanbase who would purchase merch, visit their website and stream games from home. By collecting data at every digital interaction they have built a comprehensive fan database that informs their marketing strategies and enhances the fan experience.

The fan experience:

Manchester City–like many Premier League teams–have a multi-tiered membership program to reward fans for loyalty.

• The baseline membership is free, making it widely accessible, and offering fans a reward without any need to pay (i.e. their way of capturing their largest percentage of regular fans). The other tiers are paid, and range from offering merch discounts to providing early access to in-demand tickets. They even account for the next generation of fans with a junior membership tier for children and teams.
• First-party data is collected via the initial registration form, but is then beefed up with behavioural and purchasing data based on actions they take with the team. For example, Man City gains insights based on the membership type purchased, the merch discounts used, and ticket purchases made.

The future is now

With countless broken attendance records, six-figure sponsorship deals, and numerous league expansion announcements in 2024 alone, it’s obvious this is a groundbreaking time for women’s sports. 

Now is the time to capitalize on the heightened attention to invest in a fan data strategy that centralizes data sources, helps capture more addressable fans and empowers your team to use this data strategically.

A robust collection of fan data can help you…

• Assign monetary values to groups of fans in your database:
  • You can find out which fans are willing to spend on things like seat upgrades and limited edition merch vs the fans that are watching from home - so you can more strategically target these groups of fans.
  • Start understanding what the average LTV is for the fans in your database - so that you can test certain initiatives to see if they drive the needle up overall
• Prove your value to sponsors
  • Present potential sponsors with a demographic breakdown of an audience that would resonate with their product/brand showing them that you understand their target audience, and that they can reach that audience through your partnership.
• Figure out what exclusive deals to chase based on demographic details specific to the team or league as opposed to general market assumptions.
  • Women’s sports in particular have seen success in signing exclusive deals within untapped markets. As brands are (finally) starting to take notice, the opportunities for official partnerships for leagues and teams are endless.

Conclusion

2025 is the year to take the lead in data-driven marketing and first-party data.