ABSTRACT
The extent of the use of business analytics varies among sport leagues and franchises. None the less, major leagues in the United States rely on business analytics more heavily than women’s professional sports. Mainstream sports use business analytics in ticketing, marketing, fan engagement, digital and social media, sponsorship evaluation, and so on. The Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) and the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) focus on consumer insights and marketing, content and media performance, branding, and sponsorship sales and evaluations. On the other hand, the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) and the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) teams focus more on ticket sales and pricing, customer retention, fan profiling, sponsorship lead generation, and sales. However, women’s professional sports are lagging behind men’s professional sports in utilizing business analytics in their operations. The number of full-time, business analytics staff in these organizations are very low or inexistent in some WNBA and NWSL franchises. This is due to being in the early product life cycle for the WNBA and the NWSL, the business model of the WTA and the LPGA, and having limited resources for all women’s sports leagues and associations. With the current state, women’s professional sport organizations cannot justify the investment needed for business analytics because the outcome of analytics might not offset the cost of investment.
