Analysis of the relationship between football clubs and their consumers from a gender perspective

Football is by far world's most popular and most lucrative sport. However, it is overwhelmingly considered a 'male interest' while female consumers are less interested in supporting a club, or in football in general. From a marketing point of view, this major discrepancy has significant consequences. The fact that football is regarded as a male sport leads the sporting media to underline the virile components of this sport, thus alienating female viewers. This vicious circle in turn damages and ignores the marketing potential of female masses. Hence, in our thesis, we will try to understand how the game of football has turned into a male hobby where female viewers were excluded. Furthermore, this thesis will outline the ways in which this problem can be mediated for more female viewers to be included in the fan-base. With the inclusion of female masses, football marketing, and sporting media would gain a significant fan base to reach its consumers. Besides the advantage of sheer numbers, the increasing diversity of fan-base would help football industry to reinvent their image. To reach this conclusion, the required data set was collected via a survey and the analysis of this dataset via descriptive statistics, as well as correlation, factor and regression analyses. Finally, we will be suggesting a new way to understand how football consumers consume by redesigning Holt's consumption metaphors via statistical techniques we utilize.