"Fantasy Football Players Are Dream Demographic -- If You Can Get Their Attention"

From Ad Age

Review by Erika Grimm in SRM 435 (section 1)

In today’s world, there are over 36.6 Million Fantasy Sport Players between the United States and Canada alone. These users contribute to a 1.1 Billion dollar industry. Meaning, there are people in this world whose sole job is to research and reach out to this specific target market. The article named “Fantasy Football Players Are A Dream Demographic - - If You Can Get Their Attention” written by Sonya Chudgar gives the exact demographic of who these players are.

Ms. Chudgar describes a very specific set of demographics. “A college-educated professional, often a male, in his 30’s or 40’s with an average household income over $90,000, according to the Fantasy Sports Trade Association.” For a professional in the marketing business, this set of facts makes them salivate as much as a perfectly cooked 16 ounce free steak would. This specific demographic group, as Sonya states, has extra income. Meaning, not only do these men have the resources to afford league fees, but they have the finances to be slightly impulsive and buy something they weren’t even sure they wanted. If a marketer can grab his attention, they have a higher percentage chance of influencing him to buy their organizations product or service.

The trouble marketers run into is that the players are not on any of the many fantasy football media channels to look for ways to spend their money. As with any media channel, advertisements are not particularly welcomed by users, creating a more difficult job for marketers. When a player goes to the, let’s say Yahoo Fantasy Football site, if the same ad is on the site for three months, the player will eventually tune it out completely, leaving a minimal chance for ad’s company to make a profit from that user. It is also true that if an ad has absolutely nothing to do fantasy football, a minimal percentage is left for potential profit opportunities.

This being said, marketers have to create advertisements that catch users eyes’. Chudgar writes, for example, about Volkswagen. VW is a vehicle name brand, having absolutely nothing to do with fantasy football, but VW signed a three year fantasy sponsorship with CBS in 2011. This car company is marketing towards Fantasy Football players by introducing something called Coaches Corner in which “Fantasy users can compete with CBS Sports personalities to see whose team does better, and the CBS personality will then heckle or praise his opponent with a custom video response embedded in a VW banner.” This is one example Ms. Chudgar addresses within the article. Marketers utilize a very specific set of demographics to make creative ads that attract users and ultimately increase that company’s profit potential. As there are approximately 36.6 Million Fantasy Sport Players in the U.S. and Canada right now and that number growing dramatically each year, I see no issue for marketers reaching this target market.

---

Review by Dean Marlowe in SRM 435 (section 1)

Fantasy football leagues are a way for many football fans to interact with their favorite game along with their friends. As the article stated, fantasy football leagues have made strides over the past two decades growing from something that seemed “nerdy” or “uncool” to a raved about pastime. Before, participants in fantasy leagues were on the same level as people that also played computer games and had the online persona of a warlock. During that Dark Age for the hobby, marketing was not such a big concern because there were not a great number of people that openly participated. Now, a lot of attention is being paid to this aspect of the sport that is fiercely growing among the industries ideal population.

Focus has been pointed to this industry more and more as participation has seen an outstanding increase. A marketing research company called Ipsos has calculated a total number of 25.8 million people that are expected to engage in fantasy football leagues this year. Of this large number of people they are expected to generate $1.1 billion. This is obviously a huge market, and what sweetens the deal for companies is that many of the participants are their ideal demographic. This means that the people they want to target in the first place to buy or use their products can be easily accessed in one general area. The demographic is males who are educated with disposable incomes and an education, aged between 30 to 40 years. These people are making companies invest millions of dollars into advertisement spaces on fantasy websites.

Websites containing the leagues are not the only ones being targeted for advertisements, though. Many players willing to devote an ideal amount of time and money into their teams are going to want to find out the most breaking news regarding players to gain the edge on their fantasy rosters. News like injuries can generate a lot of traffic onto sports news websites, especially if they have the story before anyone else. Fantasy players are going to want to visit these sites as often as possible, which make them ideal advertising locations. On the flipside to this, the participants visit so often that they have become accustomed to going to the exact page that they need ignoring any ads that may pop up. In order to try and combat this problem of neglect, some companies are creating more interactive ads to try and gain more attention. For example, VW will create ads that use popular sports personalities to heckle league members and attract more attention to ad space.

There is a lot of potential in fantasy football leagues and interest keeps growing. A lot of the work for these companies has already been done, because they have their ideal clients and customers in one area. These are two feats that are sometimes a big enough struggle in marketing on their own. Now, these potential moneymakers are all lined up, but the challenge is how to interest them and catch their attention. The first companies that are able to create effective advertisements will be the ones that will see an amazing response from the growing market that is fantasy football.