#62 International women's day: DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality.

Happy International Women’s day.

Today the global world community celebrates the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women while also calling on all stakeholders to take action in order to accelerate gender parity. And the theme this year is: DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality.

And of course Data Talks being a SaaS company bringing cutting-edge innovation and technology to the sports industry while also advocating and championing the acceleration of women’s sports commercial success, we feel passionate about this year’s theme. At the beginning of the year, we announced our partnership with Lewes FC. Speaking on the partnership, this is what our CEO, Stefan Lavén had to say:

“At the heart of Lewes FC is a strong passion for innovation and equality. This is evident in everything they do not least, in how they allocate their resources between their men’s and women’s teams. So of course, Data Talks could not miss out on the opportunity to partner with a club whose ethos reflects ours. With this partnership, Data Talks and Lewes FC have a chance to prove the merit of using data to create unparalleled commercial success, for both men’s and women’s teams.”

Today we implore all stakeholders involved in the sports industry to:

1. Set bigger goals for women’s sports organizations and commit to achieving those goals so that we can see an acceleration in attendance at women’s sports games
2. But also an important factor is to embrace innovation and technology in helping women’s sports clubs to achieve their goals

This was the very reason we went into partnership with Lewes FC. When speaking about the partnership, this is what the CEO of Lewes FC had to say about the partnership:

“Football is full of emotion. But when you’re trying to hit targets and make good decisions, you need to be thoughtful and rational. For that, you need good evidence, good data, and good ways of connecting, understanding, and handling data. Data Talks will help us to clean up and streamline the way we handle information internally, which in turn, will help us make good commercial decisions and engage better with our fans, owners, partners, and suppliers. We’re delighted to welcome Data Talks to the Lewes FC team.”

Accelerating the commercial success of women’s sports organizations is something that we have been working fiercely with. Because we believe that this is truly the key to reaching gender parity faster, the very reason we are celebrating international women’s day today. We have particularly been focusing on ensuring that women’s sports organizations get more supporters, superior sales, and real revenue through the 4 fundamentals of selling more tickets and merchandise.

These four fundamentals are:

1. Grow your supporter base, continuously

2. Collect supporter data with contact information and merge it with your sales data

3. Find out which supporter segments you should target with your ticketing campaigns

4. Send out relevant ticket offerings to those segments in a way that your supporters will really appreciate

Using these 4 fundamentals to sell more tickets and merchandise is crucial especially today when women’s sports are enjoying a lot of publicity. However, just because people are talking about women’s sports clubs and teams online, does not mean that they are actually buying tickets or merchandise from them. And just because FC Barcelona and The Lionesses are setting new attendance records, it does not mean that the average women’s club is seeing record or even full attendance at their games.

This, unfortunately, is the sad reality in sports right now. Online hype, buzz, or whatever you want to call it does not necessarily translate to commercial success through ticket sales. That is why it is crucial for women’s clubs to be more strategic in leveraging the current positivity.

We are always willing and excited to talk to people one-on-one so if you would like to get in touch to discuss how we can help your club accelerate the success of their women’s team.

Once again, Happy International Women’s day.

Join our women's sports community here to be part of the change!