Women sports fans

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Photography: 
AP/Paul Spinelli

A big reason that the National Football League is so popular is because so many women love it. Indeed, half the league’s fans are women, and they like their game just the way it is. Yet marketers can’t leave this fact alone, insisting on presenting products during broadcasts that befit stereotypical images of what appeals to women, according to Kristina Durante, an associate professor of marketing at Rutgers Business School–Newark and New Brunswick. “As soon as marketers started to go for women, they lost women because women were like, ‘Hey, I just want this product; it doesn’t need to be girly,’” says Durante, quoted in a Teen Vogue article appearing in February. “We don’t have to have just one gender role that is hyper-feminized. We can be whatever feels right for us.”