Don’t count us out! Women who bet on sports are becoming extremely influential in the space, yet is the marketing and inclusion of women in sports betting spaces reflecting that? Representation is extremely important in the continued growth of the women’s sports betting space.
According to GWS (a data analysis company) there was a 115% increase in the number of active female sports bettors from 2020 to 2021. They also found that 4.6 million women had joined sports betting apps in 2021 alone. The lack of women in the betting space prior to the last few years can be attributed to lazy marketing and promotion, and a lack of safe space for women before sports betting was widely legalized.
All of these numbers came after the 2019 study by the American Gaming Association that showed that 31% of core sports betting customers were women.
There has also been a huge increase in engagement in women’s sports in general in the same time frame, something that has surely helped get more women engaged in the sports world. In 2023, the women’s NCAA college basketball finals, also known as March Madness, had 4.9 million average viewers and 9.9 million viewers total – shattering previous records. When Coco Gauff won the US Open in September 2023, over 3.4 million people viewed the event live on ESPN. The most recent Olympics in Tokyo also saw a rise in bets made on women’s sports. Women’s basketball at the Olympics was the second most betted on event at the Games in 2021.
The accessibility of sports betting has also helped more women feel comfortable placing bets. Now that you can bet from the comfort of home, on your mobile phone, many women feel safer being able to bet. It’s become more inclusive, more widely accepted in society, and there are more tools in place to make sure that people are participating in safe and manageable ways.
Another study showed that women are more likely to bet on single game wagers, as opposed to men betting on live, in-game wagers. This same study showed that while women most prefer betting online, they are more likely to bet in person than men. The study showed 32% of women will bet in person as opposed to 22% of men.
Just the same way marketing for women’s sports is growing, betting companies are now skewing marketing initiatives towards women. Plus, with more online spaces for women to discuss betting and women’s sports in general, it is becoming more normalized to have women as the faces of sports betting companies.
So do women bet on sports? Of course we do! Just like any industry, the attention to attracting women customers will only help grow sports betting for women as it continues to grow in popularity.