Segmenting and Targeting Markets

Gender Segmentation

One of the most impressive features of the MLB target market audience is that gender representation is almost equal. Few professional sports organizations can make that claim about their fan base. Among those who rate themselves as avid fans, Scarborough Sports Marketing finds that 65 percent are male and 35 percent are female. When looking at the big-picture fan base representation for the MLB, the research outfit finds that 57 percent of fans are male and 43 percent are female. With the percentage of female fan base interest steadily increasing, the MLB is expanding its marketing efforts to appeal to females in the hopes of closing the percentage gap between the two fan base gender groups.

Although this shows that almost as much women go to games as men, it is very clear that MLB franchises are more likely to target men as their target market, because men are usually the ones that buy tickets and other products.