Seton Hall Sports Poll Featured by 538, ESPN, SBJ, PR News, Deadspin and More
Friday, March 10, 2023
Findings from the poll included the Super Bowl, gatherings in light of Covid-19, advertisements, social media engagement with the game, sports betting and women’s sports.
PR News looked at the poll’s findings from the perspective of marketing and public relations professionals in “A Super Bowl of Content: Should You Participate?”
For communicators, the Super Bowl is not just a big game. For many it allows an opportunity to reach a massive engaged audience—a Super Bowl for advertisements and messaging,…
In fact, according to the latest Seton Hall Sports Poll, among the general population, 43% of respondents say they’ll engage with social media during the game. And notably, 50% of the general population say they will comment at some point on the commercials via social media. Twelve percent of the general population say they will partake in second-screen engagement for the game. So there’s a real opportunity for content to resonate, no matter where it is being placed.
Regarding Super Bowl gatherings, ESPN noted that
Gatherings to watch the Chiefs-Eagles Sunday are expected to be different than for previous pandemic era Super Bowls, according to a Seton Hall Sports Poll released Tuesday. In 2021, 25% of the general population said they'd watch with people who live outside their home, compared with 36% last year & 46% now (up 84% over ‘21). Among self-identified sports fans: 27% in ‘21, 39% in ‘22 & 52% now (up 93% over ‘21).
538.com featured findings from the poll in its pre-Super Bowl Pollapalooza, “What Americans Think About The NFL.” The article notes that “46 percent said they plan to get together with people who live outside of their home to watch the game, up from 36 percent in 2022 and 25 percent in 2021, according to polling from Seton Hall University.”
NJ ROI, a leading business media outlet in the state, also focused on the findings regarding gatherings in “Seton Hall poll: COVID over? Number of Americans planning to watch Super Bowl with others is up 84%,” but delved further:
Has the Super Bowl party made a post-COVID comeback? The numbers from a recent Seton Hall poll seem to point in that direction, with data from the last three years supporting this conclusion.
In 2021, just 25% of the general population said they would be gathering with others who live outside their home to watch the Super Bowl. In 2023, that number rose to 46%, an increase of 84% over the last two years.
Likewise, among self-identified sports fans, in 2021, just 27% said they would be gathering with others from outside their home to watch the game. In 2023, that number rose to 52%, an increase of 93%.
“The multibillion-dollar business of sports reaches far beyond the field of play,” professor Charles Grantham, director of the Center for Sport Management within Seton Hall’s Stillman School of Business, which sponsors the poll, said. “The Super Bowl is a major event and the impact of these gatherings reach across the economy. For the league, the network and the advertisers, this is the biggest sport marketing day of the year.”
Women’s Sports
For the Sports Business Journal, a Sports Poll finding regarding women’s sports was featured as the “Daily Digit.” SBJ reports:
50% - Percentage of the U.S. general population that would like to see more media exposure for women's sports, according to a Seton Hall Sports Poll conducted by YouGov that measured the standing of women’s sports in America (Seton Hall).
An article in The Record (which was also featured on Yahoo Sports), covered this as well as other aspects of the poll on women’s sports: “How about government money to boost women's sports? Guess what — the public is for it.”
The article (which features a picture of Billie Jean King and Ilana Kloss on stage at Seton Hall along with the Director of the Center for Sports Media Jane McManus), notes:
A new Seton Hall poll has some promising findings about women’s sports.
The report, released one day after Billie Jean King visited campus, demonstrates a desire for more media coverage of women’s sports as well as more public investment. In the court of public opinion, more needs to be done to invest in women’s sports
The findings were also featured in Deadspin in an article published by Jane McManus. In “Billie Jean King reminds us how far women's sports have come — even if the progress has been slow,” McManus writes,
A Seton Hall poll through the Stillman School of Sports Management commissioned to coincide with King and Kloss’ visit found that Americans are interested in watching more sports. The poll found that 50 percent of the general population, 60 percent of self-described sports fans, and 66 percent of avid fans want to see more women’s sports. And among the general population, the enthusiasm was roughly equal among women and men who responded. (Full disclosure, I’m the executive director of the Seton Hall Center for Sports Media.)
So what’s standing between fans and that interest? It’s not just theoretical, it’s glimpsed in the ratings for the USWNT and the social media followings for women who play professionally.
Marketers are starting to recognize the followings so many of these athletes have, and design campaigns around them. You couldn’t get away from Serena Williams during the Super Bowl commercials if you’d tried.
On Sports Betting
Finally, Sports Law Professor Robert Boland cited the poll’s findings regarding sports betting in an interview with Bloomberg News and Jane McManus featured the findings in another article she wrote for Deadspin, “What we're not talking about amidst the Super Bowl betting hype.”
A more comprehensive detailing of results from the Seton Hall Sports Poll, including questions and charted breakdowns, may be found at https://blogs.shu.edu/sportspoll/.
Categories: Business
