Faculty Research: Embracing Inclusivity in Sport Marketing

In 2006, Nicole Melton was a recent college graduate playing professional golf when she had an experience that would change her life. She and her fellow female tour mates were sitting in a seminar entitled “Five Points of Stardom” when the instruction turned to makeup tutorials, wardrobe tips, and other “personal brand” advice.

“I’m sitting there thinking, ‘Wow, my friends from the men’s team pursuing their PGA dreams aren’t having to go through seminars like this,’” Melton recalls. “I thought, ‘This is silly. We have to make this better. This doesn’t have to be the way forward.’”

Flash forward and Melton, now an associate professor and associate department chair for the McCormack Department of Sport Management, studies how sports can be more equitable and inclusive for all.

“Sports has huge potential to bring people together. It’s the only environment I’ve seen where you can have total strangers hug and high-five each other, where grown men will cry together,” she notes. “But there are still areas where sports can improve.”

Her recent paper “Examining Sport Marketing Through a Rainbow Lens,” published in Sport Management Review, looks at LGBTQ+ marketing and inclusion in sports.

“Once a setting filled with homophobic practices and heteronormative ideals, sport organizations are now showing signs of inclusion,” Melton and her colleague Jeffrey MacCharles, of Michigan State University, write.

Melton cites women’s professional sports franchises, the WNBA and U.S. Women’s Soccer, for being leaders in promoting inclusion. It helps that some of the respective sports’ biggest stars— Megan Rapinoe and Kelly O’Hara (soccer), Brittney Griner and Sue Bird (basketball), and others—are publicly out. Media coverage has become more inclusive: Power couple Rapinoe and Bird have been shown supporting each other on respective sidelines and courtsides.

“Exposure like this helps,” says Melton. “You change hearts and minds when people see what the world is like.”

In many ways, professional sport organizations are catching up to what fans already want. In 2015, the year the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, national polls showed a majority of Americans knew someone who was LGBTQ+ and felt supportive, Melton says. In her paper, she cites findings that more than half of fans (56 percent) would like their team more if the team promoted LGBTQ+ inclusion while a mere 8 percent would feel turned off by such an action.

“Fans want sport to become a more welcoming and inclusive place for LGBTQ+ individuals and sport organizations should not hesitate in offering support,” Melton writes.

Business Benefits of Doing the Right Thing

In addition to inclusion being morally right, it’s also good for business.

The LGBTQ+ community in the United States has an estimated buying power of $1 trillion, and its members are politically active spenders. Melton and MacCharles say marginalized communities look for “safety” signals of inclusion from brands and when they find them, more than half of LGBTQ+ individuals encourage their friends and family to support such businesses.

“Being inclusive can also lead to business gains from not only sexual minorities but also from their heterosexual allies,” Melton and MacCharles write.

Melton says that LGBTQ+ marketing creates a broader halo too, signaling that the organization is committed to social justice.

But there is still progress to be made, particularly in men’s professional sports, which seem to be hindered more by traditional “masculine” stereotypes. According to a 2021 Gallup poll, roughly 6 percent of the U.S. population identifies as LGBTQ. (In her paper, Melton says the figure may be higher, perhaps as much as 17 percent of the total population.) Despite this, the number of openly gay, active-roster male professional athletes can be counted on one hand. The first openly gay football player, Michael Sams, was drafted into the NFL in 2014. At present, there is one openly gay player on an NFL roster—defensive end Carl Nassib of the Las Vegas Raiders, who came out on Instagram in June 2021. He received widespread support and sales of his jersey skyrocketed.

Melton encourages organizations to do more than host an annual Pride night or stitch a rainbow onto a jersey. Inclusion efforts should be consistent and ongoing, including public statements of support, partners and spouses of LGBTQ+ employees listed on website bios, and safety in the workplace for coaches and players.

Sports have “incredible cultural capital,” she says. “Executives can say all they want, but when athletes come out and say something is okay, they really have the power to change hearts and minds.”