This weekend, half of the audience watching the Super Bowl will be women. As the NFL has tried to figure out how to better engage and serve those female fans, one team has had a head start—the Kansas City Chiefs.
A few weeks ago, Kansas City Chiefs CMO Lara Krug came by Fortune‘s offices on a trip to New York. While the Chiefs didn’t make the Super Bowl this year, the rest of the league is still watching the team for tips on how to tap into the female fan base.
“The reality is that there were actually just as many female fans pre-Taylor Swift as there were perhaps after,” Krug says of her team’s most famous fan. “I just don’t think they were as prioritized in terms of how brands and clubs and leagues were thinking about their product offerings to them.”
So what’s different now? Merch collaborations are the “lowest lift” way to engage female fans. Partnerships with Abercrombie, Zara, and other brands are reaching her where she’s already shopping—rather than requiring her to buy gear from the team store.
The Chiefs have been focused on the “millennial mom” who might be bringing her kids to games. “Bringing your kids for a six-hour game or four-hour game—that’s a long commitment,” Krug explains. Nursing rooms in stadiums, tailgate suites for rental (rather than just a parking lot) can all make that a more appealing prospect for her (and make it feel like she’s getting her money’s worth after shelling out for tickets for the whole family).
