The Results are In
So what do you do when you find yourself in a global pandemic with a little more spare time on your hands? Create a survey, of course.
And coronavirus-related surveys have seen a real uptick the past couple of months, as seen in this handy graph (actual numbers may vary).
But in all seriousness, we created a short survey to see how the pandemic is affecting those working in the world of sports- those we call clients, partners and friends. One thing a survey can show you is that despite the isolation all of us are experiencing around the country, we all still think and feel very much the same way. It's actually one encouraging part of everything that's happening.
Thank you to all those who spent a couple minutes sharing your thoughts with us. And now, the results...
Our results came from 36 of the 50 US states, with a majority of respondents being from DI schools (85%). Of those that responded, 67% were football schools.
When asked what level of impact COVID-19 is having in the areas of ticketing, donations and sponsorships, it was clear that the level of impact was most consistent across all 3 areas for DI schools, but for non-football schools the donation levels were most severely being impacted (1=not at all, 10=severely).
For DII football schools, the level of impact is overall lower than DI (averaging closer to 4 vs 6.5), with ticket sales and sponsorship being the hardest hit areas. Non-football DII schools are comparable to DI, with donations and sponsorship being pretty evenly impacted.
For NAIA schools, only football schools were represented in the survey. The biggest impact by far has been in donations.
Since the pandemic is obviously keeping people away from players, coaches and facilities, we wanted to find out how that's affecting the digital space. It would seem logical that web and digital traffic would be up during this time. So how does it look?
With the lack of sports taking place, the need to go visit an athletics site to get a recap and review highlights is also decreasing, which is why we're probably seeing the largest portion of respondents saying they're about the same with the traffic numbers. Coincidentally, there are also about the same amount saying there's been an increase as there are saying there's been a decrease in web traffic (36% with an increase, 35% with a decrease). One thing that surveys don't answer are the reasons for the statistics, at least if you don't ask the questions. In this case, we didn't dig in to find out why there's more or less traffic, but suffice to say that this is a time that digital communication is going to become increasingly important for the world of sports to stay connected with fans.