NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - It may have the strongest female audience for any sporting event, but it's not just women who will be watching women's figure skating at the Olympics this week.
And when the women skaters are not on the ice, or at least not on the tape-delayed broadcast, their loyal female viewers aren't going to just melt away.
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The truth is that far more men watch the figure skating at the Olympics than you might assume. And female viewers aren't tuning in just to "women's" sports like figure skating.
First, a look at the guys who will be watching skating.
According to figures from Nielsen Sports Marketing, there were about 15.6 million men ages 18 and older who watched the women's skating finals four years ago at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. That might have only been enough to make up 37 percent of the 18-and-older audience that night. But it was still more than the men who watch many typical "guy" sporting events.
For example, the 2005 Daytona 500, the top race in the nation's No. 2 television spectator sport, only had just over 10.8 million male viewers age 18 and above last year. A breakdown on this year's race is not yet available.
So the advertisers who have a have a campaign geared towards men, such as beer or pickup trucks, will find the viewers they're targeting even when women's figure skating is dominating a night's coverage.
But women are becoming much more of a factor for sports viewership, and advertising.
Overall, the gender breakdown in the key 18- to 49-year-old age group for NBC's entire Winter Olympics prime time broadcasts in 2002 was 7.9 million women viewers on an average night, compared to 6.2 million men. That means women were about 56 percent of the "typical" Winter Olympic audience.
And it's not all ice skating. It's also men and women racing downhill on skis or around the track on speed skates.
"For the women viewers, it's more than a sporting event, it's entertainment, like a movie," said Neal Pilson, a sports broadcasting consultant who helped the International Olympic Committee negotiate its most recent rights deal with NBC. "There's a lot of effort to tell stories. Women look at it differently than they do the typical basketball or football game."
And the ability of the Olympics to attract women viewers with those kinds of stories is a key to the games' great audience, and advertising dollar, strength.
"Women typically control the remote in prime time," said Pilson. "Maybe men determine what is watched on a Sunday afternoon, but women generally pick what is viewed at night. 'American Idol' might be able to beat the Olympics for a night or two, but for the full run of the Olympics that (the popularity with women viewers) is what gives you the quality of the audience, and the value to the advertisers."
Of course the Olympics aren't the only big sporting event with a big female viewership. The Super Bowl this year drew nearly 20 million women viewers ages 18 to 49, or about 44 percent of that age group watching the big game. That's far more than ever tuned in to watch "Desperate Housewives" or "Dancing with the Stars." It's even far above the 12 million women in that age group who watched the women's figure skating final four years ago, even if it's not a majority of the audience.
That's a key reason that among the beer and car commercials, there were also spots for Dove soap and Slim-Fast diet drinks aimed primarily at female viewers. The audience for sports today, whether it's 300-pound guys bashing into each other or lithe teenage girls doing spins above the ice, isn't what you might have thought it was.
"We don't typically use sports programming, but the Super Bowl happened at a time of year when dieting is at a peak," said Terry Olson, vice president of brand development at Slim-Fast. "It was a terrific opportunity to get real reach to a vast audience, of which females are a big part." The ads used only actresses.
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