Women Emerge As NFL Game Changers
TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. Now it's time for the Sports Lead. Now, whether you'll be watching for the game or the commercials or for the halftime show, there's a good chance that you'll be one of the millions of people tuning in to the Super Bowl this Sunday. In decades ago catered to a certain demographic namely, beer-chugging men. But these days, women are making their presence felt as diehard fans and their impact is being felt from the stadiums, all the way to Madison Avenue. Nischelle Turner has more.</s>NISCHELLE TURNER, CNN ENTERTAINMENT CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Remember back in the days when the word pro football fan conjured up images of guys like this? And women who didn't hate the sport were thought to be simply tolerating it because, well, how else would you get to spend time with your guy on Sundays in the fall?</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't want you to give up the Super Bowl. How selfish do you think I am? You love the Super Bowl.</s>TURNER: Fast forward a few years and the so-called football widow may notice her huddle is shrinking. According to the NFL, women now make up nearly half of the league's fan base, 375,000 women attend NFL games each weekend. In fact, more women now watch the Super Bowl than they do the Oscars. And these ladies are no longer content to just sit on the side lines while the fellas have all of the fun. The NFL director of Apparel says over the past ten years the league has gone out of its way to cater to the growing women.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're always getting smarter about what women want and what we're realizing is that there is always more. There's always something out there that we can be doing.</s>TURNER: Before even the league got hip to the fact that women should include more than pink jerseys, actress Alyssa Milano was proving that when it comes to giving the ladies what they really want, she's the boss. Milano is an avid sports fan who got fed up with the lack of team apparel options for women so back in 2008 she started her own line of figure flattering fashions called "Touch."</s>ALYSSA MILANO, ACTRESS/CREATED "TOUCH" APPAREL LINE: I knew that women made up 50 percent of the attendance in sports and I figured if even 7 percent of those women wanted something, an alternative to either the big jersey or the pink, and then we'd be in good shape.</s>TURNER: And it's clear, female fans are not only on the fashion industry's radar, they are influencing major marketing decisions too. Yet they are still Super Bowl commercials where women are put on display in ways that might make even Hugh Hefner blush, but you'll notice a growing number of ads where female fans are the featured players.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm missing kick-off for this?</s>TURNER: The dynamic is shifting from the bleachers to the board rooms. According to the Institute for Diversity in Ethics and Sports, the percentage of management positions held by women in the NFL increased to 29 percent in 2013. The highest it's been in more than a decade. But that jump was only enough to earn the league a C for overall gender hiring in the institute's annual report card. So, not exactly a touchdown but a sign that the NFL is steadily moving the ball forward in the quest to shed its boy's club image. Nischelle Turner, CNN, New York.</s>TAPPER: Thanks, Nischelle. When we come back, the NFL commissioner throwing a curveball at a press conference. Ahead here, how he responded to this question.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Would you feel comfortable calling an American Indian a redskin to his or her face?