How did “watching other people exercise, competitively, while you stuff your face with excessive calories while sitting on a couch” become a"manly" activity
That portrayal you describe is marketing and nothing more. It’s similar to hating Christmas because you don’t like the Hallmark Channel. Many, many, many, many women watch sports and if you go to a game it’s about half women. Watching sports is and has always been a family activity.
Different cultures and groups do sports differently. There are “ultras” supporter groups for soccer / futbol in the world that are paramilitary organizations, or have strong gang affiliations, and almost everybody in those groups is male. But, even when you consider something more sedate like baseball, audiences are still mostly male.
YouGov recently did a study and found that men are almost twice as likely to have watched a men’s sport than women, and men are even the bigger audience when it comes to watching women’s sports.
As for in-person sports, I’ve never been to a professional sporting event where half the audience was women. It’s never 100% men, but it’s always over 50%.
How did “watching other people exercise, competitively, while you stuff your face with excessive calories while sitting on a couch” become a"manly" activity
That portrayal you describe is marketing and nothing more. It’s similar to hating Christmas because you don’t like the Hallmark Channel. Many, many, many, many women watch sports and if you go to a game it’s about half women. Watching sports is and has always been a family activity.
Different cultures and groups do sports differently. There are “ultras” supporter groups for soccer / futbol in the world that are paramilitary organizations, or have strong gang affiliations, and almost everybody in those groups is male. But, even when you consider something more sedate like baseball, audiences are still mostly male.
YouGov recently did a study and found that men are almost twice as likely to have watched a men’s sport than women, and men are even the bigger audience when it comes to watching women’s sports.
As for in-person sports, I’ve never been to a professional sporting event where half the audience was women. It’s never 100% men, but it’s always over 50%.