Time to Tear Apart Yahoo's Sexist Fantasy Football Ad

By: The Football Girl | Posted: September 10, 2011

Rarely do I enjoy delving into “battle of the sexes” conversations, certainly not about the NFL. Frankly they make me yawn, and those that bring them up are not generally in the “people I care to associate with” demo. 

Men and women who consider themselves football fans do not watch football differently.  Men and women who play fantasy football do not draft differently.  And men and women don’t generally let fantasy football come in between their marriages.  (If you are the exception…I’m sorry, and your life is terrible.)

But alas, there was a recent odd message that made my skin crawl -- this Yahoo! fantasy football ad that ran the past two months.

If you’re in my demo (obsessive fantasy player and Yahoo mail account holder), you’ve likely seen this ad hundreds of times.  You may have even been like me and confused it at first glance with a woman who loves fantasy football.  That’s not a crazy thought in this day and age.

The truth is female participation in fantasy sports has grown exponentially since 2007’s hit comedy, Knocked Up.  The film contains a famous plotline where Paul Rudd has to hide his obsession with fantasy baseball from his wife. Of course fantasy baseball is more geeky and niche than football and may very well drive a marriage into the ground.  But fantasy football’s popularity, which includes 20% female players, is so strong it makes the stereotypical male loves sports/female loves the kitchen narrative seen archaic in any fantasy sport.

It figures if any company would by the culprit of such an irrelevant ad, it’s Yahoo.  Just today, one of Yahoo's sliders, (which often features quite helpful articles like the  “Top 100 Signs Your Husband Doesn’t Love You Anymore” or a slideshow of the world’s fattest female sumo wrestlers) was all about the crazy ways Mavericks fans celebrated their NBA Championship.  Seriously.

Anyone who has a Yahoo mail account spends half their day trying to refresh away that “We are experiencing a technical issue” page.  Those with a default Yahoo home page spend the extra effort to type in Google (and waste five seconds a pop) for the far superior search engine experience.  And have you tried a Yahoo image search recently? It’s like their photo phiser has a memory card able to hold 100 images – for the whole site!

I could do a whole dissertation on the ways Yahoo is light years behind its competitors in terms of technology and ancillary products.  Maybe in another life.  For now I’m just going to celebrate that fantasy is here, which means this ad, just like every other product associated with Yahoo, will become obsolete.

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