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Investment in women’s sports is growing rapidly, and for brands looking to get in on the ground floor, several companies are providing a playbook.
Heading into upfront season, women’s sports are one of the hot ticket items, and the reasons are obvious: Ratings are growing exponentially—including highlights such as Caitlin Clark and Iowa’s win over UConn at the women’s Final Four averaging 14.2 million viewers on ESPN—and fans are showing sponsorship loyalty, with one in three women’s sports fans telling Global Web Index they think more positively about sponsors when they support a favorite team or league.
For companies trying to get in on the action, early adopters such as Ally, Visa and Aflac are leading the way and proudly sharing their game plans.
“I think people that are in it need to stand on the mountaintops and shout it,” Ally chief marketing and PR officer Andrea Brimmer told ADWEEK. “We need to be willing to share our data, our knowledge, pound the pavement, get on stages … talk about it in terms of what it’s doing for businesses, not that it’s a nice thing to do.”
A stronger Ally
In 2022, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the Title IX education amendment of 1972, which prohibited federally funded schools from discriminating based on sex, financial services company Ally pledged to evenly split its sports marketing spend between men’s and women’s sports.
A year later, its 50/50 pledge stands at a nearly 60/40 split between men’s and women’s sports. Ally has increased women’s sports media investment by 300%—helping CBS move the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) Championship game into primetime (increasing viewership by 71% from a year earlier) and striking a media deal that placed 90% of its ESPN spend into women’s sports.
This year, Ally is continuing to push its investments even more.
The company signed a multi-year, multimillion-dollar sponsorship deal with the reigning back-to-back WNBA champion Las Vegas Aces and paired it with a national media sponsorship deal for WNBA games. It also added Aces players Alysha Clark and Sydney Colson to its Team Ally roster of more than a dozen sponsored athletes and artists.
Those initiatives, along with sponsorships with Just Women’s Sports, The Gist and Re—Inc’s Re—Media (founded by USWNT players Christen Press and Tobin Heath) and activations such as the Just Women’s Sports x Ally Party at the NWSL Championship and a Super Bowl event with Laura Correnti’s Deep Blue, have helped increase Ally’s investments in women’s sports to 44%, with brand value growing along the way.
