{"id":18203,"date":"2023-10-20T14:28:33","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T14:28:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mysourcefunding.com\/marketing\/how-brands-can-tap-into-the-growing-audience-for-womens-sports\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T14:28:34","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T14:28:34","slug":"how-brands-can-tap-into-the-growing-audience-for-womens-sports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mysourcefunding.com\/?p=18203","title":{"rendered":"How brands can tap into the growing audience for women\u2019s sports"},"content":{"rendered":"

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If you build it, brands will come. At least, that\u2019s the hope of many sports marketers\u2014especially those focused on women\u2019s sports.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a big week<\/del> month<\/del> year for women\u2019s leagues and teams. Case in point, just this past weekend, the New York Liberty and the Las Vegas Aces had the largest-ever gate attendance for a WNBA Finals game, while the University of Iowa drew more than 55,000 fans to an exhibition game, the biggest crowd<\/a> yet for any NCAA women\u2019s basketball game.<\/p>\n

\u201cI keep hearing about how women\u2019s sports is having a moment, and I really dislike that phrase,\u201d Deidra Maddock, VP of sports brand solutions at Disney Advertising, said during a panel at Advertising Week New York. \u201cI think it\u2019s much more than a moment. It is a movement, and there is momentum\u2026If we can keep that collective momentum building, it\u2019s almost impossible to predict where we will be three years from now, but I think the sky\u2019s the limit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the growing size of the women\u2019s sports audience, several execs across brands and agencies at Advertising Week acknowledged the barriers to entry marketers that want to tap into that audience can face\u2014as well as the ways those barriers are being dismantled.<\/p>\n

Cold feet?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Brands spend an average of 9% of their total media budget on women\u2019s sports, according to a recent report from fan intelligence company Sports Innovation Lab. More than three-quarters (83%) of agency and brand representatives surveyed said they plan to up that spend next year, but about two-thirds said they were only planning for an increase of between 1% and 10%.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the performance space, it\u2019s very challenging sometimes to get clients to try new things, because they\u2019re very focused on their ROI,\u201d Michelle Cardinal, co-founder and chairwoman of Rain the Growth Agency, said during a panel on Tuesday. \u201cEvery dollar that they spend has to drive sales, responses, engagement, conversions, and so forth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rain uses case studies and data to help convince clients to invest more, Cardinal told Marketing Brew, and then starts testing with smaller budgets. \u201cI think between $100,000 and $150,000, we can really get a feel for whether we\u2019re going to take them to the next level\u2026I could probably do something with $50,000 if a client said, \u2018Look, we want to test,\u2019\u201d she told us. Eventually, the hope is to increase that budget into the range of a few million dollars, she said onstage.<\/p>\n

Where\u2019s the money, Lebowski <\/del>inventory?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Even when brands do decide to spend on women\u2019s sports, it isn\u2019t always immediately\u2014or easily\u2014doable, several execs said onstage. Julia Cheney, cultural marketing lead for Google\u2019s devices and service team, said when she first started looking into spending equally on men\u2019s and women\u2019s sports, \u201cthere wasn\u2019t the inventory for us to make the spend equitable.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Andrea Brimmer, chief marketing and PR officer of Ally Financial, which last year publicly committed to spending equally on men\u2019s and women\u2019s sports by 2027, said some media companies have offered to \u201cunlock the women\u2019s sports media for free\u201d if she spent a certain amount on men\u2019s sports. It was \u201cinsulting,\u201d she said. \u201cWe didn’t want it for free. We wanted to pay for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sara Gotfredson, founder of women\u2019s sports media advisory group Trailblazing Sports Group, said in those cases where there is limited availability, brands can \u201cask their media partners to help create new inventory opportunities.\u201d That\u2019s what Disney and ESPN did earlier this year when it introduced its Level Up initiative designed to encourage brands to spend more on women\u2019s sports.<\/p>\n

\u201cBrands are raising their hands and saying, \u2018Hey, we want to be involved, we intentionally want to be in women\u2019s sports,\u2019 and we want to facilitate that for them, and then recognize them for that intent,\u201d Maddock said. \u201cFans notice when brands show up with intent to support women\u2019s sports, and they reward that intent with intent of their own. They will turn around and intentionally support that brand, because they noticed that they showed up.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n