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This story is the latest in our series on women leaders in sports and sports marketing. Read the rest of the profiles here.<\/em><\/p>\n Sports fans have no problem finding programming focused on the men\u2019s game. Beyond the games and matches themselves, there\u2019s The Last Dance <\/em>for basketball enthusiasts, Hard Knocks <\/em>for football fanatics, and Welcome to Wrexham<\/em> for fans of English football, to name only a few.<\/p>\n Allyson Davis and Melissa Forman know it well. The two media execs spent years working at Fox Sports, as well as years at other brands and media companies like Red Bull and MTV, long before women\u2019s sports docs like Full Court Press <\/em>or In the Arena: Serena Williams<\/em> were available to viewers.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s this disconnect between what the platforms think that fans want and what the fans really want,\u201d Davis told Marketing Brew.<\/p>\n In 2022, Davis and Forman set out to address that disconnect, founding Impakt Partners, a media company focused on producing, marketing, and distributing programming about women\u2019s sports.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want to do something that matters at this point in our careers,\u201d Davis said. \u201cMen\u2019s sports, they\u2019re fine. They don\u2019t need us anymore. We\u2019ve done a great job for all those men. Let\u2019s do it for the women now.\u201d<\/p>\n Davis and Forman grew up on opposite coasts\u2014Davis in the Bay Area and Forman in New York City\u2014and their introduction to athletics was also miles apart.<\/p>\n Davis played an array of sports from a young age, including basketball, softball, swimming, and cycling, but she said she felt there was \u201cno clear pipeline\u201d for her for a career in sports. Forman discovered a love of sports later in life, and she took her involvement to the extreme: Fresh out of college, she took a job at MTV and soon moved to MTV Sports, where she worked behind the camera covering athletes in extreme sports like paragliding. She once climbed Cotopaxi, one of the highest active volcanoes in the world, while filming a project.<\/p>\n \u201cFor me, it really lit the flame and the fire, because then I could really see what drives athletes to do what they\u2019re doing,\u201d Forman said. \u201cWhile I was still behind the camera, I was always part of the adventure.\u201d<\/p>\n Davis, an avid cyclist, also started out on the content side of the media business, cutting her teeth at the University of San Francisco, where she served as videographer for the men\u2019s basketball and soccer teams and worked at her college radio station. After working in production in LA, she moved to magazines and to the marketing and business side of media. She went on to work as a marketing executive for companies including E! Networks and Universal Sports Network after Fox Sports.<\/p>\n While Forman and Davis overlapped working at Fox Sports, they only first began working together when a mutual friend introduced them while Davis was working with Red Bull athlete Rebecca Rusch around the documentary Blood Road<\/em>. They spent the next few years orbiting one another before partnering up officially.<\/p>\n Around the time they started working together, both were reaching turning points in their careers, with Davis realizing that she was \u201cmuch happier being a big fish in a small pond than a small fish in a big pond,\u201d and Forman experiencing some frustrations after working on Candace Parker\u2019s documentary, Title IX: 37 Words That Changed America<\/em>. Those frustrations included not having the ability to execute on an impact campaign around the time of its release, she recalled.<\/p>\n Marketing Brew informs marketing pros of the latest on brand strategy, social media, and ad tech via our weekday newsletter, virtual events, marketing conferences, and digital guides.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Suffice to say she disagreed with the approach. \u201c[Women\u2019s sports stories] need to be told through a variety of formats,\u201d she said. \u201cYou need to tap audiences that don\u2019t even know they\u2019re sports fans yet.\u201d<\/p>\n For Impakt Partners\u2019 first-ever project, Davis brought Forman in to work on a documentary about the original Tour de France Femmes in the 1980s, and Forman said they worked to get the word out with marketing, including encouraging people in the cycling and broader sports world, as well as brands, to share it.<\/p>\n The doc, Uphill Climb: The Women Who Conquered The Impossible Race<\/em>, streamed on Peacock in the US and Discovery+ in Europe, and Forman and Davis worked with both companies to promote it, Forman said. It held 50% of the audience from the live stage of the race that aired before it, according to Forman.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s unheard of,\u201d she said. \u201cSuper Bowl numbers don\u2019t even do that. People are hungry for women\u2019s sports storytelling.\u201d<\/p>\n It was a stat that helped solidify the idea the two were dreaming about, Forman said.<\/p>\n Now, Impakt Partners serves as a production company and a strategic marketing studio for teams, leagues, and athletes, with a nonprofit arm that funds some of its work.<\/p>\n One of Impakt Partners\u2019s other early projects was In the Machine<\/em>, a documentary following racing driver Ashley Freiberg, for Lucas Oil-owned cable network MavTV. Davis and Forman are currently producing a doc about Ali Truwit, the swimmer who was attacked by a shark about a year before she won two silver medals at the Paris Paralympics; it\u2019s set to come out next year, Davis said. They\u2019re also working on a feature for Fox Sports about women\u2019s flag football that\u2019s set to air during a Sunday NFL game on the network, Forman said.<\/p>\n Davis said marketers could do a better job \u201cwalking the walk\u201d and becoming involved in documentaries and shoulder programming around women\u2019s sports. Data from companies like Sports Innovation Lab has helped demonstrate the marketing case for women\u2019s sports, Forman said, but there continues to be a lack of investment in stories about women athletes.<\/p>\n That also means that there is plenty of room to grow.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s not just room for one story,\u201d Davis said. \u201cThe sooner that those things are funded, the faster this whole entire segment is going to build and grow, because that\u2019s the fuel that feeds the ecosystem.\u201d<\/p>\n Update 9\/27\/2024: This piece has been updated to better reflect Forman\u2019s role at MTV Sports. Davis\u2019s work involving the documentary \u201cBlood Road,\u201d and to remove an inaccurate quote.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\nThe climb<\/h2>\n
Get the wheels turning<\/h2>\n
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Off to the races<\/h2>\n