What the WSL and brands can learn from Ally's women's sports strategy
The US bank has got ahead of the game through smart partnerships and savvy activations
If you’re a sports fan, you’ll know that when it comes to big business, the US market is way ahead of the game.
With a population of over 340 million and a media landscape that includes several national networks and pay-TV broadcasters, it’s not surprising that the country is so much more advanced than the rest of the world.
When it comes to women’s sports, the US is held up as the gold standard for growth. Part of that is down to all the above, Title IX - which transformed college sports with legalised investment for women’s sports programmes - and the closed league model.
However, the investment and creativity applied to brands is also having a huge impact on the growth of women’s sport.
At the recent Deep Blue Sports + Entertainment conference in New York, Andrea Brimmer, chief marketing and public relations officer at Ally, the US financial services firm, spoke about the impact of the company’s aggressive investment in women’s sport.
Ally is lead sponsor of the Unrivaled three-on-three women’s basketball league, banking partner of the NWSL, as well as golf’s US Open. When Ally entered the space in 2022, just 10% of its sponsorship and marketing spend was on women’s sport, it pledged to reach equal spend on men’s and women’s sports media by 2027. The company recently revealed it had hit that target a year ahead of schedule.
The investment hasn’t just been about aligning Ally with the positive messaging that women’s sport offers, which is often what brands look to when they enter the space. Ally has looked to embed itself in the emerging fandom of women’s sport.
Brimmer shared the strategy behind Ally’s investment at the BOWS summit last week, saying: “I think for us, a lot of what we thought about is this is a completely evergreen space.
“These are places where we could invest in one 30-second football NFL game on Christmas day, or we could buy an entire season of WNBA media. What makes more sense? There was a lot of discomfort in that for the team”.
Brimmer expanded to say that she wanted to work directly with the leagues on something more meaningful than traditional partnership.
