BUILDING
ATHLETE
BRANDS

Elite sports revenues are founded on three main pillars:

tv rights, event day appearances and sponsorship.

With rising viewership, the advertising dollars and wages for women compared to their male counter parts remain significantly lower.

One of the main issues today is the accessibility for coverage of women’s sports, and yet more people are watching women’s sports. Women sports fans are loyal and resilient. If they’re lucky in succeeding to finding the sporting event they are after online, they stick around and watch till the dying seconds. But it’s not just women sports fans. In fact, today women make up 49% of sports fans. Men are watching women play.

More major networks like ESPN, CBS and TSN in North America, SKY in the UK, and SRG in Sweden, are now airing women’s sports. There’s a long way to go still, but brands are seeing this opportunity, and stepping up. 

There’s a cycle here…

There are more major partnerships around the world with women’s leagues and federations than ever before. To name a few, Budweiser stepped up for the women’s football team in England, AT&T and Deloitte are sponsoring the WNBA, and PepsiCo partnered with UEFA Women’s football. Zwift, an online cycling platform that stands for equality is the first major title sponsor of the first ever 2022 Tour De France Femme avec Zwift.

The National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) saw a 300% increase in viewership in 2020. Both the 2020 and 2021 US Open Tennis Finals had more viewership for the women’s match than the men’s, with the latest 2020 Women’s final viewership peaking at 3.4M, a 33% increase than the previous year. More Canadians watched the Women’s Soccer Final in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics than any other event, 4.4M Canadians to be exact.

There is an invaluable opportunity in the women’s sporting landscape for brands, partners and corporations to be

global game changers.