Within the spring of 2023, we reported from the US that girls’s sports activities had been on the rise. Only one 12 months later, that unimaginable momentum not solely exhibits no indicators of stopping – just like the expansion we now have reported within the UK. From the record-shattering viewership of the NCAA girls’s basketball match, to rising alternatives for group sponsorships and higher prime-time media protection, girls’s sports activities have caught the eye of manufacturers, corporations, and followers world wide it’s climbing to new heights.
New Branding Offers
With worldwide consideration driving viewership throughout extra girls’s sports activities—not simply in basketball but in addition soccer, tennis, and lacrosse—manufacturers are capitalizing on the elevated curiosity.
- In Might 2023, the Ladies’s Nationwide Basketball Affiliation (“WNBA”) introduced CarMax as a brand new WNBA Changemaker. “WNBA Changemakers are a collective of purpose-driven corporations that harness their energy to raise girls in sports activities and assist the league’s mission round advancing range, fairness, and inclusion.” As a WNBA Changemaker, CarMax will assist construct the model of WNBA athletes and promote the WNBA by way of annual participant media classes and new social media context sequence.
- In June 2023, the WBNA introduced a further multi-year unique partnership with Low cost Tire, naming it the Official Tire Retailer of the NBA and its in-house model, Continental Tire, the Official Tire of the WNBA. “As a part of the partnership, Low cost Tire and Continental Tire will obtain media publicity throughout a wide range of platforms together with by way of TV visible signage, and on courtroom digital signage throughout WNBA nationwide broadcasts, in addition to throughout the league’s official social and digital websites. The WNBA and its latest companions may also collaborate on future promotional efforts….”
- In July 2023, the WBNA introduced a multi-year partnership with Mielle, making the main black-founded and woman-led magnificence model an Official Advertising and marketing Accomplice and the Official Textured Hair Care Accomplice of the league.
- In October 2023, the WBNA and SKIMS introduced a multi-year partnership making SKIMS the official underwear associate of the WNBA. The timing of the partnership for the model proved perfect on the heels of the WNBA’s record-breaking season of viewership, attendance, and digital engagement. In truth, the 2023 AT&T WNBA All-Star recreation and WNBA Reside offered by U.S. Financial institution noticed a 111% improve in WNBA companions engagement and a 70% % bounce in WNBA merchandise gross sales across the identical timeframe.
In line with the WNBA’s information launch masking SKIMS deal, SKIMS continued to capitalize on the curiosity and viewership into 2024. “The WNBA and SKIMS will work collectively on unveiling WNBA targeted activations because the league approaches its 2024 season, particularly on the 2024 AT&T WNBA All-Star Sport, the midseason showcase in Phoenix, Arizona, as SKIMS is called an affiliate associate. The 2-day fan pageant which celebrates the intersection of sports activities, trend, music, and tradition will return for the third consecutive 12 months.”
New WNBA Groups, New Curiosity, Extra Inventive Occasions
In 2022 WNBA Fee Cathy Engelbert hoped to establish cities for WNBA growth efforts by the top of 2024. That work got here to fruition when the Golden State Warriors had been awarded a WNBA growth group in October 2023. The growth is the primary for the WNBA because the Atlanta Dream in 2008.
The Warriors additionally grew to become the sixth NBA franchise to have a WNBA group, becoming a member of the Indiana Pacers (Indiana Fever), Minnesota Timberwolves (Minnesota Lynx), Brooklyn Nets (New York Liberty,) Phoenix Suns (Phoenix Mercury), and Washington Wizards (Washington Mystics). The group will start play within the 2025 season.
The 2024 NBA All-Star weekend additionally created a singular cross-over occasion with a battle of the genders in “Stephen vs. Sabrina” 3-point problem—a one-on-one matchup between the Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry and the New York Liberty star Sabrina Ionescu. Saturday night time scores for All-Star Weekend peaked throughout the problem with 5.4 million viewers watching.
Report Breaking Viewership and Attendance Continues
In 2024, the video games throughout the NCAA Division I Ladies’s Basketball match offered six instances as many tickets for its Last 4 video games because the Males’s Last 4 video games. A complete of 292,456 followers attended the primary and second spherical video games, a rise of greater than 60,000 over 2023 attendance figures. Even attendance on the opening spherical video games elevated, pushing the NCAA Ladies’s Basketball Championship whole attendance over the 9.2 million mark over the 41-years of the championship recreation.
In 2023, the WNBA skilled its most-watched season in 21 years, including to the record-breaking 12 months of 46.7 million folks tuning in to girls’s sports activities usually. The New York Liberty hosted the most important crowd in WNBA historical past with 17,143 witnessing Sport 3 of the WNBA Finals in opposition to the Las Vegas Aces on the Barclays Heart. The Las Vegas Aces finally gained the 2023 WNBA Championship, changing into the primary WNBA franchise in additional than 20 years to repeat as champions.
The 2024 WNBA season has already shattered data with the Indiana Fever versus the Connecticut Solar Might 14, 2024 recreation averaging 2.12 million viewers, making it probably the most watched WNBA recreation since 2001.
Spectacular Management
One factor that should be talked about in reviewing the strides girls’s sports activities has made in such a short while: the enduring coaches. Whereas few girls seem in sports activities group management—which incorporates higher administration, coaches, and house owners—this girls’s basketball season introduced really spectacular management expertise.
For instance, South Carolina’s Ladies’s Basketball Head Coach Daybreak Staley grew to become the first Black coach to win three profession NCAA titles, and solely the fifth coach to win a minimum of three NCAA Championships. She joins College of Connecticut’s Geno Auriemma (11), College of Tennessee’s Pat Summitt (8), Louisiana State College’s Kim Mulkey (4) and Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer (3). Coach Staley additionally entered the undefeated season coaches membership with Auriemma, Summitt, Mulkey and former College of Texas at Austin coach Jody Conradt.
To highlight and assist extra girls coaches, the Washington Spirit—an WNBA franchise—introduced its “inaugural Teaching Mentorship program to assist elevate and assist feminine coaches in its area, the primary program of its type to create entry for the subsequent technology of feminine coaches.” This system joins WeCoach, the NCAA’s Growth Academy that started in 2003, which focuses on growing and mentoring girls coaches throughout all sports activities.
What’s Subsequent and Model Takeaways
With these ground-breaking and speedy developments over simply the previous 12 months in girls’s sports activities, corporations ought to proceed to noticeably contemplate investing in branding prospects and partnerships with girls– which incorporates particular person athletes, groups, leagues, occasions, and organizations. The 2024 Olympics will supply one more alternative for corporations to leverage the world’s consideration on girls’s sports activities. Proactively participating in home in addition to outdoors counsel to audit, overview, or help with these efforts is usually a clever step in maximizing alternatives round girls’s sports activities. One factor is for certain: the world shall be watching.
Concerning the Squire Patton Boggs Ladies’s Sport Group
We’re dedicated to supporting and facilitating the event of girls’s sport globally to make sure that its full potential is realized, and we consider that the sporting and business alternatives are exponential as girls’s sport turns into extra fashionable and visual worldwide.
Our devoted girls’s sport group includes main legal professionals throughout a number of disciplines and jurisdictions, with unrivalled trade information, connections and expertise. We’re approachable and proactive, and passionate concerning the progress and affect of girls’s sport, advising our shoppers throughout the total spectrum of authorized companies, together with business, regulatory and contentious issues impacting the fast-growing girls’s sport trade.
Our market-leading group of sports activities legal professionals has an actual understanding of the problems that matter and methods to make an influence. We’re proud to be on the forefront of those essential developments and to assist our shoppers in attaining their goals and aspirations.
