New York Liberty player Jonquel Jones at the WNBA 2024 Finals Game 3. (Photo: John Mac, https://www.flickr.com/photos/johnmac612/54073113350/)
2024 was a banner year for women’s sports sponsorships.
The average share of brands’ marketing budgets spent on women’s sports rose 120% this past year, according to a survey by Sports Innovation Lab.
Some of that increase was due to the Olympics and the impact of generational athletes like Caitlin Clark. But the money will not stop flowing in 2025. While popular athletes may have drawn fans, women’s sports leagues are also simply maturing, experts say. More than 80% of brands plan to increase spending on women’s sports next year, according to the same survey.
“Women’s sports is not going anywhere. It will continue to grow,” said Matt Hochberg, founder of Hochberg Sports Marketing, where he represents women athletes. “I would say the only question is how fast.”
The sport where individual athletes have been singled out the most for increasing viewership is women’s basketball, where growth in fan numbers and sponsorship have been highly visible. More viewers tuned in to the women’s March Madness title game this past year than the men’s, according to ESPN. Fan interest in the WNBA grew 29% from 2023, according to Nielsen, the ratings company. And sponsorship deals in the league increased by 7% year-over-year, according to a report by SponsorUnited.
The so-called “Clark effect” had some hand in that, as well as the debuts of other popular rookie players like Angel Reese. Reese is near the top of SponsorUnited’s list of female athletes with the most endorsements for her NCAA career alone.
But the rise in interest in women’s sports isn’t limited to basketball. The National Women’s Soccer League saw a 17% rise in interest, according to Nielsen. Sponsorships for the Ladies Professional Golf Association and Women’s Tennis Association grew by 25 and 34% year over year, respectively, according to SponsorUnited.
Those leagues are filled with talented players, but there have been well-known female athletes before, such as Florence Griffith Joyner, Sheryl Swoopes, and Diana Taurasi. The leagues that birthed them have now had time to grow. Title IX, a law that led to a significant increase in funding for women’s college athletics, was passed in 1972. The WNBA was launched in 1997.
“The NFL has had 100 seasons. The NBA is 75 years old,” said La Quita Frederick, a brand consultant and former director of the sports industry management program at Georgetown University’s School for Continuing Studies. “Women’s sports is 25, not quite 30 years old.”
Momentum in viewership and sponsorship is unlikely to fade when those stars are no longer new, she said. The benefits of advertising in women’s sports have now become clear to companies.
For some brands, women’s sports offers them a way of differentiating themselves from their competitors. Much of the advertising in sports comes from companies that would otherwise struggle to stand out, such as insurance, credit card, and financial firms, said Jonathan Jensen, associate director of the Center For Sport Management Research and Education at Texas A&M University. Women’s sports can provide an opportunity to set a company apart. Visa for example, has made large and strategic investments in women’s soccer, differentiating it from rival Mastercard.
Academics have also begun to argue advertising through women’s sports can be more efficient than advertising in men’s sports, Jensen said. Although the former draws fewer eyeballs, it’s also less expensive.
“Anybody can go do a Super Bowl commercial for $7 million,” Jensen said. “But the key is, which sport properties can you reach and get the best bang for your buck?”
Research shows that marketing through women’s sports marketing might be more impactful than marketing in men’s leagues. Fans of the WNBA are almost twice as likely to visit a sponsoring brand’s website than fans of other sports and are 18% more likely to talk about the brand with friends and family, according to Nielsen. About 43% of women’s sports fans are men.
“There’s an increasing recognition that you don’t have to target women through women’s sports,” Jensen said.
Hochberg, the sports agent, said he believes female athletes can sometimes be better content creators than their male counterparts. The athletes he works with are often posting about their lives outside of sports, which can help a brand deal seem more authentic. The fact that female athletes often make much less in salary than their male counterparts might also contribute to their eagerness to form a partnership.
“Because they’re not making enough money doing their professions some of them feel the need to go out and spend the time and dedicate the resources to create high-quality consistent content in order to go about finding these brand partnerships off the field,” Hochberg said.
Hochberg has seen his own business grow since 2019. Continued growth in women’s sports, he said, will in part depend on the willingness of brands to keep investing.
“There are countless brands who truly do view women’s sports sponsorship as a good return on their investment and something that is just simply smart to do from a business perspective,” he said.
Companies used to sponsor women’s sports out of philanthropy budgets, Jensen said. Now they’re starting to realize it can actually be a way to make money.
“They’re starting to recognize, ‘Oh, this isn’t just charity,’” he said.