Coretta Scott King Classic illustrates future for tentpole holiday events in women’s sports

The GIST: The College Football Playoff (CFP) National Championship isn’t the only significant collegiate event on Monday — the inaugural Coretta Scott King Classic (CSKC), a first-of-its-kind women’s basketball doubleheader, will air on Fox ahead of CFP kickoff.

• Holidays tend to draw outsized sports viewership, so it’s smart to hold both these events on Martin Luther King Jr. Day to provide an ideal opportunity for networks and advertisers to activate. A lay-up.

The Coretta Scott King Classic: Created in partnership with Fox Sports, Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, Playfly Sports, and The King Center, this four-team event features top women’s basketball programs Baylor, Maryland, Texas, and UCLA. The teams will play at Newark, New Jersey’s Prudential Center, a 16K-seater venue home to NHL and PWHL teams.

• Notably, this is the first sporting event to license the names of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife Coretta Scott King. The tournament intends to align the championing of women's sports and equity with the mission of Mrs. King, a dedicated civil rights activist who advocated for women’s equality.

The trend: There’s been a rise in brands creating tentpole events around women’s basketball games, including the Ally Tipoff, Aflac Oui Play, and SharkBeauty’s Women’s Champions Classic. The added benefit is that the CSKC has direct ties to Mr. and Mrs. King, which will help cement its presence on the MLK Day holiday for years to come.

• And airing the CSKC is a major win for Fox, which recorded an average 3.39M viewers for a Caitlin Clark game last season and an average of 2.2M viewers for UConn–USC in December. Fox may not have women’s March Madness rights, but it can build around the CSKC.

The opportunity: The NFL and the NBA are no strangers to the benefits of holiday viewing as they pull massive viewership (and ad spend) on major holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas. But sports also capitalize on smaller holidays, like the NHL’s Presidents’ Day doubleheader or the Winter Classic played around New Year’s.

• While it’s tough to compete with simultaneous sporting events (the CFP semifinals dented this year’s Winter Classic viewership), headlining matches often bump viewership before and after a game. However, there’s historically been an uneven dynamic — women’s sports often play lead-in to primetime men’s sports events. No need for warm-ups.