Sports Illustrated and Scripps Sports capitalize on women’s sports spend through new competition

The GIST: On Wednesday, Sports Illustrated (SI) announced the creation of the SI Women’s Games, a six-sport competition scheduled for this fall. The tournament aims to capitalize on the surging popularity of women’s sports and exemplifies media companies working together to innovate ad packaging and scale up advertising inventory in the space. Let the games begin.

The details: Over a five-day period in Oceanside, CA, the competition will feature basketball, volleyball, tennis, gymnastics, flag football, and combat sports. Athletes will compete in individual and team competitions as either “Team Americas” or “Team World,” a popular format in pro hoops.

• Scripps Sports, which has a multiyear deal with SI, will be the exclusive U.S. broadcaster for the event. Locked in.

The precedent: Founding a women’s sports competition to create media and advertising opportunities is a relatively recent trend. Brands like Ally, Aflac, and Shark Beauty have all sponsored NCAA women’s hoops showcases, with the latter executing a similar concept to the SI Women’s Games: An experiences brand and a media network showcasing women’s sports.

• While Shark Beauty is the presenting sponsor, the December basketball competition is actually facilitated by Horizon Sports & Experiences (HS&E) and Fox Sports. It’s a solid move for Fox, which is looking to bolster its women’s basketball programming, and for HS&E, which wants to capitalize on the brand loyalty of women’s sports fans.

Zooming out: The SI Women’s Games are expected to be a biennial event, which is especially smart in the lead-up to LA28. As HS&E noted in its 2024 report, women’s basketball and volleyball viewership has seen some of the fastest growth across women’s sports, while tennis is experiencing global YoY growth and flag football is already courting serious investment interest.

• Competitions like this also help media companies scale up their advertising offerings as the space gets crowded. Scripps and SI can both benefit from sponsor activations and broadcast ad sales for this event, while also giving brands another opportunity to spend in women’s sports at a time when companies are looking to equalize. One plus one really is three.