No time for losers
From The GIST Sports Biz (hi@thegistsports.com)
Happy Hump Day!
Yesterday’s edition of The Broadsheet highlighted wins and losses for women CMOs: Women outnumbered men at the position in 2022, but it’s also one that’s increasingly being dissolved. In women’s sports, however, CMOs are indispensable power players, from the NWSL’s Julie Haddon to Ally’s Andrea Brimmer. It’s called making an impression.
WNBA
💰 Cashing in her chips
The GIST: In 2022, Ruffles secured the bag by making WNBA star A’ja Wilson the brand’s first woman athlete. Two years later, the company’s Ridgeline Unlocks event will center her during February’s NBA All-Star Weekend. On yesterday’s episode of The GIST of It, Wilson explained how the activation puts the two pro basketball leagues on equal footing. Savoring every bite.
The details: Following a nationwide search, the official chip of the WNBA and NBA will host its first-ever pregame shooting experience ahead of the 2024 Ruffles NBA All-Star Celebrity Game on February 16th. The two lucky competitors will be hand-picked by Wilson and Boston Celtics forward Jayson Tatum based on video submissions of their best shot attempts.
The context: This is the chip brand’s third year as title partner for the Celebrity Game, which was finalized in PepsiCo’s multiyear extension of its 2015 NBA deal. Although W promotional access was included in these deals, Ruffles didn’t make it official until its deal with Wilson. She’s all that (and a bag of chips).
The importance: In the past, the WNBA has been grouped under major NBA product partnerships (if included at all), but brands are increasingly treating the W and its athletes as equal partners. Skims, FanDuel, U.S. Bank, and Hennessy are a few examples of companies that have recently invested in WNBA–specific marketing campaigns.
- “I think it’s also cool for people to see the NBA and the WNBA together,” Wilson told The GIST of It. “I think a lot of people try to divide us obviously because of our gender, but at the same time, it’s kind of cool for them to see us in the same space.”
The takeaway: While NBA and WNBA players casually attend each other’s All-Star weekends, promoting Wilson equally alongside Tatum in the NBA’s Ruffles experience aligns with the chip brand’s mission to set the tone in sports sponsorship. Wilson’s talent sells itself, and the brand was smart to sign a bonafide winner as the first of hopefully many W athletes.
👀 ESPN offers company stakes to sports leagues
In order to transition to its direct-to-consumer streaming model and survive cable’s slow demise, ESPN wants sports leagues like the NFL, NBA, and MLB to buy stakes in the company, raising serious concerns about compromised objectivity in its future reporting.
- If major men’s leagues have opportunities to influence content, this could also potentially undermine the work ESPN has done to increase women’s sports coverage after a scathing 2019 study revealed that it comprised only 5.7% of SportsCenter content. Back to square one.
💼 Athletes Unlimited (AU) adds seven women leaders to advisory board
AU announced seven new advisory board members yesterday, including StockX CMO Deena Bahri, Vox Media president Pam Wasserstein, and theSkimm co-founders Danielle Weisberg and Carly Zakin. They will join existing high-profile members like Abby Wambach, Kevin Durant, Rich Kleiman, and WNBA legend (and AU commentator) Sheryl Swoopes.
📺 Netflix scores $5B deal for WWE rights
Netflix inked a 10-year, $5B deal for WWE Raw yesterday, marking the streamer’s first foray into media rights for live sports (well, kind of). While WWE is notoriously scripted, it does underscore Netflix’s increasing interest in broadcasting live sports and sports-adjacent content.
- Its strategic moves seem to be working — Netflix entered the 2024 earnings season with a 50% YoY boost in company stock and bragging rights as the only major streaming company in the black. Making millions (and millions).
🏀 A Caitlin Clark Topps card is expected to be the highest-selling women’s basketball trading card ever, shattering the previous record of $11.5K. Wanna be on top?
🤖 Deloitte shared its 2024 outlook for the sports industry yesterday, identifying five key trends across AI and data analytics, Paris 2024, and the NIL space.
🏆 Ohio State’s upset victory over Iowa averaged 1.93M viewers, making it the most-watched regular season WBB game across all networks since 2010. We are the (ratings) champions.
💸 Amer Sports is looking to raise an additional $1.8B as it aims to file an IPO worth up to $8.7B, which would be a significant boon for the powerful sporting goods brand.
🎓 Median NCAA athletic department donations are up 13% across 46 schools in 2022-23, dispelling concerns that NIL would cause donors to forgo funding athletic programs.
📉 Per Axios, the Arena Group’s failure to renew its Sports Illustrated brand license was a miscalculated power play that could cause ex-interim CEO Manoj Bhargava to back away from purchasing a majority stake in Arena. Yikes.
🏈 Nielsen renewed its multiyear measurement deal with Fox Corp. as it moves to modernize its ratings system.
📈 Meta stock value reached an all-time high last Friday thanks to AI advancements that revamped its ad business and renewed Wall Street faith, undoing the damage from its 2022 nosedive.
Here’s what has The GIST team currently hyped:
🎧 What to listen to
The Business Case for Women’s Sports podcast, presented by Ally, by our friends at GOALS! Listen to the latest episode with Jennifer Haskel from Deloitte about how women's sports are projected to be the next billion dollar industry in 2024.
🎾 What to watch
Break Point: Season 2. If you enjoyed the first season, get ready for even more pro tennis drama on and off the court in season two. Happy binging!
🏀 Where to hoop
At the airport, of course. The newly-installed court at the Indianapolis Airport has gone viral, generating buzz ahead of the city's upcoming NBA All-Star Game.
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