Say less
From The GIST Sports Biz (hi@thegistsports.com)
Hello!
Days after Concacaf handed out its first-ever W Gold Cup trophy, the soccer governing body announced the W Champions Cup, an annual tournament beginning in August 2024 that will be the region’s first official women’s continental club competition. The best part? The winner automatically qualifies for the new FIFA Women’s Club World Cup. Talk about a golden ticket.
NWSL
⚽ Primed for success
The GIST: Commerce behemoth Amazon is expanding its recent NWSL media rights deal through a multiyear partnership with the league that involves Amazon Prime and Amazon Web Services (AWS). Additionally, the deal makes Amazon the exclusive retail partner of the NWSL and an official licensee. Sports dripping down.
The details: AWS will support uploaded match content from past seasons, while also testing cloud-based production for matches on Prime Video, which is also the new presenting partner for the Best XI awards. Plus, supporters can now purchase hundreds of licensed items on the Amazon Fan Shop, which launched last November.
- Official NWSL kit provider Nike isn’t included in the Fan Shop, but the online store has other merch available ahead of season kickoff this weekend. Amazon has also mentioned that it hopes to integrate gameplay with online shopping in real-time.
The context: Amazon’s new media rights partnership with the NWSL includes the exclusive broadcast of 27 matches this season, but the expanded partnership allows it to flex its tech and business operations — a trifecta of content, cloud, and retail — to showcase the NWSL’s product.
- This partnership differs from Amazon’s other prominent American partnerships with the NFL, WNBA, and MLB. While these deals utilized Amazon Prime media coverage and AWS tech, none leveraged Amazon’s cash cow: its e-commerce platform.
- As Amazon continues to build out its Fan Shop with the NBA and over 200 NCAA schools, the NWSL is a big get — every other major U.S. pro league shop is operated by Fanatics, a $31B sports apparel company ironically looking to become the “Amazon of sports.” Awkward...
Zooming out: The NWSL is already using tech to drive the game forward, especially through its recent partnership with Google, but this partnership further proves how the league can be commercialized in innovative, integrated ways.
- Tech-supported soccer is more accessible for soccer’s young and diverse fanbase and Amazon is already primed to appeal to Gen Z’s online shopping habits. Plus, all elements of this deal — streaming, apparel, and data — make women’s soccer easier to grasp than ever. Say less.
Women’s sports
📈 She’s got next
The GIST: A new report by EDO — a marketing platform that measures the effectiveness of TV ads — offers metrics about 2023’s women’s sports viewership. It shares meaningful insight on ad engagement trends in sports like tennis and basketball, with data supporting the marketability case for rising stars like Coco Gauff and Caitlin Clark. Let’s dive into the numbers.
🎾 Last year’s Wimbledon was a real ratings winner. The women’s semifinals and finals resulted in the most ad engagement of all major pro women’s sports events in 2023. Wimbledon was 53% more effective in promoting consumer ad engagement than the primetime average and 2% more effective than the US Open’s women’s semifinals.
🏆 Outfitting champions is a winning strategy. New Balance has been with Coco Gauff since the beginning, and in 2023, it paid off. The “Call me Coco Champion” t-shirt Gauff sported after her US Open victory was a “marketing miracle” as New Balance earned the most engagement among women’s sports advertisers and was 203% more effective than the average competitor.
📺 The Caitlin Clark Effect isn’t new. NCAA games last year featuring the Iowa basketball star were 7% more effective for advertisers than games without her. And after signing her to an NIL deal last October, State Farm has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of Clark’s success. Her six State Farm ads were 46% more likely to generate engagement than the company’s average spot.
- And even though Iowa lost last year’s NCAA championship, Clark’s popularity still drove the tournament’s profitability. The Elite Eight saw more ad engagement than the primetime average, ranking only behind Wimbledon and the US Open in this metric.
🏀 WNBA fans are a dream marketing demographic. If the 2024 NBA All-Star Game proved anything, it’s that pro basketball should pivot toward WNBA fans. Ad effectiveness for the 2023 WNBA playoffs was 23% higher YoY and 30% higher YoY for the WNBA Finals — far better than the NBA’s 29% YoY decrease in ad effectiveness during its championship series. A bank shot.
🏒 The PWHL looks to reset attendance record at Montréal’s Bell Centre
Yesterday, the PWHL announced relocation of the April 20th match between PWHL Montréal and PWHL Toronto to the 21K-seater Bell Centre. The arena is home to the NHL’s Montréal Canadiens, marking the sixth time a PWHL match will be played in an NHL venue. This increased capacity will also likely break the pro women’s hockey all-time attendance record for the fourth time this season.
💸 Ally announces new sponsorship with celebrity-backed Wrexham Women
Ally is teaming up with Wrexham Women, a Welsh semi-pro soccer club owned by celebrity sports investors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney. In an effort to “expand [Wrexham’s] platform so more people can witness their talent first-hand,” Ally CMO Andrea Brimmer said, the company will sponsor a U.S. tour for Wrexham Women, following its men’s side’s successful one last year.
- In addition to making gains towards Ally’s 50/50 Pledge, this move also advances the celeb duo’s efforts to take over sports. McElhenney wants to make Wrexham the “best women’s team in the world,” but their push to support women’s sports extends beyond the pitch — Reynolds’ production company helped make the The Syd + TP Show possible.
🇦🇺 Australia’s national women’s soccer team expects a 13th consecutive home sellout at the 53K-seater Adelaide Oval when the Matildas host China in May.
⛳ The Thunderbirds — a local Phoenix committee that produces the PGA’s Phoenix Open — joined the LPGA’s Ford Championship as a founding partner, adding $250K to the prize purse to increase it to $2.25M.
🇬🇧 Manchester United reported record $289M Q2 revenue thanks to strong attendance and broadcast revenue, while both the men’s and women’s sides broke attendance records.
🤖 Reddit announced plans to raise up to $748M for a potential IPO next week with a valuation of $6.4B, which would make it the first social media company to go public since Pinterest in 2019. Looks like everyone’s on board.
🚫 Online sports outlet Deadspin was sold to Europe’s Lineup Publishing and all staffers were fired and immediately locked out of their emails as devastating sports media layoffs continue into 2024.
🏛️NAACP president Derrick Johnson asked Black college athletes to reconsider playing at public Florida universities after the schools eliminated DEI programs in accordance with a recent state law banning the use of state funds for DEI initiatives. A major step back.
Peep our squad’s MVPs (Most Valuable Picks):
🏒 Who’s standing on biz
Sarah Nurse. One of Canada’s top hockey players and a face of the PWHL, her journey beyond the ice is just as impressive as her performance on it.
🏀 Who’s unionizing
Dartmouth Men's Basketball. It’s a historic move and a milestone in college athlete advocacy, all while the NCAA is engaged in several concurrent legal battles regarding its relationship with its athletes.
📕 What to read
Sidelined: Sports, Culture, and Being a Woman in America by Julie Dicaro. The GIST Book Club is all over this one for Women’s History Month. Read along with us on Fable.
Today's email was brought to you by Aryanna Prasad and Briana Ekanem. Fact checking by Bonnie Lee. Editing by Lindsay Jost. Operations by Elisha Gunaratnam and Lisa Minutillo. Ads by Lauren Tuiskula, Dee Lab, and Alexis Allison. Managing edits by Molly Potter and Ellen Hyslop.