Advertisers are mad for March Madness. Yesterday, ESPN announced that it sold out its NCAA women’s basketball tournament advertising inventory — including branding opportunities outside of the competition's 67 games — for the second consecutive year.

The renewed commitment runs through the 2024–25 academic year and will focus on building parity between women’s and men’s sports.

On Tuesday, a Nashville Metro council member proposed allocating $60M in public funds to facilities for pro women’s sports teams to entice prospective owners to the Tennessee city.

Canadian brands are getting in the women’s sports action. Canadian Tire directed millions of sponsorship dollars towards professional women’s sports on Monday, while GE Appliances Canada supported CanWNT in its ongoing labor dispute with Canada Soccer.

According to a Thursday report, ESPN is considering an online and mobile app feature that links out to live sporting event streams — even for events aired by competitors — in an effort to become the hub for sports fans.

On Wednesday, the women’s sportswear brand signed 13 athletes across 13 different sports to join “The Power of She Collective,” an initiative to deepen Athleta’s support of women in sports.

As Staley exclusively told The GIST, this will raise “the level of our game [in] ways in which people aren't really thinking about.”

While ad revenue is projected to increase by 4.8% in 2023, growth in ad spend is expected to slow and some media companies are falling behind on their Q1 targets.

Yesterday, the sports media company launched Overtime Boxing (OTX), a competition spotlighting the next generation of boxers — and targeting young sports fans — that begins in August.

On Monday, the pair announced a multi-year, multimillion dollar deal to invest more than 90% (!!!) of Ally’s media budget in ESPN’s women’s sports broadcasts, beginning with March’s ACC women’s and men’s basketball championships.

As we covered in yesterday’s episode of The GIST of It, the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in Johnson v. NCAA on Wednesday, and a three-judge panel from the City of Brotherly Love ripped into the organization’s business model.

On Wednesday, the regional sports broadcaster skipped $140 million in interest payments to its bondholders, a sign that Diamond is prepping to file for bankruptcy.