GroupM, the media shopping for arm of promoting large WPP, is planning to double its annual funding in girls’s sports activities and create a devoted market to facilitate offers.
The corporate mentioned the initiative will start within the 2024-25 upfront, with an preliminary roster of advertisers together with Adidas, Google, Ally and Unilever to be supplemented with extra manufacturers coming in down the road. Girls’s sports activities are projected to generate greater than $1 billion in income in 2024, in accordance with an estimate from consulting agency Deloitte. Whereas development has are available a number of sports activities, basketball has been significantly sturdy, with rising rankings for NCAA match video games and the WNBA.
“Our trade has seen the unbelievable affect of investing in girls’s sports activities over the past a number of years, however even with continued momentum, girls’s sports activities investments solely comprise a mere fraction of complete media spend in sports activities,” mentioned Matt Sweeney, Chief Funding Officer, GroupM US. “Beginning with this yr’s upfront negotiations, our crew will procure elevated alternatives which can be a win-win for our advertisers. GroupM advertisers have challenged {the marketplace} to flip the script on the right way to put money into girls’s sports activities, and they’re going to proceed to play a pivotal position shifting ahead.”
Alternatives eyed by GroupM vary from broadcast sponsorships and bespoke packages to grassroots investments with leagues and athlete-owned leisure firms.
“With heightened demand for girls’s sports activities, and a duty to reinforce the ladies’s sports activities market, our crew is dedicated to delivering our advertisers with bespoke and bountiful alternatives that can drive model affect, improve advert effectiveness and optimize enterprise outcomes,” mentioned Denise Ocasio, Govt Director of Funding, GroupM. “Quick-growing audiences are watching at a excessive clip, and subsequently, girls’s sports activities programming is within the ranks with among the highest rated broadcasts general. Promoting alongside girls’s sports activities works.”
Information and measurement agency EDO has studied the affect of promoting in girls’s sports activities on a model’s picture and industrial goals. Among the many findings was one eye-catching stat: Adidas advertisements that includes feminine athletes have been 69% simpler than the model’s common advert on broadcast and cable in 2023.
“Past prioritizing investing in girls’s sports activities as a complete, we have to problem the way in which promoting and sponsorship packages are purchased and offered,” mentioned Martin Blich, Govt Director, Sports activities and Stay Funding, GroupM. “For a few years, there was disparity between males’s and girls’s sports activities promoting, however at this time there are elevated alternatives throughout girls’s sports activities. We hope our dedication will assist manufacturers execute a extra holistic funding technique centered round viewers, whereas rising general sports activities promoting.”
