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. Ladies’s sports activities are projected to generate greater than $1 billion in income in 2024, in keeping with an estimate from consulting agency Deloitte. Whereas progress has are available in a number of sports activities, basketball has been notably sturdy, with rising scores for NCAA event video games and the WNBA.
“Our business has seen the unimaginable influence of investing in girls’s sports activities during the last a number of years, however even with continued momentum, girls’s sports activities investments solely comprise a mere fraction of whole media spend in sports activities,” mentioned Matt Sweeney, Chief Funding Officer, GroupM US. “Beginning with this 12 months’s upfront negotiations, our workforce will procure elevated alternatives which can be a win-win for our advertisers. GroupM advertisers have challenged {the marketplace} to flip the script on tips on how to put money into girls’s sports activities, and they’re going to proceed to play a pivotal function 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 ladies’s sports activities, and a duty to reinforce the ladies’s sports activities market, our workforce is dedicated to delivering our advertisers with bespoke and bountiful alternatives that may drive model influence, enhance advert effectiveness and optimize enterprise outcomes,” mentioned Denise Ocasio, Government 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 a few of the highest rated broadcasts total. Promoting alongside girls’s sports activities works.”
Information and measurement agency EDO has studied the influence of promoting in girls’s sports activities on a model’s picture and business targets. Among the many findings was one eye-catching stat: Adidas adverts 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 best way promoting and sponsorship packages are purchased and bought,” mentioned Martin Blich, Government 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 present 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 growing total sports activities promoting.”
