By Sam Bradley • October 16, 2024 •
Ivy Liu
The WNBA’s 2024 season could also be coming to an in depth, however the league’s breakthrough yr could have an enduring industrial affect.
It’s confirmed a draw for advertisers which have beforehand been strangers to basketball, reminiscent of relationship app Bumble, over-the-counter contraception model Opill and most not too long ago, car lubricant-maker Castrol.
The latter has signed as much as sponsor the NBA forward of the 2024-25 males’s season. In main half, in accordance with Andreas Osbar, CEO of Castrol Americas, it’s a transfer to align the model with the WNBA and its more and more broad fanbase. The monetary particulars of the partnership weren’t shared.
“It’s permitting us to succeed in new and completely different form of audiences,” mentioned Osbar.
Media consumers say that the NBA and WNBA’s proactive strategy to fan engagement, and adaptability with promoting alternatives — it was the primary U.S. sports activities league to introduce jersey patches, for instance — has made sponsorships extra accessible.
Castrol joins underwear model Skims and used automobile gross sales platform CarMax as a non-endemic advertiser that now companions with each the NBA and WNBA. “Increasingly we’re seeing manufacturers and classes partnering with the NBA and WNBA… that haven’t traditionally been companions of the NBA or supporters of it,” mentioned Jimmy Spano, evp and head of Dentsu Sports activities.
“That’s an indication of manufacturers recognizing the distinctive qualities and choices that these two leagues particularly deliver to the desk,” he added.
Colie Edison, chief progress officer of the WNBA since 2022, isn’t shocked that the league is pulling in new names. “With the league’s progress, huge cultural relevance and multifaceted gamers, a wider array of non-endemic manufacturers are getting into the fray,” she informed Digiday in an electronic mail.
“These partnerships aren’t restricted to women-specific merchandise or industries,” she mentioned, including that “the league’s potential to safe such a various sponsorship portfolio highlights the broader financial alternatives tied to its success.”
Castrol isn’t a stranger to sports activities advertising and marketing. In addition to soccer and soccer partnerships, it’s lengthy been a associate of NASCAR, and is about to sponsor the Audi Method One crew starting in 2026.
However Osbar mentioned that it wants to succeed in youthful, feminine drivers, if the corporate is to extend its revenues in its core U.S. market.
Castrol’s inner analysis, he claimed, had proven that there have been extra feminine drivers concerned in oil and lubricant buying than it had beforehand estimated. “The function of girls in our worth chain might be an untapped alternative for us,” he mentioned, with out offering particular information. “That’s the place the NBA is available in.”
Girls make up 44% of WNBA followers versus 40% for the NBA, according to YouGov SportsIndex. WNBA followers are additionally youthful, with an estimated 47% aged 18-34 in contrast with 42% for the NBA.
“From a hardcore advertising and marketing standpoint, the expansion of girls’s sports activities equals the expansion of a media alternative to talk to extra girls,” mentioned Ant Firth-Clark, senior strategist at M&C Saatchi Sport & Leisure, an company which has not too long ago labored with Castrol within the U.Ok. “[For] anybody who’s making an attempt to attraction to a feminine market, it’s going to be an apparent contact level.”
And although the WNBA attracts loads of male viewers, he mentioned it’s supplied a second which means “extra girls get to see themselves and extra women get to see themselves in sport.”
Osbar didn’t disclose the price of Castrol’s sponsorship, however mentioned it represented “a major funding… I needed to critically suppose two or thrice earlier than I opened the checkbook.”
The CEO mentioned it’ll be enterprise a major media activation program alongside the sponsorship. The strategy, which Osbar mentioned was nonetheless being finalized, will give attention to TV and digital — notably paid social and influencer — in addition to shopfloor exercise at retail companions’ shops. “The activation dedication might be as large because the rights dedication,” he mentioned, with out offering particular figures.
Castrol may also be betting that the WNBA’s extra various viewers may also be extra receptive than the everyday viewer.
“Girls’s sports activities followers are very a lot conscious of prior inequities, they usually care concerning the progress of those leagues and these athletes extra so than the generic or informal sports activities fan,” mentioned Maria Marino, a sports activities journalist and host of Motion Community basketball podcast Buckets.
“They pay attention to and assist the manufacturers that assist the sport that they care about,” she added.
The WNBA’s Edison argued that followers of girls’s sports activities had been extra more likely to buy from manufacturers that supported their crew or league. “Followers of girls’s sports activities are 54% extra conscious of girls’s sports activities sponsors and 45% extra more likely to think about or buy from sponsor manufacturers in comparison with males’s sports activities,” she mentioned, referencing a study published by sports agency Wasserman in 2023.
She added: “It makes enterprise sense to assist the WNBA because it continues to interrupt information throughout viewership, engagement and extra.”
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