Heroine Hit - March

Get ahead of the game with my monthly must & want-to-know women’s sport sponsorship & marketing hit

People power & social media red cards

It’s been a month of people rallying together on social media to call out organisations getting off-side.

1. Weightroom chaos - Oregon’s, Sedona Prince exposed the NCAA “weightroom” disparity which quickly got picked up by fans, players, stars and media. It then spiraled into a series of March Madness inequality posts including food, swag and even inferior Covid tests.

2. Footy’s back - Fox commentator, Shane Warne was called out after promoting AFL’s return, claiming “proper footy is back” despite AFLW having been back for weeks. Players and fans took to social media to announce their dismay which resulted in the AFL deleting similar posts.

3. International Women’s Day tokenism - Gender Pay Gap App singled out UK organisations who were more talk than action by tweeting the gender pay gap of those who did #IWD posts. Hardest to digest were female focused sport brands like Lulu Lemon and Sweaty Betty where women’s average pay was 34% and 63% lower than men’s!

5 Gotta-know

1. Sky Sports and BBC have signed a game-changing broadcast deal, reportedly worth £21-24m to host the Women’s Super League for 3 years.

2. World Rugby announced a global women’s competition called WXV launching in 2023 after postponing the women’s Rugby World Cup this year.

3. A new study shows women’s sport receives the same miniscule level of media coverage as it did 30 years ago, hovering at around 5%. It you take out the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2019, it drops to a measly 3.5%.

4. Deloitte predict that women’s sport as a total of all sport sponsorship in Australia will increase from 8% to 20% by 2025.

5. Sue Bird, Alex Morgan, Chloe Kim and Simone Manuel launched media and commerce company, Togethxr with backing of a mid-seven million dollar investment.

Athletes selling fan shout outs

Swysh gives fans the chance to buy a personalised video greeting from their favourite athletes across Australia and New Zealand. It’s a savvy idea and one that I view as even more valuable to the women’s than men’s game with it’s ability to deliver income and fan engagement for female athletes.

I think this will be a winner with kids, although I’m not convinced on the personal Valentine’s Day messages they were offering last month haha!

What the Non-Fungible-Tokens?!

NFTs (Non-fungible tokens) or at least media attention have gone ballistic in the past months. Digital collectibles or rather authenticated video moments in the case of sport are the next big thing for women’s sport according to Serena William’s husband, Reddit co-founder and venture capitalist Alexis Ohanian.

A dunk of LeBron James sold for over $200,000 last month on NBA Top Shot which currently only features men’s moments. Ohanian believes that fans want to celebrate both their male and female heroes and not offering moments from iconic stars like Megan Rapinoe is idiotic.

5 Women’s sport trends

Despite the hit women’s sport has taken over the past year with Covid, there are 5 positive trends I’m seeing emerge that will drive women’s sport success which I covered in my latest blog post HERE.

Is NCAA deliberately holding women’s basketball back?

If you look deeper than the “weightroom” disaster there are interesting points arising that suggest that the NCAA is happy to keep the perception of women’s basketball low.

Bizarrely the NCAA’s successful “March Madness” brand only applies to the men’s competition with the women’s branded as the Women’s Championship. AdAge claim this is marketing madness and using the same ‘March Madness’ umbrella across both competition’s would drive brand growth and revenue for both.

In another twist, Washington Post claim that the NCAA are mis-leading people on the profitability of the women’s competition and that it suits their narrative to have people believe it is a cost rather than a profit generating business.

Most excited about

🏏 NZ vs Australia Cricket: T20 - 1 April, ODI - 4, 7, 10 April

⛳️ ANA Inspiration Golf: 1-4 April

🏉 Women’s Six Nations Rugby: 3-24 April

🏀 NCAA Women’s ‘March Madness’ Basketball Championship Final : 4 April

🏈 AFLW Grand Final: 17 April

🏆 ANZ Premiership NZ Netball season starts: 18 April

⚽️ International Football Mania: England vs France & Canada - 9 & 13 April, Matildas vs Germany & Netherlands - 10 & 14 April, USA vs Sweden & France - 11 & 14 April

Must watch - NBA/WNBA sponsor ad

This is comedy genius from dual NBA & WNBA sponsor, CarMax as Golden State Warrior superstar, Steph Curry plays side-kick to WNBA legend, Sue Bird.

A car salesman is stoked that he’s just served a 4 x Basketball Champ before Curry corrects him that he is only a 3 x Champ. We then see a shot of 4 x Champ and 11 x All Star icon, Sue Bird getting in to her new car.

Humour can be as powerful at driving female empowerment as the emotive and big production ads we often see. The audience gets a laugh but there is a significant outtake around not undermining female athletes accomplishments.

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