As advertiser demand for women’s sports skyrockets thanks to growth in ratings, interest from young fans and the star power of athletes such as University of Iowa basketball player Caitlin Clark, GroupM is looking to boost this momentum. The WPP-owned agency announced today a commitment to double its investments in women’s sports and intentions to seek exclusive deals with media companies that host women’s sports programming.

“When we took a look at where women's sports spending is as a piece of the overall sports pie, we saw that there was more than enough room for growth there,” said Denise Ocasio, executive director of investment at GroupM U.S. Ocasio declined to specify a dollar amount for the goal, but added, “Given the amount of additional exposure women’s sports is getting in the marketplace, our clients’ desires to always want to chase audiences that are growing, we thought that it was a reasonable starting point—[women’s sports] should be taking up more space than it currently does in the overall sports pie.”

GroupM will leverage support from clients including Adidas, Ally, Coinbase, Discover, Google, Mars, Nationwide, Unilever and Universal Pictures during this year’s upfront to seek first-look and exclusive deals with media partners, as well as opportunities beyond traditional media. Additional opportunities could include sponsorships and media inventory as well as co-branded marketing, NIL deals and additional packages with leagues and athletes, said Martin Blich, executive director of sports and live investment at GroupM U.S.

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More intentional investments

These opportunities will form what GroupM is describing as a devoted marketplace for advertisers to invest in women’s sports beyond the upfront and into the seasonal cycles of women’s sports leagues.

The marketplace will unify what has been a fragmented market for women’s sports investment, Occasio said. For example, “if a brand wants to participate in a grassroots effort in supporting New York City in sports versus doing a major broadcast sponsorship—how do we create these areas where all those opportunities live together, and clients can see which ones better served their individual KPIs.”

The formalization of a women’s sports marketplace was also inspired by client feedback for wanting to more intentionally invest in women’s sports, similar to industry-wide pushes to increase marketing budget allocations for underrepresented and diverse-owned media. 

“GroupM’s marketplace is an important step forward in driving visibility of women’s sports and will allow advertisers who’ve been wanting to invest in the space, but haven’t been able to because there wasn’t enough inventory, the opportunity to do so,” Kate Johnson, global marketing director, sports, entertainment and content partnerships at Google, told Ad Age via email. In addition to work GroupM and Google have done in recent to expand TV coverage and advertiser access to women’s sports, “bringing other brands and advertisers to the table will make a huge impact and give fans the content they’re clearly hungry for.”

“Creating a dedicated marketplace for women’s sports beginning at this year’s Upfront marks a significant step forward in driving real impact in the business of women’s sports,” added Andrea Brimmer, chief marketing and PR officer at Ally, in a statement. Ally was also one of GroupM’s clients pushing for more opportunities to invest in the space. “At Ally, we dreamed about reimagining the investment approach so we could drive systemic change in the way women’s sports media is bought and sold.”

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A case study of Adidas marketing by measurement company EDO found that campaigns featuring female athletes were 69% more effective than the brand’s other ads on broadcast and cable TV in 2023.

Ocasio said that GroupM is able to be a meaningful conduit for relationships between brands and media companies in increasing investment for women’s sports because of its measurement and technology investments, which can show the business impact of doing so to clients that may not already advertise in the space. 

“We want to always consider how our media is performing,” said Ocasio. “And if we are going to understand deeply and fully what women’s sports can offer, it’s not just exposure but how it serves clients’ businesses.”