Brands flocked to women’s sports in 2024. Did that push up overall sports marketing spending?

Advertiser dollars followed. During the 2024-25 broadcast year, GroupM — still the industry’s largest media agency network, at least for now — has driven more client spending toward women’s sports, increasing it 115% by the end of October (a spokesperson declined to share the dollar amount).

That’s good news for those hoping increased ad spend means sustained support for women’s basketball, soccer or hockey. But there are still questions over which brands are funding that increase, where it’s going — and whether it’s leading to higher spending on sports overall.

Sports investment is up — but what’s it buying?

Sports is “the last bastion of live television,” said State Farm’s head of marketing Alyson Griffin. But just like the rest of the ad business, digital channels are soaking up more and more sports dollars.

With fewer tentpole sports events, Dentsu predicts that broadcast TV spend will fall 2.5% in 2025, compared with 1.6% growth in 2024, while overall digital spending is estimated to increase 9.2%.

The year saw more sports coverage move to streaming platforms, and more of it available to buy programmatically. That attracted brands new to live sports. During the Olympic Games, NBCU pulled in almost half a billion dollars from sponsors new to the event; over 70% of the advertisers for the Summer Games were new to the Olympics. And according to Amazon, 40% of the brands buying ads against its Black Friday football coverage were NFL first-timers. 

Sponsorship deals can also account for a sizable chunk of client spending. Some brands, such as crypto exchange OKX, even choose to forgo TV or digital spend in favor of an all-sponsorship strategy.

Given the diversity of deal structures (which might only involve a jersey patch, but in the case of Best Buy’s TGL sponsorship package, could include ad inventory), it’s not easy to compare like-for-like. 

Furthermore, sports clubs and franchises have often tied sponsorship deals of their men’s and women’s teams together. Jennifer Haskel, knowledge and insights lead at Deloitte Sports Business Group, told Digiday that she expected to see a gradual “unbundling” as marketers and rights-holders recognize the value of such partnerships.

Point being — although we know ad spend on sports rose overall, drawing a clear line between men’s and women’s sports dollars is more difficult.

Are brands spending more, or are more brands spending?

Advertisers already active around live sport have been among the largest supporters of women’s sports. But that doesn’t mean they’ve increased their overall sports investment.

Insurer State Farm has advertised around the WNBA — among other sports — for nine years. Though the brand’s media investment had risen in that time, Griffin said this was due to rising ad costs, rather than a net injection of ad dollars.

“We’ve been here forever, and all of a sudden the price of an ad unit is totally different than it was,” she said, without providing financial details.

GroupM’s spending increase included investments from over 20 clients including Adidas, Danone, Domino’s and Unilever. All were already active sports advertisers, confirmed Marty Blich, executive director of sports and live investment at GroupM U.S. Again, it isn’t clear if they’d increased their overall sporting investment in meeting the collective target, or simply spread budgets more thinly.

“I don’t know if it’s new… I would say there’s more clients that are involved in that now than there were before,” he said.

Where new investment has definitely occurred, it’s come from advertisers that were previously strangers to sport. The WNBA drew in a number of sponsors that previously avoided sports marketing, such as dating app Bumble, haircare brand Mielle, over-the-counter birth control brand Opill and underwear brand Skims.

Partly, that’s due to a lower barrier to entry. According to Ampere Analysis, the cost of media rights deals per game day, per engaged fan, for NBA games in 2024 was 579.4% higher than WNBA games ($1.97 vs. $0.34).

And there’s still a chance for marketers to position themselves as early-days supporters of a given sport. For companies such as Skims, the WNBA is “a clean slate… to get in on the ground floor and grow together,” according to Basia Wojcik, vp of sports at The Marketing Arm (TMA).

Media buyers told Digiday that in 2025, they expect to encourage clients to increase their spend on women’s sports. Certainly more opportunities to jump on board will come along. Two new teams will join the WNBA in coming years, while the Women’s Professional Baseball League is slated to launch in 2026. 

“Every year is going to be a milestone for women’s sports investment over the next five years,” said Blich. “The growth chart on this doesn’t seem to be stopping.”

Anticipating client demand around the UEFA Women’s Euro 2025 soccer tournament, Total Mediaplus’ head of broadcast Kieran Mills said: “It’s big enough to attract investment from brands now. It’s on that top tier.”

“We love that interest in female sports is increasing and heavily push the need to allocate new budget towards this effort,” added Nick Valenta, chief executive officer of sports-focused full service agency Mādin.

According to Gather managing director David Gaspar, marketers need to consider women’s sports as a potential channel in the future. 

“It may or may not be right for you as a brand, but you need to have an answer for it,” he said.