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After elbowing its way into the thick of the pop-culture conversation, women’s sports are now commanding a volume of advertising dollars commensurate with the recent surge in fan engagement. And as media agencies continue to steer their clients into this rapidly growing segment of the TV marketplace, brands that have sat out the boom are in danger of finding themselves sidelined.
According to a new study from the TV ad tracker EDO, investment in women’s sports skyrocketed in 2024, as a record upswing in college and pro basketball deliveries sent marketers scrambling to engage with these rapidly growing audiences. Total ad spend in women’s sports last year grew nearly two-and-a-half times to $244.4 million, a sharp improvement over the $102.3 million invested in 2023.
Pricing increases accounted for much of the big swing, as the 139% boost in dollar volume far outpaced the 37% lift in commercial airings. You get what you pay for; last year’s March Madness final between Iowa and South Carolina averaged 18.87 million viewers on ABC, making it the most-watched women’s basketball game of all time. In defeating Caitlin Clark’s Hawkeyes 87-75, Dawn Staley’s charges won their second national title in three years while drawing the largest U.S. audience for any basketball broadcast—including the NBA Finals—since 2019.
Among the categories that have helped power the women’s sports renaissance are automotive, which contributed $27.2 million in TV spend last year; pharma, the runner-up with $26.2 million worth of investment; and telco ($25.6 million). Per data culled from EDO’s Ad EnGage platform, the top seven categories, which include financial services, insurance, food/beverage and retail, spent a grand total of $159.5 million on women’s sports, accounting for 65.3% of the overall haul.
Top spenders in 2024 were State Farm ($5.5 million), AT&T ($5.5 million), Allstate ($4.5 million), Nike ($4.4 million) and AbbVie’s Skyrizi, a drug prescribed to treat plaque psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis. Among the biggest spenders in women’s sports are a pair of NCAA “corporate champions” (AT&T and Capital One) and official WNBA marketing partners State Farm, Nike and Delta Air Lines. Together, the 10 most active investors in women’s sports plunked down $40.5 million on in-game advertising, accounting for 16.6% of the cumulative spend.
Unsurprisingly, the most effective advertising in women’s sports was also contextually relevant. As part of a campaign that was built around WNBA veterans Kelsey Plum and Skylar Diggins-Smith as well as rookie Cameron Brink, the underwear/shapewear brand Skims saw engagement with its in-game spots outperform other targeted creative by a staggering margin. Per EDO, the star-studded Skims ads were 3,716% more effective than other spots that aired during women’s sporting events. (Brink’s appearances in Skims and New Balance commercials helped generate 1,368% more effectiveness than the average in-game WNBA ad.)
In advertising circles, “effectiveness” is a catch-all for the sort of active engagement that leads to heightened brand awareness and customer acquisitions. For example, in-game spots featuring WNBA players are 103% more effective than similar ads without any familiar faces, which is to say that viewers who watch the commercials starring pro hoopers are twice as likely to engage in the online clicks that lead to real-world buys.
Basketball continues to move the needle for advertisers, especially those that buy time in the postseason. Per EDO, ads that aired during the 2024 WNBA playoffs were 24% more effective than those slotted in primetime entertainment programs, while the women’s NCAA tourney was 18% more effective than the average 8-11 p.m. show.
EDO’s findings are consistent with other research around women’s sports. According to a recent SponsorUnited report, sponsorship deals in women’s sports grew 12% year-over-year in 2024, outpacing the 8% growth across the five major men’s pro leagues. Meanwhile, a Sports Innovation Lab survey found that the average brand last year had allocated 20% of its sports-media budget to women’s sports, up from 9% in 2023.
While ad dollars will always chase eyeballs, the recent splurge on women’s sports has been well-orchestrated at the media agency level. A year ago, GroupM announced that it would double its investment in women’s sports—a target the $64 billion investment arm of WPP surpassed in just seven months’ time. Among the GroupM clients that have expanded their commitment to the space include Adidas, Discover, Domino’s, Google, Nationwide, Target and Unilever.
GroupM would in short order be joined by another agency giant. Last month, Publicis Media launched Women’s Sports Connect, a dedicated investment unit within its Publicis Sports arm. The platform will target women’s sports across the professional and collegiate landscape, including the WNBA and NWSL, as well as NCAA basketball, softball, gymnastics and volleyball.
Among some of the first investments made by Publicis’ new women’s sports unit are a student-athlete program being developed by NBCUniversal and a TV/streaming arrangement with Disney’s ad sales team. Publicis pegs the women’s sports fanbase at some 65 million consumers and growing. The agency sees the value of the global marketplace growing 300% to $1.28 billion in the next three years.
All of this investment is ramping up as the TV ratings continue to grow—this despite the ongoing erosion of the nation’s pay-TV base. The ESPN networks this seasons saw the audience for women’s college basketball grow 3% year-over-year to 280,000 viewers per game, which marks the biggest turnout since the 2008-09 campaign. A record 15 games cracked the half-million viewer mark. Advertisers targeting adults 18-34 were treated to an even greater lift, as the hard-to-reach demo grew 27%.
For what it’s worth, ESPN’s year-to-year comps weren’t greatly influenced one way or the other by Caitlin Clark, as Iowa’s regular-season games rarely air on the Disney networks. (The Big Ten inked a seven-year, $7 billion rights deal with CBS, Fox and NBC in 2022.)
Those gains were made in the face of the loss of some 6.78 million bundled pay-TV subs in the past 12 months, and a 9% in-season decline in overall TV usage.
