{"id":612454,"date":"2023-02-27T08:49:28","date_gmt":"2023-02-27T14:49:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.sellorbuyhomefast.com\/index.php\/2023\/02\/27\/publishers-like-espn-and-agencies-are-seeing-more-investment-in-womens-sports-coverage\/"},"modified":"2023-02-27T08:49:28","modified_gmt":"2023-02-27T14:49:28","slug":"publishers-like-espn-and-agencies-are-seeing-more-investment-in-womens-sports-coverage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2023\/02\/27\/publishers-like-espn-and-agencies-are-seeing-more-investment-in-womens-sports-coverage\/","title":{"rendered":"Publishers like ESPN and agencies are seeing more investment in women\u2019s sports coverage"},"content":{"rendered":"

The attention and investment in women\u2019s sports coverage has increased especially over the last two years<\/a>. That\u2019s thanks to new dedication to the topic \u2014 from publishers expanding the teams writing that coverage to agencies securing multimillion ad deals for the category.<\/p>\n

Last year, publishers including ESPN and Warner Bros. Discovery Sports saw viewership increase after it invested more in its women\u2019s sports coverage. Two ad agency execs who spoke with Digiday said anecdotally that more brand budgets are going toward advertising against women\u2019s sports.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cYou no longer have to explain to the brands the value of being in the women\u2019s sports space,\u201d said Scott McGowan, senior media creative at the IPG agency Mediahub, with clients including the NBA and Fox Sports. \u201cThere\u2019s less need to explain [this value], so we are starting [conversations] from a much more even playing field,\u201d McGowan said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have pitched women\u2019s sports ideas to literally every brand that we have had an opportunity to do so,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Advertiser support growing<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Two ad agency execs told Digiday more advertisers are inquiring about women\u2019s sports coverage in the past year or so. And as broadcast companies air more women\u2019s sports games, more inventory becomes available, they said.<\/p>\n

They pointed to the multi-million, multi-year deal between Ally and Disney announced last week<\/a>. (A spokesperson declined to share the financial terms of that deal.) The deal \u201cis not a surprise,\u201d McGowan said. \u201cThere\u2019s an appetite for this, and it will only continue to grow.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Ally-Disney deal will also help to bring in more women\u2019s sports advertisers, said Adam Schwartz, svp and director of sports media at Horizon Media. \u201cI hope it gets to a point where [a deal like that] is not a big deal. We\u2019re not quite there yet, but that would be the goal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schwartz said Capital One, one of Horizon\u2019s clients, has \u201cowned everything\u201d across the women\u2019s NCAA tournament for years, and recently they\u2019ve had to \u201cfight\u2026 to keep those assets because other advertisers are coming in.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the budgets going to women\u2019s sports coverage is not \u201cclose to equal\u201d as the money going to men\u2019s sports, \u201cthere\u2019s room to grow [and that] is exactly the place and space that brands want to be. In this industry, growth opportunity is an advantage,\u201d McGowan said.<\/p>\n

Both McGowan and Schwartz said advertisers are investing in both linear and digital, usually in the form of cross-channel deals. \u201cA decade ago, I couldn\u2019t tell you there was a women\u2019s digital option,\u201d Schwartz said.<\/p>\n

On the publisher side, Jennifer Dill \u2014 who was promoted to vp of women\u2019s sports strategy in March 2022 to oversee women\u2019s strategy across Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) \u2013 said the company\u2019s sales team does not pitch women\u2019s and men\u2019s sports coverage differently. WBD\u2019s sales team is \u201cholistically speaking about both of them. There might be some nuances in the packaging and the customization. But overall, we\u2019re talking about a total U.S. soccer package,\u201d for example, she said.<\/p>\n

This approach \u201cmakes sense,\u201d Schwartz said. \u201cWomen\u2019s sports should not be in a silo.\u201d<\/p>\n

WBD Sports\u2019 content has attracted notable advertisers across properties, including Nike and AT&T for digital, social and linear campaigns as well as digital campaigns from advertisers including Zelle, Gatorade and Ruffles. The company has several multi-million deals for WNBA content across three of its properties, but a WBD Sports spokesperson declined to share terms of those deals.<\/p>\n

WNBA digital content at WBD Sports has seen a 150% increase in revenue year-over-year.\u00a0HighlightHER has grown\u00a0revenue\u00a0nearly 40% year-over-year, and new categories have partnered with the female sports vertical\u00a0in the past year, including insurance, food, tech and QSR. Exact figures were not provided.<\/p>\n

While there\u2019s a hard line between editorial and ad sales at the Los Angeles Times, Iliana Lim\u00f3n Romero \u2014 who was promoted to assistant managing editor for sports at the LA Times last May \u2014\u00a0said the sales side is having more conversations with her team about upcoming editorial initiatives and projects in women\u2019s sports to then bring to advertisers.<\/p>\n

ESPN did not provide advertising revenue figures before publishing time.<\/p>\n

Audience numbers up, with more content being served<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Audiences\u2019 interest in women\u2019s sports is continuing to grow at ESPN and WBD Sports (which oversees digital brands like Bleacher Report and HighlightHER, as well as sports broadcasts on TBS and TNT, among others).<\/p>\n

ESPN has beefed up its coverage of women\u2019s gymnastics, softball and the FIBA World Cup, said Nicole Pelaez-Dandrea, vp of audience engagement at ESPN. The company hired Alexa Philippou as its women\u2019s basketball reporter last February.<\/p>\n

NCAA Softball content generated 2.5 million uniques across ESPN.com and the ESPN app in June, up 10% year-over-year, after launching a full play-by-play of the tournament that month, Pelaez-Dandrea said. Monthly women visitors to ESPN Digital was up 11% year-over-year in 2022, and up 40% in the ESPN app.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Content around the WNBA increased more than 400% last year, across ESPN\u2019s site, game pages, apps and connected TV, Pelaez-Dandrea. (The WNBA\u2019s 2022 regular season was its most-watched regular season in 14 years, where TV viewership was up 16% compared to the 2021 season.)<\/p>\n

ESPN+, ESPN\u2019s subscription video streaming service, held live coverage of over 11,000 women\u2019s sports events last year, up 25.8% year-over-year.<\/p>\n

WBD Sports has 164 million women fans across its portfolio, Dill said. TNT and HBO Max aired the women\u2019s soccer tournament SheBelieves Cup over the past week, with accompanying coverage from both Bleacher Report and HighlightHER.<\/p>\n

At the Los Angeles Times, there will be more staff covering the FIFA Women\u2019s World Cup this summer than the men\u2019s tournament a few months ago \u2014 two journalists are going to Australia and New Zealand, as opposed to the one reporter on the ground in Qatar, said Lim\u00f3n Romero.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Economic conditions slowing down rate of progress?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Despite the optimism from both the publisher and agency side, the current economic climate means that while there is increased interest from new advertisers in the women\u2019s sports space, brands aren\u2019t necessarily bringing in bigger return budgets, McGowan said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBudgets everywhere are being more scrutinized. You can\u2019t measure anything in a vacuum,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While Schwartz said he saw bigger and new budgets coming into the women\u2019s sports space in the past year, the economy could slow down deals around the Women\u2019s World Cup in the next few months before picking back up later in the year, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m fairly certain it will be a big one this summer,\u201d Schwartz said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a>
\n Sara Guaglione<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The attention and investment in women\u2019s sports coverage has increased especially over the last two years. That\u2019s thanks to new dedication to the topic \u2014 from publishers expanding the teams writing that coverage to agencies securing multimillion ad deals for the category.Last year, publishers including ESPN and Warner Bros. Discovery Sports saw viewership increase after<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":612455,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34102,1461,46],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-612454","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-agencies","8":"category-publishers","9":"category-technology"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=612454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/612455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}