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February 24, 2023
The Walt Disney Company and Ally Financial Inc. have announced a multi-year and multimillion dollar media and collegiate partnership to advance parity in women’s sports coverage. The partnership features a “first-of-its-kind” media investment with more than 90% anchored in women’s sports. The collaboration will focus on expanding game highlights, branded content and features across ESPN networks, including regular SportsCenter segments.
According to the press release, women’s sports receive less than 10% of media coverage and media investments for women’s sports are only included as an add-on to men’s packages. As part of the partnership, the US-based financial investment company will become the official sponsor of the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), featuring the first-ever title sponsorships of the ACC Women’s Basketball Tournament and Women’s Soccer Championship and the exclusive presenting sponsor of the 2023 ACC Women’s Lacrosse Championship. This step intends to change the way women’s media is packaged with a desire to create “the kind of systemic change needed to significantly increase visibility, opportunity and fandom in women’s sports.”
“For too long, women’s sports programming has been treated as an afterthought in the media buying process, perpetually giving women athletes the short end in terms of media exposure and income opportunity while limiting investment opportunities for brands. This cycle needs to change,” said Andrea Brimmer, chief marketing and public relations officer at Ally.
The venture came about following Ally’s discussion with Disney to create an innovative sponsorship package to spotlight women’s sports and advance the brand’s pledge to reach 50-50 media spend across men’s and women’s sports late last year. Disney then worked with Ally to create “a new and innovative type of package with gender equity at its core.”
“The roadblocks we kept running into are that women’s sports are generally sold as part of a men’s package or as an add-on, and with an already scarce landscape locked up through category exclusivity, it made it nearly impossible to reach our internal investment goals,” explained Brimmer who shared that Disney and ESPN were eager to buy women’s media directly and create opportunities where there weren’t any.
The package also features a collaboration with Disney’s CreativeWorks team to build custom creative to keep gender equity and allyship top of mind for all fans. The spots will run in two exclusive episodes of ESPN’s SportsCenter this summer.
Early next month, Ally will kick things off at the Women’s and Men’s ACC Basketball Championships in North Carolina with interactive fan activations and giveaways. Ally and Disney intentionally structured the ACC Network media portion of the agreement to create opportunities for additional financial brands to join, thereby increasing investment in women’s sports.
The ACC Women’s Basketball Tournament is the longest-running D1 conference women’s basketball tournament in the country and fans can watch all 14 of the tournament games on ACCN (Tuesday-Saturday) and ESPN (Sunday). In addition to the games, ACCN will be on site with live studio programming throughout the event.
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