Over the past five years, women’s football has undergone extensive change, driven by the professionalisation of top-flight leagues, increased grassroots participation and greater promotion and accessibility to live broadcasting of domestic leagues and leading international tournaments. This change has spurred substantial growth to viewership of the women’s game, with leading tournaments, including the Women’s World Cup, becoming increasingly valuable sponsorship opportunities for brands as a result.
As the 2023 Women’s World Cup kicks off, we expand on the key reasons why global brands have invested in sponsorship of the tournament.
2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup Is A Growing Brand Building Platform To Reach A 2bn+ Audience
The growth of the women’s game is illustrated by a considerable increase in the global viewership of the Women’s World Cup. Viewing figures for the 2023 tournament are forecast to double in comparison with the 2019 instalment (from 1bn to approx. 2bn), as free-to-air broadcast, including the BBC, ITV, Fox & Optus, make the tournament increasingly accessible for viewers around the world.
This increased interest on the international stage builds on progress within domestic women’s football, which has seen record-breaking, sell-out attendances over the past two years (see the 91,000 crowd that saw Barcelona’s UWCL showdown with Real Madrid and Arsenal’s 60,000+ attendance for their match up with Wolfsburg as two examples).
The 2023 Women’s World Cup will be no different, with a total of 1.5m fans expected to attend the tournament, offering brand sponsors a lucrative platform to reach millions of people, both at home and in the stadium.
This promotional platform is exclusive, owing to FIFA’s limited 4-tiered sponsorship ecosystem that has a limited number of positions for brands aiming to align with the tournament (see below).
Sponsors can maximise this exclusive platform via branding on LED perimeter advertising & pre/post game interview backdrops at 64 games, played over a 31-day period, with the sponsorship structure providing a range of branding opportunities at varying investment levels.
Women’s World Cup Sponsorship Is An Opportunity To Create Positive Social Change
Women’s World Cup sponsorship is set apart from other forms of football sponsorship by the opportunity it provides brand sponsors to enact long-lasting positive social change in relation to gender equality and inclusion.
Rights holders and brands are beginning to realise the unique opportunity provided by sponsorship of women’s sport, with sponsorship assets linked to female teams increasingly sold separately to their male counterparts. In the past year, Nielsen reports, there has been a 146% year-on-year increase in unbundled sponsorship investment in women’s sponsorship as brands look to activate campaigns linked specifically to women’s teams, athletes and female empowerment.
Visa, an official FIFA Partner, provide a case study of this approach at work, using their collaboration to authentically champion women’s sport in order to promote gender equality and support future female athletes.
Suzy Brown, Visa Marketing Director, UK & Ireland, encapsulates the approach:
Visa have matched the activation budget of their 2022 World Cup campaign, aligning with 33 female footballers to tell their stories in the ‘Team Visa’ campaign. The aim of this initiative is to produce more female role models in order to encourage children and parents to both watch the tournament and take up the game themselves.
Visa aren’t alone in this approach. See Unilever, Globant and CommBank’s sponsorship activations for other campaigns that carry equality, diversity and inclusion at their heart.
Women’s Football Sponsorship Helps Brands Engage & Resonate With Hard To Reach Demographics
Importantly, audiences resonate with such marketing-for-good campaigns. In a recent poll of users, Twitter found that 63% of Twitter’s football fans felt women’s football should receive equal coverage to the men’s game.
This figure increased further to 72% for users in the 18-34 age bracket, highlighting how millennial and Gen Z audiences (notoriously hard to reach via traditional marketing channels) are likely to look more favourably on brands who invest in women’s sports, particularly high-profile tournaments such as the World Cup.
This favourability translates into commercial gain, with nearly 20% of the UK population indicating that they are more likely to buy from a brand that supports women’s sports.
Women’s World Cup Sponsorship Offers Unique Integration Opportunities To Introduce Product To New Audiences
Awareness and engagement with match going fans can be heightened further via tactical product integrations that make partners’ products a key part of the World Cup experience.
This is a tried and tested approach that drives a big impact. For example, long-term FIFA sponsor Adidas has provided the official match ball to all FIFA-affiliated tournaments since 1974, while Visa provide the ticket purchasing infrastructure for the tournament.
The 2022 World Cup in Qatar produced some cultural challenges for FIFA in this respect due to the country’s ban on alcohol, which restricted the time periods and amount of beer than sponsor Anheuser-Busch InBev could sell during the competition. This won’t be an issue in the Australia / New Zealand hosted Women’s World Cup, shown by the inclusion of wine brand Jacob’s Creek in the FIFA Women’s World Cup sponsorship hierarchy. As a regional sponsor, Jacob’s Creek wine will available at all venues, as well as FIFA Fan Festivals over the course of the tournament.
Looking to find out more about sponsorship opportunities in women’s football and how they could help your brand? Get in touch with the SportQuake team to find out more.