Partner Article

Women’s sport – the future of brand sponsorship

In 1999 the Sports Sponsorship Advisory Council published a Government-funded report urging sportswomen to ‘play the sex appeal card’ to ignite industry interest and tease open brands’ wallets.

Lynsey Holbrook, sponsorship director of Momentum UK, considers how far sports sponsorship has come over the past 14 years, and what this means for brands looking for a better deal.

Things are changing for women’s sport. Back in 2011, The Commission on the Future of Women’s Sport in the United Kingdom published a report called The Big Deal which claimed that 50 per cent of UK sports fans believe women’s sport was on the way up, compared with 36 per cent for male sports.

Meanwhile, 44 per cent believed the quality of women’s sport was much better than ten years ago and 61 per cent of sports fans state that they would watch more women’s sport if it were televised.

A year later those predictions were undeniably certified, as the women’s contingent of Team GB in the London 2012 Olympics became the superstars of the show. Jessica Ennis smashed records to become the Olympic heptathlon champion, Victoria Pendleton picked up gold in the keirin, Nicola Adams became the first woman ever to win an Olympic boxing gold medal, and Jade Jones won Britain’s first ever gold medal in taekwondo. These are just a handful of the female heroes that have now become honoured pin-ups for women’s sport in the UK.

Victoria Pendelton on the way to winning Olympic gold in the keirin in 2012

While in this year’s Winter Olympics, the women are steaming ahead and Team GB has already bagged a bronze in the women’s snowboarding. Not only are we seeing a marked increase in the quality of women’s sport, it’s bringing lesser known sports into the limelight, a fantastic opportunity for sponsorship. Are women perhaps even beginning to outshine the men?

Despite all this good news for women’s sport, the Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation (WSFF) claims that today only five per cent of sports media coverage is devoted to women’s sport and just 0.5% of commercial investment. Meanwhile, only one in five Board positions are held by women in publicly funded sport. This reveals a clear disconnect and imbalance in women’s representation across the sector, which needs to change.

It is of no doubt that sponsorship is the lifeblood of modern sport. It is a reciprocal relationship built on mutual benefits of exposure, recognition and growth. As Helen Morrissey, CEO of Newton Investment Management highlighted, with no brand investment, the women who wanted to row for Oxford or Cambridge four years ago were forced to pay £1,500 each for their own kit and transport. Morrissey recalls that following Newton’s investment, Natalie Redgrave rowed for Oxford and her subsequent victory resulted in front page coverage across all the national newspapers, providing Newton with a very decent and very measurable return on investment in brand exposure.

Morrissey’s story effectively demonstrates the age old business wisdom that where there is a gap in the market, there is opportunity. Brands struggling to achieve cut-through in men’s sport sponsorship are well placed to steal a march with investment in the growing interest demonstrated toward women’s sport.

With the introduction of women’s boxing – the London 2012 Games became the first at which every sport had female competitors. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Brunei entering female athletes for the first time, meant that every eligible country has sent a female competitor to at least one Olympic Games.

WSFF research reported that 74 per cent of British adults thought the women’s Olympic events were of a high quality and 68 per cent said they were exciting to watch.

Regardless of appetite, the sponsorship model for emerging sport often presents something of a chicken and egg scenario, whereby brands are wary of investment unless media coverage is satisfactory and media coverage is largely unsatisfactory unless there is bigger investment.

However, the unashamedly sexist call back in 1999 to ‘play the sex appeal card’ in a post 2012 Olympics context is now irrelevant, but a helpful barometer of the changes we’ve seen in the last ten years. It’s no longer about equality; it’s about a huge gap in the sponsorship market, which brands need to wake up to. Failure to do so is ultimately a failure to appear relevant to half the potential audience.

Today, less and less merit is to be found in money spent or media coverage; sponsorship is an opportunity to co-create with your commercial partners and absorb their values into your brand.

Investec’s association with England and GB’s women’s hockey is a perfect example of this. Breaking records for a single company’s investment for any women’s sport in the UK, the partnership is hailed as a proof point for the brand’s integrity: the players wear the Investec logo and with it align their virtues of hard-working honourable athletes with the values of the brand.

As women’s sport sponsorship inevitably grows, it would do brands well to ensure they maintain their raison d’être within the space. If you dissect any sponsorship, the big question should be if that brand wasn’t involved, what difference would it make? True and legitimate sponsors are integral to that sport or event, without them it simply would not take place. Sponsorship for the sake of sponsorship is over; partnerships that have meaning are the future.

In 2012, 80,000 people – men and women – travelled to Wembley to watch the women’s football – a far cry from what could have been expected in 1999. It may still be the case that only 5 per cent of sports coverage in the media features women but a change in perception of the purpose of sponsorship may mean that for brands at least; the media is no longer their primary concern. The tide, as they say, is turning: brands need to act fast and act right to catch the wave.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Lynsey Holbrook .