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How New Balance’s athlete-first approach to women’s sports partnerships pays off

How New Balance’s athlete-first approach to women’s sports partnerships pays off

As the WNBA Finals between the New York Liberty and Minnesota Lynx get into full swing, all eyes are on a league that has exploded in popularity this year.

According to Colie Edison, SVP and chief growth officer of the WNBA, one of the main reasons for the league’s popularity is that the level of play has improved. This WNBA season has seen more 100-point games than any other season in the league’s 28-year history. Additionally, name, image and likeness rules changed three years ago have allowed college players to secure brand deals and build followers.

“There is more star power than ever before,” said Edison. “Caitlyn Clarke, Angel Reese, … Because of the new NIL rules, these players were able to build huge fan bases that followed them to the WNBA.”

While brands like Prada have welcomed individual players like Caitlin Clark, New Balance has gone a step further and signed on as a league-wide sponsor in July. Naveen Lokesh, head of global sports marketing for basketball and soccer at New Balance, said part of the impetus for the deal with the WNBA was New Balance’s goal to reach a younger audience. The WNBA grew its Gen Z audience by 247% in 2024 compared to the previous year, and many of the WNBA’s players have large social followings in this cohort.

“We think about partnerships in terms of ‘less, bigger, better,’” said Lokesh. Lokesh and Edison spoke Tuesday at a CEO summit hosted by the Wharton School’s Baker Retailing Center and the RLC Global Forum. “It took us two years to sign Cameron [Brink, a star player with over a million Instagram followers and New Balance’s first WNBA athlete]. During this time, we delved deeply into their social audience to ensure they overlapped with the Gen Z audience we want to reach.”

Edison said the younger shopper is as interested in fashion as they are in sports. Citing internal survey data, she said 92% of WNBA fans consider themselves fashionable.

The WNBA has actually grown rapidly compared to last year. The games averaged around 440,000 viewers last year, now they average 1.4 million. New Balance also thrived, increasing its revenue by 23% to $6.5 billion in 2023. The partnership with the WNBA is already paying off. Lokesh said the company ran simple AB tests as part of a marketing campaign, using Cameron Brink in one ad and a generic model in the other. The ads with Brink saw a 22% increase in engagement and another 10% increase when the WNBA logo was added. A post about Cameron Brink wearing New Balance at her draft is New Balance’s fourth most popular post on social media.

The growth of women’s sports isn’t just limited to basketball, although the WNBA is leading the way. All women’s sports in the U.S. are expected to bring in over $1 billion this year. Lokesh said New Balance is looking closely at other women’s leagues in sports such as soccer and tennis.

“We have an athlete-first approach,” Lokesh told Glossy. “We signed with Cameron a year before we signed the WNBA contract so we could establish ourselves in the sport. We do not have a partnership with the WTA [Women’s Tennis Association]but we co-signed [tennis player] Coco Gauff. It will take some time, but there is definitely a long-term plan to collaborate more with other women’s sports leagues in the future.”