The last few months have seen women’s sport breaking viewing records on both sides of the pond. The Women’s Euros gave ITV its biggest audience of the year in July, while the Women’s Rugby World Cup final on the BBC became the most-watched rugby match of 2025. Meanwhile in the US, the WNBA playoffs scored their highest ever viewership on ESPN. These records follow a landmark 2024, when women’s sport accounted for around 15 percent of total sports viewing in the UK, according to the Women’s Sport Trust (WST).
Yet despite the rising popularity of women’s sports, advertising investment is failing to keep up. Data from TV measurement company EDO suggests women’s sport makes up just 3 percent of all TV ad spend on live sports. This represents a significant untapped audience for advertisers looking to reach highly engaged sports fans. According to ad tech firm Quantcast, the addressable audience for women’s football alone grew by 590 percent over the course of the last season.
There are however moves from major agency groups to redress the gender balance in ad investment. Last year, WPP formed a dedicated women’s sports marketplace and pledged to double annual media spend in the area, a target it reported to have exceeded at the end of 2024. In February, Publicis Media launched a dedicated women’s sports investment unit within Publicis Sports called Women’s Sports Connect (WSC). And Stagwell made female athletes a focus of its Sport Beach in Cannes this year, with Serena Williams among the high-profile speaker lineup.
But Beth Sidhu, Chief Brand and Communications Officer at Stagwell, says consumer changes occur faster than shifts in advertising practices, resulting in an imbalance that the industry is looking to address.
“What we’re seeing is a lag between audience behaviour and advertiser behaviour,” Sidhu tells VideoWeek. “Viewership in women’s sports is exploding, and in some cases outperforming men’s games in engagement, but ad dollars don’t move overnight.”
Changing the game
Given the large amounts of ad spend associated with major sporting events, keeping pace with the booming popularity of women’s sport requires rethinking entrenched spending habits, which can prove challenging for advertisers and agencies that have been invested in the space for a long time.
“A big part of the problem comes down to legacy media buying habits,” comments Nisha Ridout, Marketing Director at Quantcast. “Many brands are still allocating budgets based on outdated data from men’s sports, failing to recognise there’s been a seismic shift in viewership of women’s sport, driven by the recent successes of the Lionesses. This is compounded by an outdated view that investing in women’s sport delivers a much lower ROI, ultimately making it harder for marketers to justify a significant budget.”
But proving ROI on women’s sports investment poses hurdles for brands looking to reallocate their spend. According to WST research, almost one-third of brands still find ROI evaluation challenging, while one-third say they need more clarity on effective activation channels. Meanwhile economic factors are putting pressure on ad budgets, with 47 percent of respondents citing spending restrictions. Then there are internal obstacles, with one in five brands struggling to communicate the value of women’s sport sponsorship internally.
Tammy Parlour, CEO of the WST, adds that other barriers could be blocking the flow of ad spend. “Coverage can be fragmented across platforms, making ad buying less straightforward; long-standing contracts in men’s sports might soak up budget; and some advertisers might feel less confident about developing the right creative or brand fit for women’s sport. These structural and strategic hurdles, combined with lingering perceptions of risk, could be slowing ad investment, even as audiences and engagement accelerate.”
Setting the pace
On the other hand, that relative nascency and lack of entrenched practices opens up the playing field for brands willing to step out from the crowd, and even help shape an emerging space. “The perceived immaturity of women’s sport is its greatest strength for forward-thinking brands,” argues Quantcast’s Nisha Ridout. “The ad space is far less saturated, offering a huge opportunity for a company to truly make its mark.”
That might mean taking a risk as a marketer, but WST’s Tammy Parlour says this comes with the opportunity for brands to align themselves with values that fans increasingly associate with women’s sport: inclusion, empowerment and progress. For example in the UK, Visa has made inclusion and equality a focus of its UEFA women’s football sponsorship, including its “When more of us play, all of us win” campaign during the 2022 Euros. Meanwhile in the US, e.l.f. Beauty has teamed up with Billie Jean King as part of the tennis legend’s ‘Change the Board Game’ campaign to boost diversity on corporate boards.
Stagwell’s Beth Sidhu says the misconception that women’s sports are less mature than their male counterparts therefore creates “more white space, more room to experiment” for brands looking to invest.
And these opportunities go beyond traditional TV sponsorship and broacast spots, says Nisha Ridout, with growing audiences on streaming services and the popularity of athletes on social media opening the door to omnichannel marketing strategies.
“The digital-first nature of the audience on streaming platforms opens the door for highly targeted CTV and OTT campaigns,” comments Ridout. “Even more exciting are opportunities driven by the athletes themselves. With big followings on social media and the increasing popularity of podcasts, this allows for incredibly effective influencer-led activations. Ultimately, this ecosystem demands holistic strategy, not just a single-channel spend.”
Parlour agrees that while TV remains a major channel for brands investing in women’s sport, multi-platform approaches can unlock further opportunities. “Our research shows fans want sponsorships that align with their values and feel embedded in community,” she says. “That means brands can drive real impact by combining traditional broadcast opportunities with digital-first activations. It’s not about choosing one channel over another, it’s about recognising that women’s sport offers a more flexible, multi-platform sponsorship ecosystem where broadcast, digital, and community can reinforce each other.”
But if more brands are to pursue these omnichannel strategies, measurement also needs to evolve to ensure effective budget allocation across channels, in order to help brands invest with confidence. “The momentum is there,” comments Parlour. “The task now is to close the gap between audience demand and ad spend by giving brands the confidence, measurement tools, and strategic understanding to unlock the full potential of women’s sport sponsorship.”
Staying on target
At the same time, investing ad dollars in women’s sport will help evolve the sports themselves, by growing visibility and contributing to wage parity. Parlour notes that ad spend also funds coverage in sports, as advertiser demand gives broadcasters a stronger case to expand distribution and prime slots. She adds that ad spend “underpins rights fees and sponsorships, which are the financial foundation for athlete pay.”
Sidhu cites the launch of Stagwell’s Sport Beach in 2023 as helping drive that visibility for advertisers, enabling brands to connect with athletes, and increasingly with female athletes. “Despite Cannes being the largest gathering of advertising and creative executives, there was no sports presence,” she says. “Brands want to invest in women’s sports but don’t always know how to connect with the right athletes, while female athletes have huge followings but need the right partnerships to scale. Sport Beach shows that partnering with a female athlete isn’t just about game-day visibility, it’s about reaching engaged communities that trust these athletes as creators and authentic voices.”
And now the rise of dedicated marketplaces is helping brands prioritise women’s sports, rather than bundling media investments or leaving engaged audiences on the sidelines. “The disconnect between ad spend and viewership in women’s sports is a major missed opportunity for advertisers,” says Ridout. “Until we stop treating women’s sports as a bundled add-on and start valuing it as a standalone, worthwhile investment, the gap will continue to grow.”
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