The Women’s Sports Playbook: Get in the Game

For years, the case for investing in women's sports was built on equity and enthusiasm. The energy was undeniable, and the audiences were real, but the complete measurement story had yet to be told.

Beyond Enthusiasm: The Data Is In

The Women's Sports Playbook, developed by WPP Media in partnership with EDO, Adverteyes, and VideoAmp, delivers the proof brands have been waiting for. Across five verticals and more than 200 creative executions, we found that ads in women's sports consistently outperformed comparable non-sports broadcast and cable placements on engagement, predicted attention, and creative resonance.

The takeaway is clear: the environment is the advantage.

The High-Value Audience You've Been Looking For

The market context makes this opportunity even more compelling. Women's sports impressions grew 79% year over year, and ad spend rose 69%. This audience isn't just bigger; it's distinctly valuable. According to VideoAmp data, the linear women's sports viewer is a hard-to-reach, high-value consumer who remains highly engaged with live sports even among cord-cutters. This is the audience that delivers scale and impact.

“Women's sports are one of the most impactful places to generate meaningful engagement. When strong creative meets smart media investment, we see compounding returns and sustained growth. It's an opportunity marketers can't afford to overlook.” — Andrea Brimmer, Chief Marketing & PR Officer at Ally

How Ally Scores Big on Context

Ally’s ads are example of how ads lead to action. In running consistent creative, Ally’s ads generated 85% higher engagement during women's sports than their broadcast and cable average outside of live sports. A single ad airing during professional women’s basketball delivered 3.4 times the impact of a typical non-live sports TV ad. Because Ally maintained the same ad across environments, these gains isolate the effect of powerful effect of the sports context.

“For us, the takeaway was clear. Women’s sports audiences will respond to brands with loyalty and action. When brands contextually meet the moment, they sustain attention longer and drive stronger action — ensuring brands, leagues, audiences, and athletes win.” — Kate Johnson, Global Director of Sports & Entertainment Marketing Partnerships at Google

Google Pixel's Winning Play on Clarity

Google Pixel’s women's sports placements drove an incredible 192% higher search engagement versus the brand’s non-live sports average, with women’s professional basketball placements delivering a 284% lift. Google’s attention data revealed something equally important: narrative-driven creative achieved roughly three times the attention of more complex executions. The lesson? Clarity outperforms complexity.

A Winning Streak Across Every Category

The pattern held strong across all five verticals in the report.

• A sportswear brand featuring athlete-led storytelling saw up to 4.6x stronger impact in women's sports and delivered 426% higher engagement in women's sports versus non-women's sports programming, using the exact same execution.

• An automotive brand saw ads in women's sports run 75% more effectively than the average non-luxury automotive ad on linear TV. A single women's collegiate basketball airing delivering 1.8x the impact.

• A CPG personal care brand drove 175% more ad impact versus its own brand average, with a single U.S. professional soccer ad generating 3x the impact of a comparable non-live sports placement.

"Performance in women's sports is more promising than ever. We're seeing repeatable lift in both attention and engagement, helping us empower our clients to plan with confidence and optimize with precision." — Cindy Rose, CEO at WPP

The Five Principles for Peak Performance

The study's dual methodology — EDO measuring ad-driven search engagement in the minutes after exposure, Adverteyes using AI-powered gaze tracking and facial coding to score emotional resonance against a database of 200,000+ ads — creates a performance picture that's immediate and predictive. Together, they point to five creative principles that consistently drove lift: authentic athlete-led storytelling, purpose-led narratives, strategic placement in culturally resonant moments, platform-native cross-screen activation, and scene-level creative optimization including early brand cues and reduced visual clutter.

Your Next Move: From 'If' to 'How'

The question for brands is no longer whether to invest in women's sports. The question is how to deploy that investment strategically — which leagues, which creative formats, which audience targets — and how to keep proving and improving performance over time. That's the work WPP Media is built to do alongside our clients.

The opportunity is measurable, optimizable, and growing. Now is the time to get in the game.