Ally chooses women’s sports over traditional cable sports and sees a boost

Financial services firm Ally has been working to find new places in sports that might never have been seen on TV in years past.

Ally is a major sponsor of the unparalleled three-on-three women’s basketball league and plans to invest advertising dollars into “Women’s Sports Sundays,” a new ESPN showcase that will replace the long-running “Sunday Night Baseball” this summer. If Andrea Brimmer, the company’s head of marketing and public relations, has her druthers, Ally will increasingly be able to place ads next to Professional Women’s Hockey League Games in more prominent TV slots.

Four years ago this was not the case. In 2022, Ally executives found that 94% of women in top positions had played sports at some point in their lives, but women’s sports received less than 5% of total media coverage. “We did the quick math and said, ‘How much are we spending on women’s sports?’” Brimmer recalls. “And at the time, we were spending 90% of our budget on men’s sports and 10% on women’s sports. And we said, ‘Okay, we’re part of the problem. So let’s fix it.’

Ally decided it would take five years to dedicate 50% of its sports spending to women’s sports. It completed this task a year earlier than expected.

Ally’s pursuit of his goal can be closely watched. More and more advertisers – even those who haven’t tried to reach a sports-oriented audience in the past – are finding that they can’t make efficient advertising investments without getting their message in front of large groups watching the same program at the same time. As more and more consumers watch dramas and other series at times of their choosing, for much of Madison Avenue, sports – with dramatic storylines that end at the moment a match or match ends – are the only thing that is certain in the media.

That’s a factor pushing the NWSL, WNBA and a host of emerging leagues associated with women’s hockey, volleyball and other sports to gain new attention. WPP Media, which represents Ally, found that total viewer impressions for women’s sports increased 79% in 2025 compared to 2024, while ad spend for women’s sports increased 69%. Ally’s ads in women’s sports generated 85% higher engagement compared to ads seen on non-sports programming on television and cable, WPP Media found.

To find more money for women’s sports, Ally opted to overhaul its ad spend on traditional non-sports cable. “We’ve gone to zero on our cable investments” that aren’t tied to sports, Brimmer says. “We have stopped using certain media that we simply don’t use anymore,” she says, while spending in men’s sports remains stable.

The company couldn’t just flip a switch and revise the sport allocation. When Ally first revealed its goal, other advertisers had the top ad positions in WNBA games and Unrivaled had yet to launch. But Ally over time was able to strike new advertising deals with Disney, CBS and Scripps, which in some cases called for moving the women’s championship games to primetime or for networks to pick up the rights to women’s sports they had not connected to in the past. Ally also kept its eyes peeled for overview shows and video podcasts around women’s sports that it could sponsor.

Such programming could gain more support over time, says Brimmer, who calls Sue Bird and Billie Jean King’s new efforts highly entertaining. “I think fans have a different relationship with female athletes than they do with male athletes. And they have a keen interest in learning as much as they can about them. And these emerging platforms have started to exist, they are able to provide that,” she says. “I would like to see this continue to grow.”

Ally will continue to monitor women’s sports, Brimmer said, citing the need “to make sure we don’t fall below 50/50.” Yet other sports plans are in the making.

“The average fan needs about $1,600 a year to attend the sporting events they want,” she notes, “and there isn’t a lot of disposable income for that.” Going forward, Ally will look to give fans access to games in a variety of ways. Perhaps an Ally-sponsored viewing party or an event at an Ally facility could give consumers “the opportunity to be in the moment while not necessarily being in the stadium,” she says. “Let’s make sure the fan isn’t left behind.”