Financial services company Ally has been working for years to carve out a new home in sports, a field that has never been shown on TV.
Ally is a major sponsor of the 3-on-3 women’s basketball league “Unrivaled,” and will invest advertising dollars this summer in “Women’s Sports Sundays,” a new show on ESPN that replaces the long-running “Sunday Night Baseball.” If Andrea Brimmer, the company’s chief marketing and public relations officer, hires her mentor, Ally will be able to advertise alongside Women’s Professional Hockey League games in more prominent TV slots.
That wasn’t the case just four years ago. In 2022, Ally executives learned that although 94% of women in executive roles played sports at some point in their lives, less than 5% of women’s sports received media coverage. “We went back to our napkin calculations and said, ‘How much do we spend on women’s sports?’” Brimmer recalls. “And at the time, we were spending 90 percent of our budget on men’s sports and 10 percent on women’s sports. So we said, ‘Okay, we’re part of the problem. So let’s solve it.’
Ally has decided that it will take five years to allocate 50% of sports spending to women’s sports. The mission was accomplished a year earlier than expected.
Attention may be focused on allies’ commitment to their goals. More and more advertisers, even those not previously trying to appeal to sports-specific audiences, are realizing that they can’t effectively invest in advertising unless they get their message in front of large groups of people watching the same shows at the same time. As more consumers tune in to scripted dramas and other series on their own time, sports with dramatic storylines that end the moment a game or game ends have become, for Madison Avenue, the only thing that remains firmly in the media.
This is one of the reasons why the NWSL, WNBA, and the many emerging leagues associated with women’s hockey, volleyball, and other games are gaining new attention. WPP Media, which represents Ally, found that overall viewer impressions for women’s sports increased by 79% in 2025 compared to 2024, and ad spending on women’s sports increased by 69%. According to WPP Media, Arai’s ads in women’s sports generated 85% higher engagement than commercials shown on non-sports programs on broadcast and cable.
In order to generate more funding for women’s sports, Ally has chosen to overhaul its traditional non-sports cable ad spending. “All investments in cable that are not related to sports have gone to zero,” Brimmer said. “We’re pulling back from certain media that we no longer use,” she said, adding that spending on men’s sports has remained stable.
When Ally first announced its goals, the company couldn’t just flip a switch and rethink its sports allocation. When Ally first announced its goals, other advertisers had prime ad placements at WNBA games and Unrivaled had not yet launched. But over time, Allie was able to reach new advertising deals with Disney, CBS and Scripps, in some cases deals that required the women’s championship games to be moved to prime time and the networks to acquire rights to women’s sports that they had not previously partnered with. Allie was also on the lookout for recap shows and video podcasts built around women’s sports for potential sponsorship.
Brimmer cites new initiatives from Sue Bird and Billie Jean King as highly entertaining, and says such shows could gain even more traction over time. “I think fans have a different relationship with female athletes than they do with male athletes, and they have a vested interest in knowing as much as they can about them. And these emerging platforms are starting to exist and they can provide that,” she says. “I would like to see it continue to grow.”
“Allie will continue to focus on women’s sports,” Brimmer said, citing the need to “make sure it doesn’t go below 50/50.” Still, other sports plans are in the works.
“The average fan needs about $1,600 a year to attend their desired sporting event, and they don’t have a lot of disposable income to do that,” she points out. In the future, Ally aims to help fans access games in a variety of ways. Perhaps Arai-hosted watch parties or events at Arai facilities could allow consumers to “not necessarily be in the stadium, but be in the moment,” she says. “Let’s make sure no fans are left behind.”
