With the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup underway, caytoo looks at the landscape of women’s sponsorship and suggests 15 key brands to approach if you’re a women’s rights holder.

There’s little doubt that women’s sport is receiving more exposure and goodwill than ever before – be it media coverage, viewing figures and attendances.

The 2020 women’s T20 Cricket World Cup registered a record 1.1 billion digital views for the tournament – 20x more than the 2018 edition. It was also the ICC’s second most watched competition ever behind 2019’s men’s World Cup.

The 2022 Women’s EUROs was watched by over 365 million people globally – 2x the 2017 edition and over 3x more than in 2013. In turn, the current Women’s World Cup has already exceeded targets and broken new records with more than 1.5 million tickets sold and the tournament’s total attendances so far being 54% up on the 2019 edition.

In the lead up, for the first time, FIFA published the finances for the Women’s World Cup separate to the men’s, revealing the tournament is predicted to net $308 million in sponsorship.

Indeed, the football figures illustrate the importance of the game among women’s sport. caytoo analysed nearly 1,400 sponsorship deals in the first seven months of 2023 to compare how women-only (W-O) deals compare to the rest – nearly 75% of W-O deals were in football.

However, despite all this exposure and goodwill towards women’s sport, many believe it has yet to translate into a corresponding level of sustained sponsorship investment, outside some signature examples. One editorial put this down to four key misconceptions about women’s sport (which it addresses): lack of audiences, the audiences are only women, lack of a business case and it’s not worth the money.

Indeed, the lack of audiences is reflected in the fact that ‘Brand Awareness’ is over 3x less likely to be cited as a reason for undertaking a W-O deal – the greatest difference in share between W-O deals (10%) and the rest (32%).

In contrast, Social Impact is over 3x more likely to be cited in a W-O deal than in a non-women-only deal.

A PwC study said 71% of experts expect women’s sports revenues to grow by more than 15% in the next 3 to 5 years. This could be high or low depending on your point of view as to where things stand in terms of the overall growth in the popularity of women’s sport. For instance, of the near 1,400 sponsorship deals caytoo recorded in the first seven months of 2023, just 8.6% were W-O deals (although an additional percentage of deals did cover both women’s and men’s teams).

When it comes to which companies are doing W-O sponsorship deals, Financial Services is the most prevalent sector (accounting for 17.5% of W-O deals) while Information Technology and Professional Services are the most likely to choose W-O deals vs. non-women-only deals.

For more detail on these trends, caytoo’s latest report covers the women’s sponsorship landscape including:

• An overview of the landscape
• Most prevalent sectors undertaking women-only deals in 2023
• The rationale for choosing these deals
• The type of rights involved
• The rights holder sectors chosen
• How the above compares to non-women-only deals
• Example sponsorships
• 15 brands to approach about women’s sponsorship
• Decision-maker contact details