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There’s a new player in town.
Giant Spoon partner Laura Correnti is set to shake up the women’s sports world by launching Deep Blue Sports + Entertainment, a new firm that wants to become the agency of record in women’s sports.
The firm will provide agency services that include platform development and brand strategy, media investment, brand partnership, ad campaign and content development, media content and strategy development, experiential marketing and analytics and measurement framework—and that’s just the start.
Correnti—a 2023 Adweek Champion of Change—will serve as CEO of Deep Blue while continuing as a partner at Giant Spoon. The agency will also be an investor in the company, which gives Deep Blue the ability to head to market quickly and utilize the agency’s resources to execute.
“The Giant Spoon investment allows us, from an infrastructure resource standpoint, to get up quickly but then also have the executional prowess across those four disciplines between strategy, media, creative, experiential, many of which we have industry recognition for,” Correnti told Adweek.
For Trevor Guthrie, co-founder of Giant Spoon, the partnership with Deep Blue is set to help Giant Spoon clients expand how consumers experience their brands in sports.
“Laura is a captain no matter the field, court or boardroom,” Guthrie said. “Deep Blue blends Laura’s knowledge of the game with her deep understanding of business, people and creativity.”
In a record year for women’s sports, which saw the biggest broadcast deal ever for a women’s sports league, 9.9 million average viewers for the NCAA women’s final, and an all-time women’s sports attendance record with 92,003 people turning up for a Nebraska volleyball match, Correnti knew the time for the new agency was now.
The business of women’s sports
Of course, the firm didn’t form overnight.
After the U.S. Women’s National Team won the World Cup in 2019, with the entire crowd chanting “equal pay,” Correnti, a former Division I soccer player, headed to the domestic National Women’s Soccer League website to find the league had only four partners at the time.
“Ultimately the impact and the return that the mass public was expecting had challenges because the commercial side wasn’t there,” said Correnti. “[I] went on a few years’ journey of starting to immerse myself, studying the space, talking to many brand leaders, CMOs who played collegiate athletics, and talking about if we’re moving even a small amount of media investment, the implications of what that would have.”
In the time since then, Correnti attended conferences in the space, learning that the focus was on challenges of the past rather than opportunities for the future, and even partnered with Alexis Ohanian, founder of Reddit and lead investor of NWSL team Angel City FC, and NBCUniversal for the first Business of Women’s Sports Summit, which took place in April.
Following the success of the summit, Correnti knew it was “go time,” especially heading into an Olympic year.
And that’s where Deep Blue comes in.
Shaking up the media industry
The firm’s name is inspired by the largest shark ever recorded—a Great White named Deep Blue.
“The thesis of it is that sharks are always swimming, never standing still,” Correnti said. “When you look at an emerging marketplace like this, if you’re not moving, you’re not competing. Be the shark.”
As a shark in the women’s media landscape, Deep Blue isn’t looking to just go with the flow. While Giant Spoon’s tagline says it wants to “stir shit up,” Deep Blue wants to change the entire business of women’s sports, down to the nitty-gritty of measurement and media buying.
For instance, one major issue still ongoing is bundling, with Correnti noting, “You have to buy the worst of men’s sports to get the best of women’s.”
“Many of the buyers in the media marketplace that are representing brands investing in this space are incentivized to buy on reach and efficiency, and you go to the marketplace and you have a dollar to spend on Sunday Night Football or the NWSL semifinals, you’re going to put that dollar on SNF every time,” Correnti said. “So now we have a currency challenge, and we have a metrics challenge.”
According to Correnti, Deep Blue will be heavily media-forward, focusing on how, where and why dollars are being invested in sports.
“What is the unique strategy?” said Correnti. “The currency has to change; the media models have to change; the filters for how we’re approaching this has to evolve because we are missing a massive emerging growth market opportunity as brand marketers [and] advertisers by continuing to lump this in with our overall sports strategy. It’s time that it warrants its own independent approach.”
That includes changing the way media buys work in sports. According to Correnti, currency and reach in their current state are broken and need to evolve.
“We need to look at things like fan engagement,” Correnti said. “If the media companies aren’t leading with that data, and we keep defaulting to the standard currencies, this is never going to change.”
Deep Blue will announce its leadership team and founding clients on the other side of the holiday season, and its work will be visible as early as the first quarter. The firm plans to have a presence at the Super Bowl, the women’s Final Four in Cleveland, the NWSL kickoff, WNBA tip-off, the Paris Olympics and Cannes Lions. Also look for the return of the Business of Women’s Sports Summit, tentatively set for April 2024.
“We’re going aggressively at the space because the space warrants it,” Correnti said. “Deep Blue isn’t getting into this solely because we’re passionate about women’s sports. This is a massive emerging business opportunity, and we’re only just scratching the surface.”
An international affair
Including athlete voices is a priority for Deep Blue, which is launching an Athlete Advisory Council to support the firm’s clients. Founding members include Rennae Stubbs, an ESPN commentator and former professional tennis player; Shasta Averyhardt, a professional golfer and media influencer; Melanie Jones OAM, a former Australian Cricket player and international cricket commentator; and Melissa Ortiz, an Olympian and former professional soccer player turned broadcaster, influencer and entrepreneur—with more names to be announced.
“I had multiple conversations with some of the top athletes—retired, active, collegiate, etc.—to really uncover what are advertisers missing?” said Correnti. “What would it look like if you could actually bring athletes to the table?”
The firm is also building an international affiliate network to support brand marketers investing in women’s sports globally, with Game On as the first affiliate partner, led by Jones and Emma Staples, based in Australia.
“Teaming up with Deep Blue excites us to no end and provides an elite cohort of women across sport and business that has a razor-sharp focus on what women’s sport specifically needs, as well as the capabilities of challenging the current system and decision makers,” said Jones and Staples on the launch of the partnership.
Correnti hopes to have onboarded an additional two to three continents by the end of 2024 and plans to be worldwide by the end of 2025, heading into the next World Cup and Olympic cycle, with a full plan through the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
Deep Blue is intentionally described as a firm versus an agency, despite launching with agency services at its core. While its first vertical and current priority is women’s sports, it will be moving into production, and Correnti sees a future that includes commerce, M&A and venture.
