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When it comes to NCAA ratings for 2024, it’s a whole new game.
Sunday’s 2024 NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball championship game between Iowa and South Carolina, a 3 p.m. ET tipoff airing on ABC and ESPN, scored an average of 18.9 million viewers, blowing by the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball championship game Monday night, which had 14.8 million (live-plus-same-day) across TBS, TNT and TruTV, according to Nielsen.
This is the first time the women’s championship beat the men’s in ratings, and advertisers who got in early are scoring big.
“This week has been absolutely crazy for me, not because of the men’s tournament, but because of the women’s tournament,” David Solomon, director of sports partnerships at Ampersand, told ADWEEK ahead of the game.
Ampersand is a national sales arm for Comcast, Charter and Cox, and Solomon said advertisers were clamoring to get into the Final Four and the championship after Caitlin Clark and Iowa’s win over LSU drew viewership of 12.3 million in an Elite Eight matchup.
“Everyone’s been scrambling,” Solomon said. “Cultural moments really drive this.”
However, when advertisers are scrambling, they’re often paying a premium. Meanwhile, several marketers have had women’s tournament plans as far back as last year’s TV upfront, and the investment is paying off.
For instance, through a deal at the last upfront, Omnicom Media Group’s Optimum Sports had buys that amounted to 35% of all broadcast inventory across the Women’s Regional Finals from Albany, N.Y., and Portland, Ore., which included the Iowa-LSU game.
The deal supported custom creative for clients such as AT&T, State Farm, Gatorade and The Home Depot.
Although industry spending on the Women’s NCAA tournament was up 50% this year, according to OMG, Optimum Sports’ spending was up 88%.
Another early mover, Aflac has shown up throughout the women’s tournament, shifting its spending from the men’s Final Four to the women’s Final Four in 2023 and teaming up with South Carolina coach Dawn Staley long before the tournament to address Dawn’s List of inequities in women’s sports.
The company also partnered with women’s sports bar The Sports Bra and media and commerce company Togethxr to throw a series of March Madness watch parties.
Yes, the partnerships bring goodwill among women’s sports fans (and massive viewership), but for Aflac chief marketing officer Garth Knutson, it’s also about showing up in the right way.
“We’re not trying to buy our way into a community that is as tightknit as women’s sports,” he recently told ADWEEK’s Jason Notte. “I’d like to say that we’re earning our way into it with our actions.”
‘The moment is now‘
For brands looking to get in on the action, there will be more opportunities than ever in the 2024-2025 upfront.
Among the early highlights, Sports Innovation Lab is focusing a NewFronts session on women’s sports marketing, and GroupM is launching a dedicated women’s sports marketplace, seeking first-look and first-to-market offerings alongside advertisers such as Adidas, Ally, Coinbase, Discover, Google, Mars, Nationwide, Unilever and Universal Pictures.
Ally chief marketing and public relations officer Andrea Brimmer welcomes more brands to the women’s sports marketplace, recently telling ADWEEK that now is the time to step up investment.
“What I hope comes out of it is that more people that have been talking a good game on the brand side about investing in women’s sports actually do it, that we get to a point where we get into sold-out inventory across a lot of these platforms, that you start to see this become a thriving marketplace in a short period of time,” Brimmer said. “The moment is now, and that’s what women’s sports deserves.”
