Diageo, Angel City FC and Gotham City FC - Building Brand Partnerships in Women's Soccer
On the latest Footballco Business Podcast, we took listeners back to Cannes in June this year and Stagwell 's Sport Beach event, specifically their panel focused on building brand partnerships in women's football - very timely as currently, all eyes are on the FIFA Women's World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.
The panel featured former U.S Women’s National Team and NJ/NY Gotham FC goalkeeper and current Global Creative advisor for Gotham FC, Ashlyn Harris; actor and Angel City Football Club investor, Sophia Bush and SVP of North America Whiskey Portfolio and Global Baileys at Diageo , Sophie Kelly .
Three highlights from the show are below, but if you want to download and listen to the full show, you can search for the Footballco Business Podcast or click here.
The panel is also available on YouTube.
Walking the walk
At Footballco we're always advising brands that when it comes to women's sports, you have to be a supporter, not just a spectator. This sentiment was echoed by Kelly when discussing her reasoning for getting involved with Angel City FC.
Diageo's involvement with Angel City FC followed on from an existing relationship between Kelly and Angel City investor and actor, Sophia Bush which was centred around Johnnie Walker's First Strides Initiative. This led to what Kelly calls a partnership and not a transaction, saying...
It's not about money for eyeballs. It is a community and we are getting involved in it. We're getting involved with the ownership, we're getting involved with the investors, we're getting involved with the players and we're supporting and developing stuff that helps move the player forward and the ritual of soccer forward and the players who are participating in it.
Kelly continues...
As brands, we got to be doing this. At the centre of every brand or company's ESG agenda is inclusivity and diversity. If we're not walking the talk by putting our marketing money behind programmes, platforms, whether they be teams, whether they be media channels that are promoting these audiences and getting more equity into viewership investment, and what players are getting paid. We're not doing our job.
Creating value for communities
A theme running through the panel is doing things differently and investing in the communities around women's sport, rather than slapping logos on shirts and ad space. Instead, it's about investing in communities and a value exchange that represents a different kind of commitment and relationship with the brands. As Kelly highlights, given the modern consumer base of Johnnie Walker, this makes perfect sense, but it also has be done in an authentic way. She says...
If you look at the consumer base of Johnnie Walker today, versus ten years ago, it is a different consumer base. It is more diverse, it is more varied, it is different ages. We have taken the brand to new communities, but we've taken it to them not in a superficial way but in a way where we are really walking the talk and we are doing things for the community. And then you're creating a different kind of engagement.
Players want change
The aversion to logos slaps was echoed by Harris who highlighted that what's needed is for brands to create transformative work that players want to be a part of. She says...
We have to move past this transactional deal where Johnnie Walker just slaps a logo on the front of the jersey and start moving in into this transformative stage where we're really doing incredible work that the players want to be a part of first, because brands not only want access to Angel Citys and Gotham FCs, they want access to the players. You have to have the players believe in what you're doing.
If you enjoyed this show, you can find out more about brand partnerships in women's football on previous episodes of the Footballco Business Podcast, including: