Rising Tide 🦈 May 29, 2025

🤿 Below the Surface

On deck this week:

• Signal Strength: How three brands created exceptional ROI in women’s sports partnerships

• In the Current: MassMutual champions athlete versatility across sports

• Blue Zone: "Courtside with Laura Correnti" featuring leaders from Google, LOVB, and Horizon Sports & Experiences

• Wave Watch: Which metrics matter most in women's sports investments?

⚡️ Signal Strength  

Three Brands Defining the Women's Sports ROI Playbook

The infrastructure gap in women's sports presents a significant competitive advantage for forward-thinking brands. At our third annual Business of Women's Sports Summit, leaders from Chase, MassMutual, and Monarch Collective shared how strategic partnerships in women's sports deliver unprecedented ROI and category exclusivity.

Chase + Golden State Valkyries: A Symbiotic Expansion 

The story: When the Golden State Valkyries launched at the Chase Center, they took a unique and strategic approach to align with the WNBA’s 13th franchise—sitting down with team leadership to understand the vision, audience, and long-term goals before committing to a partnership that would span years, not just seasons.

Strategy highlights:  

• Despite sharing an arena, the Warriors and Valkyries fan bases are different, with only 5% crossover—providing an opportunity for partners like Chase to reach a wider, more diverse audience.

• Chase and the Valkyries created an exclusive “founding member jacket” for season ticket holders, who used a Chase card to purchase their ticket packages. As a result, about 70% of founding members are now Chase customers, setting up a path for sustained messaging, engagement, and loyalty. 

• When it came to brand awareness, Chase wanted to go “an inch wide and a mile deep” to build genuine, emotional, engaged connections with fans. For example, they partnered with small businesses to create a scavenger hunt that revealed the new jerseys to fans.

MassMutual's "Stay Ready" Campaign: A Multi-Platform Campaign

The story: MassMutual’s “Stay Ready” campaign is the company’s first big push into women’s sports. The campaign features athletes whose sports careers span different stages and strategies—drawing parallels between sports preparation and financial readiness at every stage of life. 

Strategy highlights: 

• The campaign features athletes at different stages of their sports careers—Flau’jae Johnson, Christen Press, and Madison Keys—highlighting the importance of having the right team and staying prepared during each phase of your journey. 

• Seeking to communicate their message that “the right team can help you get ready and stay ready,” the campaign's media strategy broke through gender barriers, by advertising across men’s and women’s sports. The campaign reached audiences from ESPN’s SportsCenter, to streaming services, and sports podcasts—proving this isn't just a "women's sports campaign" but a comprehensive brand initiative.

• MassMutual took on a multi-platform approach, including video, podcast, print, and social elements—including three versions of NYT cover wraps, each uniquely featuring Johnson, Press, and Keys to create a bold visual statement— that all fed into a campaign greater than the sum of its parts.

Investor Perspectives: Different Paths to ROI

The story: Leading women’s sports investors—Jasmine Robinson (Monarch Collective), Assia Grazioli-Venier (Muse Capital)—are taking distinctly different approaches to identifying and scaling opportunities in women’s sports, while Fran Weld (Canopy Team) looks at the importance of purpose-built venues. 

Strategy highlights: 

• At Monarch Collective, Robinson focuses on identifying mature women's sports properties with existing media rights revenue and partnership dollars, then applying operational excellence to elevate performance. Look no further than Angel City FC, now the highest valued NWSL team at $250 million, for a winning example of their process. 

• Through her work at Muse Capital, Grazioli-Venier emphasizes early-stage opportunities, infrastructure building, and investing in the ecosystem around women’s sports, using a “team, TAM, and timing” investing framework. This past April, the firm invested in the Women’s Pro Baseball League (WPBL), becoming an advisory partner. 

• Weld helped build Canopy Team to emphasize the importance of venue design as a revenue driver—creating flexible spaces that accommodate multi-generational audiences and drive long-term fan value using the Kansas City Current’s first-ever purpose built stadium for women as a guiding example. 

THE BOTTOM LINE

While these smart future-forward brands are going to make a lot of money, success requires sustained investment and a willingness to embrace some risk in this rapidly growing market. The brands that understand this aren't just participating. They're writing the playbook for the next decade of sports marketing.

📰 In the Current  

We monitor the current so you can ride the wave.  Here's what you need to know this week:

• Alexis Ohanian becomes minority owner of Chelsea FC Women, with an investment valued at more than $26 million (10% stake). 

• The New York Liberty hit a valuation of $450 million as owners sell stake in "mid-teens" percentage, marking the highest-ever valuation for a women's sports franchise—30+ times what Joe and Clara Wu Tsai paid for the team in 2019.

• MassMutual champions athlete versatility: The insurance giant’s "Stay Ready" campaign features athletes at different career stages—from LSU star Flau'jae Johnson to veteran Christen Press to Grand Slam champion Madison Keys—creating a strategic parallel between sports preparation and financial planning that's airing across major sports networks and streaming platforms. The initiative addresses research showing 40% of women feel unprepared with financial planning.

🦈 Blue Zone  

Have you checked out Courtside with Laura Correnti yet? Latest episodes of this business of women’s sports focused pod on iHeartWomensSports include…

• David Levy, Co-CEO/Founder of Horizon Sports & Experiences, talks about why sports still command top dollar in a fragmented media landscape and the innovative sponsorship strategies he’s seen succeed.  

• Katlyn Gao, Bain alum and founder of LOVB (League One Volleyball), a club-to-pro volleyball community, shares how her personal mission became a national movement. 

• Kate Johnson, Global Marketer at Google and Olympic Silver Medalist, discusses Google’s strategic approach to infrastructure building in women’s sports—and how her background as an Olympic rower informs her executive perspective.

Listen in here.

👋 Wave Watch