For years, brands’ default narrative for women’s soccer marketing was great stories, inspiring athletes, but commercially unproven. Sponsors stayed conservative, sticking with the NFL, NBA, MLB and men’s soccer, where the math was predictable. Women’s soccer was often seen as a nice-to-have, not a must-have.
Now, the data says otherwise.
Earlier this summer, Parity, a sports marketing and sponsorship platform focused on professional women athletes across 85 sports, ran a survey on women’s sports fandom in the United States. It sampled 2,400 sports fans across multiple disciplines, finding that 63 percent of respondents said they watch women’s soccer.
One in four said they watch only women’s soccer, with 49 percent saying they watch NWSL and 32 percent saying they follow Gainbridge Super League, the other Division I professional league in the U.S.
That’s a staggering statistic for both leagues; the NWSL is barely a decade old, and the Super League is only just beginning its second season. But fans are not just watching, they’re investing.
The survey found that more than one in four fans of women’s soccer have made a purchase because of a brand’s sponsorship, making them 58 percent more likely to do so compared to fans of other women’s sports.
Translation: Women’s soccer fans see sponsorships less as sales pitches and more as solidarity. For brands, that is the holy grail.
“We looked at fans in basketball, soccer, volleyball, softball, etc, and we couldn’t believe what we saw for soccer,” Leela Srinivasan, the CEO of Parity, told The Athletic. Since she took the reins in May 2023, Parity has amassed a network of over 1100 women athletes and paid out over $2 million in sponsorships. “It just stood out head and shoulders above other fandoms or other sports,” Srinivasan said.
The culture of soccer is part of the equation.
“The passion runs deep in soccer, wherever it’s happening in the world,” explained Srinivasan, who grew up as a season ticket holder for Dundee in the Scottish Premiership. “I think it runs deeper, arguably, in women’s soccer here in the U.S. than in men’s soccer, in part, because the U.S. national team has been such a force for so many years.”
That passion has been translated into a commercial engine for a while. The U.S. women’s team attracted a roster of blue-chip sponsors under the U.S. Soccer umbrella: Volkswagen, Allstate, Jim Beam, AT&T, Marriott Bonvoy, Anheuser-Busch, New York Life, Bank of America and The Home Depot are listed as official partners.
Alex Morgan’s 23 sponsorship deals in 2021 defined endorsement dominance. (Rick Kern / Getty Images)
“In the U.S., it almost feels like soccer is a women’s sport — we don’t face the same uphill battle that women’s basketball players or soccer players in Europe or South America do,” Angel City defender Ali Riley said. “Yes, MLS is growing and there’s huge anticipation for the men’s World Cup, but the success of our women’s national team has made women’s soccer here impossible to ignore.
“Those players, from the ’99ers onward, fought for respect and built the foundation we stand on. They didn’t get today’s engagement, loyalty or brand support, but they paved the way — many now owning clubs, launching businesses and creating opportunities for the next generation.”
Parity also found that women’s soccer fans tend to pay attention to athlete endorsements and are 34 percent more likely than other women’s sports fans to trust athletes “a lot,” according to Parity. Athlete product collabs are the primary way they want to see brands activate, with nearly half saying they would be likely to engage with brands that do so.
“People want to see brands investing more in women’s sports, and the fans are most excited about when brands partner directly with athletes, whether it’s collaborating with products or just building that athlete relationship,” Srinivasan said. “Because that unlocks all kinds of storytelling for the brands and helps the fans get closer to the athlete that they still admire.”
Today’s players are more than athletes; they’re entrepreneurs, activists and culturally relevant voices who no longer wait for a brand to give them a voice or script their image. They are building narratives on social media, and that authenticity is priceless for brands.
With 11 active brand deals, Riley leads all NWSL players in endorsements, according to Sponsor United’s report. That is notable not just because she’s surpassed her peers, but because she has done it as a non-U.S. women’s national team player, a big contrast to the Alex Morgan era, when Morgan’s 23-deal peak in 2021 defined endorsement dominance. Chasing Riley are Mallory Swanson (10), Sophia Smith (9) and Alyssa Thompson (8), a new generation of stars just steps behind.
Angel City defender Ali Riley is the most sponsored player in NWSL. (Kiyoshi Mio / Imagn Images)
“With the partnerships I’ve been fortunate to have and the team supporting me, both clubs and players are getting unprecedented exposure,” Riley said. She never felt she could compete with U.S. national team stars like Morgan, but she is doing it. “Back then, it felt like there was just one sponsorship to go around — Nike, maybe one or two others — and only a handful of athletes got that support.
“That’s finally changing. The data on fan engagement and loyalty is undeniable, and brands are realizing it’s smart business to back us. The pie itself has grown, and now the share we’re competing for is much bigger. On top of that, I’ve got someone advocating for me, pitching my value directly to brands — and that makes all the difference.”
In the 48 hours after the Parity report dropped, the biggest reaction came not from sponsors, but from soccer clubs, according to Srinivasan. They finally had hard data to show brands what they had known all along: Women’s soccer delivers.
On the league side, the numbers are even more impressive. Sponsors United, a global sports and entertainment intelligence platform that provides data and insights for marketing partnerships, shared its first NWSL report this year. It shows teams pulled in $75 million in sponsorship revenue last year, with 441 deals across 401 brands in 167 different categories. That is a 16 percent jump in category breadth since 2022. The average team is banking about $5.4 million in sponsorship revenue, with roughly $170,000 per deal.
On a per-game basis, NWSL teams are generating more sponsorship revenue than WNBA teams, despite playing fewer games. Still, the money is clustered at the top, with the top three clubs accounting for 46 percent of the league’s sponsorship haul. Angel City FC, which launched in 2022, has the highest sponsorship revenue, followed by Kansas City Current and San Diego Wave.
Gainbridge, the USL Super League’s naming sponsor, sees the potential growth as a big upside.
“What I’ve seen traditionally through women’s sports is a lot of brands take a wait-and-see attitude. Sometimes, if you take that wait-and-see attitude, the time never comes. If nobody gets involved, then it doesn’t succeed,” Mike Nichols, chief of sponsorship strategy and activation at Group 1001 (parent company to Gainbridge), said.
Gainbridge became the title sponsor of the USL Super League this season and sponsors several prominent women’s sports entities, including the Billie Jean King Cup by Gainbridge and the ANNIKA driven by Gainbridge LPGA event. The company allocates over 40 percent of its sponsorship dollars to women’s sports and features a roster of brand ambassadors such as Caitlin Clark, Billie Jean King and former USWNT goalkeeper Briana Scurry.
“We’re in the financial services space, which is very crowded in the sports ecosystem,” Nichols said. “So to be in a situation where there was a lot of white space, and as a financial services brand, we could come in and chart our own direction, as opposed to trying to fit in with what’s available, is an incredible opportunity that really doesn’t, frankly, ever present itself, especially if you sort of take a wait-and-see attitude.
“The USL has an academy that has over 10,000 kids, boys and girls in it, and those parents are people that we want to ultimately have as our customers. With those sorts of opportunities, we’re just scratching the surface with the league just kicking off.”
While North America is known for its big four men’s leagues, both Parity and SU’s reports underline the steady growth of soccer fandom, and it is not just the game that’s becoming more popular. Parity’s data shows advertising in soccer pays like no other sport, something brands should consider in the lead-up to the upcoming FIFA World Cups and the NWSL and Super League’s combined year-round domestic calendar.
Fans know when game day is. They plan around it. They make it a ritual. Rituals build loyalty, and loyalty builds commerce.
“Soccer fans in this country have always believed in us, even when games weren’t televised and merchandise didn’t exist,” Riley said. “Now, with brands finally doing the smart thing and backing us, fans are all in. Their appetite has been building for decades, and the response shows just how strong that loyalty really is.”
There is also another shift worth noting: visibility.
The NWSL’s $240 million media rights deal over four years with CBS, ESPN, Amazon’s Prime Video and Scripps Sports represents a forty-fold jump from the NWSL’s previous, $1.5 million annual tie-up with CBS and changed the calculus overnight. For the first time, the deal put 11 games of the season on prime-time cable television, making the sport more attractive to sponsors. In sponsorship math, reach still matters. A player who appears on national TV multiple times a season instantly becomes a safer bet for brand dollars.
“It certainly doesn’t hurt. If you talk to a head of sponsorship at the brand today and ask them how they measure success, a lot of brands are still going, if not solely, then at least largely, based on number of eyeballs,” Srinivasan explained.
While Parity and Sponsor United’s reports are based on the U.S., soccer is the world’s game.
This summer’s UEFA European Women’s Championship broke viewership records among U.S. audiences, and clubs like Barcelona Femení and Arsenal FC Women are drawing record crowds into their stadiums. Ownership groups with multi-club portfolios, like Michele Kang’s Kynisca, are increasingly investing in the women’s side, knowing that cross-pollination between markets (U.S., Europe, Mexico) is inevitable.
Europe’s women’s soccer commercial infrastructure might be behind the U.S., but the momentum is there. As more leagues secure broadcast deals and sponsors step in, the growth curve looks remarkably familiar to what we have seen stateside. In other words, global brands should already be plotting their women’s soccer strategy.
“As one of our other brand ambassadors, Billie Jean King, likes to say, ‘This isn’t charity,’” Nichols said. “When she founded the Women’s Sports Foundation 50 years ago with the idea that this day would come where women’s sports would be looked at as a viable business opportunity, not just a charitable thing to do, as opposed to, hey, it’s good for business. And that moment finally came.”
(Top photo: Spire Motorsports / Gainbridge)
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