Leading agency focusing on women
Announces initiative for female athletes
Trying to take advantage of the ascendance of women athletes and the popularity of the most recent Women’s World Cup champions, one of the country’s leading sports agencies is forming a new division to work with companies to market to women through sports.
Sports and talent agency Wasserman, which represents more than half the members of the U. S. women’s national team, including Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan, announced that it is creating The Collective, a unit whose goal is to connect major companies, consumers and fans of every gender with some of the country’s best known female athletes.
“We believe there is a significant opportunity for the athletes to attract meaningfully more marketing engagement and awareness and dollars,” said Casey Wasserman, the company’s founder, in an interview last week.
Hundreds of thousands of fans turned out to celebrate the women’s soccer team Wednesday in New York, where team members and fans chanted “equal pay” together, highlighting how closely this team has connected itself to the business of its sport.
Rapinoe said she understands the opportunities that now are available to her and her teammates.
“I am fortunate to play soccer in a time where the women who came before me made such an impact on the sport,” Rapinoe wrote in an email earlier this week, shortly after leading the U. S. women to a second consecutive world championship. Because of these women, Rapinoe said, she has “seen more acceptance, more acknowledgment and support which has certainly led to more opportunity.”
Characteristic of someone who is never afraid to speak her mind, Rapinoe doesn’t believe those increased opportunities are enough. “We are still not nearly where we need to be,” she wrote.
Wasserman is hoping The Collective can help remedy that.
Wasserman also advises companies that want to market in sports and entertainment, whether with Wasserman represented athletes or others. Elizabeth Lindsey, Wasserman’s president of brands and properties, said she has seen an evolution in how companies advertise to women through sports.
“In the early days of my career in sports marketing, it never occurred to brands to talk to women,” she said. Even when companies would market to women through sports, it would be to the mom who makes Super Bowl snacks or the wife who is dragged to the game. Women were typecast as supporting players to sports fandom and not as sports fans in their own right.
But Lindsey believes that is changing because of the power of women consumers. “They control the purse strings, they are passionate and prevalent as fans, and the most important part is what is happening recently, which is they have a voice and are radically unafraid to use it,” she said.
Rapinoe is one of a growing number of female American athletes who have become stars and in many cases outshine their male counterparts. Morgan and Rapinoe are better known than most of the men’s national soccer team, and American women regularly win more Olympic medals than American men. In sports such as tennis, running and gymnastics, the most famous American athletes are women.
In addition to running his company, Casey Wasserman is the chairman of LA 2028, the local organizing committee for the 2028 Olympics. He said there was no conflict of interest between representing and selling LA 2028, and representing potential Olympic athletes and securing sponsorships for them through efforts like The Collective.
“Obviously they are completely separate entities and lines we draw very clearly,” he said. “I’m a volunteer for LA 2028; I don’t get paid,” he said, adding, “LA 2028 in its bylaws will never hire Wasserman for any business, period.”
Structurally, The Collective will have a small staff dedicated to its day- to- day operations, with various Wasserman executives and agents working on The Collective projects. Athletes will still be represented by their agents, but they also will be supported by The Collective. The task is a nuanced one.
It is not as simple as telling potential sponsors that girls and women follow women’s sports, and therefore companies should use women athletes to reach them. During the most recent Women’s World Cup, countless boys and men rooted for the American women just as strenuously as their sisters, wives and daughters.
Men and women “care equally about sports, they just consume it in different ways for different reasons,” Lindsey said. To figure out what those reasons are, she said, just ask them. “The best way to talk to women, is to talk to women.”
Lindsey said competition within this segment of the market could grow quickly, something she welcomes. “I hope more people pay attention to this,” she said. “I hope people realize what a valuable demographic this audience is.”