Brands Seeking New Women’s Sports Opportunities Are in Luck

With the rush to take advantage of the multiple marketing benefits offered by women’s sports properties, marketers may find themselves locked out of partnership opportunities with top-tier sports, leagues, teams and events—especially if they are in a competitive category where other brands have staked their claims to exclusivity.

For example, the industries receiving the most media value from WNBA league and team partnerships last season were apparel, healthcare, telecommunications, financial services, beer, sports beverages, tech and insurance, according to sponsorship analytics firm Relo Metrics. Brands in those verticals that don’t already have deals with the W, the NWSL and other leading rights holders are on the outside looking in.

Sponsors who can’t gain entry to the top level of rights holders for competitive or budgetary reasons often turn to emerging sports where the barriers to entry are considerably lower if they even exist at all.

So what sports will those marketers be eyeing in 2025? A recent NCAA announcement points to a handful that are about to level up in the world of college athletics.

Three sports in the NCAA Emerging Sports for Women program—acrobatics and tumbling, triathlon and stunt are “trending toward NCAA championship consideration,” and women’s wrestling “is in the final stages of becoming the NCAA’s 91st championship,” according to the governing body. All three NCAA divisions will vote on women’s wrestling’s championship status in January.

Once in the emerging sport program, a sport must have more than 40 schools sponsor it at the varsity level and meet minimum contest and participant requirements to receive a recommendation from the Committee on Women’s Athletics to become an NCAA championship sport.

Acrobatics and tumbling, along with stunt, are especially interesting, having grown out of the widespread interest in cheerleading and a federal appeals court ruling that cheer is a recreational activity not a sport, as a recent Sportico article explained.

In the wake of the 2012 ruling, a small number of universities established acrobatics and tumbling (A&T) as a discipline that combines elements of gymnastics and cheer. Varsity Brands, the controversial company that has dominated nearly all aspects of cheerleading for decades established its own version called Stunt. “Both sports have steadily grown their members over the last decade-and-a-half,” according to Sportico.

But thus far, those two sports have not attracted the fan interest that cheerleading does. Thanks in part to programs such as Netflix’s Cheer docuseries, cheerleading has a rabid following, primarily demonstrated on social media, including the large number of followers amassed by cheerleading’s stars.

It’s possible that the convergence of NCAA championship status, growth in the number of schools offering either A&T or stunt programs, and the marketing support of new corporate partners could propel either or both of the disciplines to achieve the fan interest and engagement level that cheerleading enjoys currently.

While brands keep an eye on those developments, they should also note that women’s flag football has applied to become part of the emerging sports program, which also includes rugby and equestrian, and should be able to join in February.

Clearly, marketers with an interest in women’s sports have plenty of options to consider beyond the stalwarts of basketball and soccer.