For instance, Deloitte (where Engelbert formerly served as CEO) overhauled the WNBA’s digital presence, helping the league see a 390% increase in WNBA App downloads over the regular season.
“Deloitte really helped us do our digital transformation, and Nike continues to help us from a marketing perspective and exposure with their big marketing brand,” Engelbert said. “We’re hearing more than ever from brands expressing interest in the W, which I think is key.”
Google, another Changemaker, extended its partnership with the league through 2025, most recently adding Pixel. In just three years as a Changemaker, Google has worked with Disney and ESPN to add 173 hours of women’s sports programming to broadcast TV, including 48 hours of new live games and 17 hours of new pre-game show content on WNBA Countdown.
When the WNBA looks for a brand partnership, Engelbert focuses on innovation and a brand’s willingness to work with and build players’ brands, pointing to campaigns like Deloitte’s and Google’s.
“How do you innovate inside the partnership? How do you activate it?” Engelbert said. “[Google] has done an amazing job.”
Media rights are moving
When Adweek last caught up with Engelbert, the league’s upcoming media rights negotiations were top-of-mind.
The WNBA’s deal with Disney, its largest broadcast partner, runs through 2025 and was worth $27 million in 2021. Last year, the league also signed a three-year deal with Scripps’ ION, making Friday nights appointment viewing for fans and bringing an additional 5.9 million viewers to the WNBA this year, according to Engelbert.
“We do have a great bridge here to get us to a really good, best value possible [deal], one that’s long overdue,” said Engelbert. “We’d all like everybody to do the right thing here and raise women’s sports, but I think we’re coming from a really strong position from a digital, linear, social, partnership support.”
To Engelbert’s point, Major League Soccer, which has a 10-year, $250 million per year exclusive streaming deal with Apple, averaged 343,000 viewers in the 2022 season. Meanwhile, average viewership for the WNBA 2023 season came in at 505,000 viewers across CBS, ESPN and ABC.
And in comparable leagues, the National Women’s Soccer League just struck the largest-ever broadcast deal for women’s sports—a $240 million agreement over four years.
“We’ve been building out our exposure through all of our partners. We’re working very hard up until ’25 because there’s never been a truer adage of ‘if you build it, they will come’ than the WNBA is going through right now,” Engelbert said. “We’ll continue to double down on what we’ve been doing already with marketing, branding, storytelling, building those household names.”
