The Ad Industry's New Bet on Women's Sports

Women's sports is moving from a cultural talking point to a measurable advertising opportunity, and the companies that connect brands to audiences are jostling to be part of it. The latest signal comes from the Women's Sports Index, a new intelligence platform from sports agency Deep Blue and data analytics firm Mondo Metrics. It is designed to help brands track engagement patterns and purchase intent across creator partnerships tied to women's sports, giving marketers a clearer read on where their money works best.

The timing is no accident. Sports, broadly, are already steering streaming TV ad dollars, including in the upfront negotiations that recently wrapped. Women's sports, however, is described as having untapped potential — and the behavior of its fans is part of the appeal. According to a recent Vox Media survey, men's sports fans often root for a team because their parents did, while women's sports fans tend to be drawn by the game itself and by specific athletes. The fandom, as trade publication AdExchanger put it, is more active and community-driven.

That fan profile is shaping how advertisers reach them. Quick-service chain Sweetgreen, for instance, tapped Atmosphere TV — a video advertising startup that prefers the connected TV (CTV) label over digital out-of-home (DOOH) — to run ads in sports bars during the 2026 FIFA World Cup. The logic: relevant ads shown near physical locations can nudge viewers to walk into a store. In the same vein, eyewear brand Blacksheep has used digital billboards to criticize Google over alleged search traffic steering, and HelloFresh has taken AI-generated creative to digital billboards in Times Square. Together, these moves point to a broader push to meet women's sports fans in public viewing spaces, not just on streaming apps.

What remains unproven is whether the current momentum will translate into sustained budgets. The infrastructure to measure women's sports audiences and their purchase behavior is still young, and much of the early energy is coming from agencies, data platforms and media vendors betting that the viewership surge will keep compounding.

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Where the Women's Sports Money Is Going — and What's Missing

The Measurement Layer Is Catching Up — Slowly

The Women's Sports Index is a bet that brands need better data before they commit serious money to women's sports. Tracking engagement and purchase intent across creator partnerships is a relatively new capability; men's sports have decades of ratings history, sponsorship benchmarks and fan segmentation to draw on. Women's sports, by contrast, are still building that evidence base. The platform's value will depend on whether it can show campaigns that actually move purchase intent — not just viewership numbers.

Why Fan Behavior Changes the Creative

The Vox Media survey points to a structural difference in how the two audiences attach to content. If women's sports fans follow athletes more than teams, then marketing around individual players and their stories may outperform generic team branding. The community-driven nature of the fandom also favors campaigns that feel participatory — creator partnerships, social amplification and in-venue activations — over traditional broadcast spots. That is an interpretation of the survey's findings, but it matches why the Women's Sports Index tracks creator partnerships specifically.

CTV and DOOH Are Converging Around Foot Traffic

The Sweetgreen and Atmosphere TV deal illustrates how the line between connected TV and digital out-of-home is blurring. Atmosphere TV's inventory runs in bars, gyms and waiting rooms — venues where viewers are already near a potential purchase point. For a brand like Sweetgreen, an ad in a sports bar during the World Cup is closer to a location-based marketing play than to classic television. The same logic explains HelloFresh's Times Square billboard and Blacksheep's digital signage: DOOH is being repositioned as a full-funnel medium that can complement streaming campaigns rather than compete with them. The turf battle over whether that counts as CTV or DOOH matters less to advertisers than the fact that the inventory is measurable and addressable.

What's Still Unproven

The biggest open question is scale. The source material is partly promotional — the article draws on a podcast episode and vendor announcements — and the claim that women's sports represent untapped potential is an industry narrative rather than a verified revenue number. Whether streaming platforms will allocate more upfront inventory to women's sports, and whether brands will shift meaningful budgets away from men's sports, will become clearer only when the next rounds of data and earnings land.

What Marketers Should Do With the Women's Sports Opportunity

  • Track purchase intent, not just reach: Platforms such as the Women's Sports Index from Deep Blue and Mondo Metrics are designed to measure engagement and purchase intent across creator partnerships — use them to test whether women's sports budgets are actually moving products, not just impressions.
  • Build creative around athletes, not just teams: Vox Media's survey found women's sports fans often attach to specific players and to the game itself, so campaigns featuring individual athletes and community-driven storytelling are more likely to land than inherited team loyalty.
  • Pair streaming with near-store screens: Sweetgreen's World Cup activation through Atmosphere TV shows how CTV-style inventory in bars and venues can drive foot traffic; consider location-based digital screens as a companion to streaming buys for brands with physical points of sale.