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Women's sports is experiencing new heights in the world of football and basketball. With UEFA bringing two circles on board to find new sponsorship and revenue opportunities, the WNBA is expected to earn up to £2 .2 billion in its next broadcast rights deal. I'm your host Colin Williams and on this episode of iGamingDaily, the rest of the insider sports team will look into how European and US betting operators can look to grow and find new sponsorship opportunities in both sports and what this means for the future growth of women's football and basketball.

But first, word from our sponsor, OptiMove. OptiMove is the number one CRM marketing solution for the iGaming market. 56 % of the EGR Power 50 personalised player experiences with OptiMove. To get a free demo, go to www .optimove .com slash SPC. And we'll also leave the links in the description for this episode below. So yeah, firstly, Ted, Kieran, nice to speak to you again on the pod. How's your weekend just been?

Yeah, not a bad thanks mate. I've obviously just come back off of short holiday, up to Yorkshire Dales, which is quite nice, to get out of the city for a bit. I'm sure you've both missed me immensely while I've been gone. Couldn't, I was crying, crying just to come back. No, joking, yeah. It's been alright, ain't it, Kieran? How's your weekend been? It's been good. I went to a local festival on Saturday, so was interesting. Some interesting bands. It was free, so you can imagine the quality,

It was a lot of fun. Can't go wrong there, can't go wrong. Yeah, well, yeah, well, the inside of sport reported that your waifers brought on the two circles, the kind of sponsorship specialist to kind of head up their commercial program between 2025 and 2030. 2030, 2030, I should say that. think that's right, yeah. Yeah, so the program will include two circles heading up marketing rights and other sponsorship avenues

tournaments such as the Women's Euro, the Women's European Championships, the Women's Champions League and the Futsal Championships and other type of championships. Ted, I'll come to you first. What can we expect from UEFA's partnership with Two Circles and what sponsorship activity do you think this will, this duo will pursue? Yeah, it's an interesting one because obviously in the context of us discussing sort of betting side of things as we usually do on this podcast, probably not much to do with that area, I'd imagine.

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partly due to the context of football in general looking to tone down, I guess for want of a better term, some of the betting sponsorship side of things. We've seen a lot of that discussion in the men's side, so we can imagine that that will sort of transfer over to the women's. I think something that, I'll let Kieran speak a bit more about this, because I know he's done some interviews and written some stuff about this in the past. Obviously it'd make a lot of sense for the women's football organizers in the tournaments.

to partner with brands that focus more on female consumers and products and brands that resonate more with this demographic. So I mean, do you wanna take over from that Kieran? I you've written some stuff about this. Yeah, so I'll take it back to an interview I did. I wanna say Last Feb. Well, not Last Feb, This Feb. It feels like a year ago actually, but it's not. That was with Queenie Porter, who is the Managing Director of Woe Hydrate and

She is also the vice president of the West Ham Women's. And that was when she first got that role and she talked to me about how women's football sort of has the opportunity to choose the sponsorships and pick ones that suit them. They don't have to follow up what the men's game is doing. And she talked a lot about the different sponsorships that they can attract. A lot of them being travel related,

sort of self care related and health, to do with makeup and stuff like that. And also things like more family related sponsorships, so things like Alton Towers or theme parks and stuff like that. So I think that's quite interesting. So yeah. Yeah, I remember you, I remember reading that article that you did, Kieran, which is really good. Just talking about the demographic, you've got to cater to that demographic quite heavily really, haven't you? Because

as the women's is growing in football, you've just got to accommodate your growing female orientated fan base. Ted, how valuable will women's football be from a marketing perspective for certain operators and no betting operators? There's not lot of coverage really for betting operators within the women's game. In fact, none at all. We can compare it to the men's game. Has it been undervalued? This isn't just for a betting operator. It could be for operators across multiple industries.

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Yeah, it's an interesting question. I think it's important to build off what Kieran's just mentioned with targeting of different consumer demographics and finding the right brand partners. Obviously, for the most part, hope I'm not being stereotypical here, but I think we can all agree that betting is by and large more of like a male activity, really. For the most part, if you go into your average betting shop, the customer base will be overwhelmingly male. I'd imagine the demographics are similar for online as well.

So as a result, it's kind of not surprising that operators would target more the men's side of the game, which will have, understandably, the more overwhelming male audience, whilst the women's game will not. Also, don't know if this is something we've noticed, but women's football, I think, is often branded as and comes across as a bit more like a family -orientated sort of game, doesn't it? Whilst men's football is often, again, to go over stereotypes, it's,

lads lads lads sort of thing, you know what mean? So it's gonna have that connection more with betting, I guess. This isn't to say, I think it's not been entirely ignored. I Kieran, you noted earlier in a conversation, there is a club that has got a more broad partnership, isn't there? Yeah, we were looking, obviously, before the podcast, just trying to do some research, and we noticed that Burnley, in the WSL, they are part of 96 .com, which is the same as the men's team.

So they're actually gonna be sort of wearing that sponsorship on the front of their kits. But weirdly enough, they've also done a weird part, I say weird part, different partnership with Dude Perfect, the YouTube channel. And they are the sponsors for the junior, infant and like child kits. So it's interesting to sort of see how maybe the scope for the women's team to maybe, I don't know, sort

change the front of shirt sponsorship in the future. But I think that sort of brings it onto the fact that a lot of the, at the minute, the women's game is growing immensely, especially the WSL. But a lot of these women's teams and men's teams are only just starting to separate. So for a long time, the women's teams sort of piggybacked off the men's team in sponsorships and agreements and they had the same departments.

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I know you're actually seeing a lot of WSL teams create their own women's departments and structure to generate these sponsorship and partner agreements that are catered for the women's game. People who go watching the women's football week in week out. Yeah, I think it's quite a positive thing to see really, isn't it? you said, not even that long ago, women's football with a lot of these major clubs would have been seen as an add -on.

almost. I don't want to use, you know, we shouldn't really use the term like side thought or anything like that. But I think in the minds of a lot, in the eyes of a lot of people, it probably was seen like it was now with the value of the sport rising, know, rising year on year, we're seeing attendance go up as well, aren't we? Arsenal are traditionally one of the biggest teams in women's football and they're now, they're going to be hosting more games at the Emirates, they? Whilst usually their games are, I think it's a Borenwood Stadium, which is obviously a much smaller ground.

but they're recognising that a lot more people are going to these games and it's getting a lot more interest. So they're going to host a few more of them at the Emirates, which is obviously what, like a 60 ,000 seat stadium. So it's pretty big for the sport. And yeah, as a consequence of that, we're seeing the women's teams take on more prominence and become much bigger organisations. And with that, of forging their own way in partnerships and strategy.

I can't imagine that betting sponsorships will take... Obviously we are seeing it, as you've said, Kieran, there's a couple of it, there's some small examples. I can't imagine that they'll pursue it that much just purely because of what we've discussed about demographic targeting. But it will be there. I think the main thing around it is probably going to be about marketing and advertising and social media rather than actual kit sponsorships personally. Yeah, I definitely agree what you said there, Taddy.

We've touched on the WSL there and they're bringing in record revenues. I the 2022 -23 season brought in record revenues at around 48 million. That is what we've covered on Inside the Sport. That's a 50 % increase from the season prior to the 2021 -22 season. So you can just see the indicativeness of how the league's growing. But moving on to next year, we know we've got the Women's European Championships.

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And this is obviously going to be another opportunity for maybe bookmakers or maybe other operators like we said outside the gambling and gaming industry. This is a real opportunity as well for sponsorship and marketing and visibility exposure from this tournament as well because we know the last European Championship obviously England won so we're looking to retain that title that way. yeah so what can we just expect from the next European Championships in terms of how bookmakers and other companies can...

just broaden their horizons through the women's game. I'll go to you with this one, Kieran. Yeah, so obviously, when you talk about the WSL and these domestic leagues, you're thinking about the fans, the people who go week in, week out, but when you talk about these big tournaments like the women's Euros, and as you said, in 2022, England won, and at the time, become the most watched tournament, the most watched women's tournament to date. I think it had a viewership of about 347 million.

So quite impressive, but a lot of that is down to these tournaments. They do generate a different demographic altogether from the week in week out games. So you've got a lot of male viewers who will be interested in betting on the sports. I think that does open up a lot of opportunities for operators to sort of take advantage of the different demographics of these games compared to normal. So you probably will see a lot more marketing opportunities and a lot more initiatives.

from betting operators to sort of cater to the many who are watching at the time. I'd just like to add on that, think quite an interesting one to put in here is like national pride. I think that's often a big thing we see around these tournaments, isn't it? And you can, I think I wouldn't be surprised if we see operators bring in some more marketing around that of just, you know, supporting the Lionessers in England, for example.

And people in general, regardless of whether they follow a sport or not, you want to see your national team do well in any circumstance. think operators will be capitalising quite heavily on that. We saw a lot of that during the last Euros anyway. I think the Lioness' fantastic performance during that was a massive asset to companies. We're in Manchester at the moment, I'm pretty sure Paddy Power had some marketing done there around

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the Man City Stadium and training ground where some of the matches were taking place. So I think we can expect to see a repeat of that and also partly because of what Kieran pointed out, it's going to be a much broader audience than the WSL tends to get on the Saturday matches. Yeah, well I don't think two circles involvement will take place during the women's URLs next year, but it will for the next edition in 2029, so they're going to be very busy as

finding sponsorship opportunities for the the way for Women's Champions League which continues to grow as well so that's all for part one but in part two we'll be heading across to the Atlantic to speak on why the WNBA is experiencing new growth rates and what this means for US betting operators and we are back and we are just gonna just gonna briefly touch on the also the rise of women's basketball in the US and the WNBA in particular

I don't know how much use to your knowledge is on the women's basketball, but as an NBA fan I've kind of, it's kind of, you know, not been able to escape the fanfare around it. Just so briefly, the league has reportedly agreed a 2 .2 billion deal, which is a part of the NBA's recent 11 -year, 76 billion broadcast deal with the SBN, NBC and Amazon. So this would be triple the amount of the WNBA's last TV deal.

And this is largely come from the incoming rookie draft class of Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, et cetera. And this is stemmed from their rivalry from the college game of the past two seasons. And so there's now this new wave of exciting young female basketball players. So I'll go to you Ted, how big of a deal is the NBA, the WNBA should I say, in the US? And how valuable is it for connecting with as a broad section of fans as possible?

So, I mean, yeah, first of all, WNBA is a really huge deal in the US, obviously in the same way that women's football is over here. I think they're the two counterparts really, aren't they? In Europe, women's football, I mean, football in general is obviously the biggest sport over here. As a result of that, women's football is by far the biggest women's sport. In the US, they obviously, it's a very multi -sport country. They've got basketball, they've also got soccer, they've got, you know, the American football and so on, they've got baseball.

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women's basketball is by far the market leader, isn't it? I think in terms of women's sports followed by soccer. something like women's MMA as well. Yeah, that's a good point actually. that's sport that's really been defined by lot of high profile athletes, hasn't it? Who've branched into other areas of media as well. But I think overall the WNBA is the leader, think, out of some of

I believe it's out of the five most searched, like Google searched, women's franchises in the US. I believe three of them are WNBA franchises. So that really shows how much of a connection it has with a lot of fans. There's also a lot of female participants in basketball just from the grassroots level upwards. So I think that has driven it quite a bit. So obviously if we're gonna link that in with betting operators, it's a chance for them

sort of bridge the demographic divide, I guess, and connect with a lot of different female fans who in the US might be a bit more open to betting on sports than women traditionally have been in Europe. Yeah, speaking on betting sponsorships, Kieran, I know that the WNBA have actually been quite active in betting sponsorships with all the draft kings and fan deal. Can you just speak on?

those sponsorship agreements with the league and who's partnered with who and why is this so significant for the league's future growth? Yes, the most recent one obviously we've covered at Inside of Sport is the WNBA with Draft Kings who is the second largest sports book in the US, sort based in Boston. And as you mentioned, they've also, they sort of sit behind FanDuel and that sort of nation league table.

It's absolutely huge, I think, in the piece that you wrote, Calvin, I think you covered it. Or was it Ted, actually? I think Ted covered it. Yeah, think that was one of mine. I'll take credit for it. Sort of, Jaff King kept sort of emphasising how the growth of the league and the fact that it's obviously just massive exposure from, like we said about the football, from a wide range of demographics.

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and it sort of brings them all together. mean, the betting side in the gambling sector in America is quite new compared to England. So they're obviously at the minute just trying to get the brands and they're all competing to become the best sports book or the most well known. And they've obviously seen WNBA's growth and decided this is something we want to be a part

And it's a really, really good opportunity for them to sort of get eyes on it from a lot of different demographics. And yeah, it's quite interesting. Yeah, from the circles that I watch within the NBA, I do see a lot more activity from then talking about the WNBA game now when it's coming from a genuine interest. Because like I mentioned before, Caitlin Clark, she's kind of like been taking the whole country by storm, really, obviously from.

a days in college and arrival with Angel Rees in the national championship final during March Madness. But they were breaking TV records all across March Madness last season. So it's really interesting to see how just the male, the men, the men viewership is growing over there. I know ESPN have reported record viewership for games this season. There's also record attendance this season in terms of average attendance. So it really does seem like the WNBA now is in a future growth phase

Because like I said, some of these rookies that are coming in, they've got a 10 year career ahead of them. So now it's all about how can these operators capitalise and I'll open this to just to finish out. I'll open it to the both of you. Why should the market value of the WME not be understated in the US considering what could potentially lie ahead? I'll go to you first, Ted.

Basically just for exactly the reasons you've just mentioned in your background there, Calum. It's got record revenue, it's got record attendance, it's got record viewership, it's getting a lot of engagement from both male and female audiences. All of this just shows that it's going to continue growing. It's also got, as you said, a real, probably the most amount of young talent it's ever had, which is only ever going to be a positive thing for a sport.

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So there's big marketing opportunity around that for operators both partnering with the league, its teams and players. And I guess as well from their actual offering, offering things like prop bets on players, specials around players like Caitlin Clark, like you said, is a really big sort of marketing and sort of betting market opportunity. So it definitely can't be understated. It's the leading women's sport for a reason.

Yeah, so like Ted said, think the biggest one for me is I covered a bit of this earlier this year. mean, Caitlin Clarke's got her own term named after her, the Caitlin Clarke effect. So I think from an operator's point of view, you've sort of got to jump on these trends and let's hope that the WNBA continues each year on year, sort of increasing ticket sales and the rise in viewership. But at the minute, they've sort of just got to jump on any trend they can.

And the WNBA has done an absolutely masterful job in marketing itself as a league and an organisation through its players. And yeah, that can't be understated how important that is for betting operators. Yeah, definitely feels like they're copying more so the NBA model now of marketing the players and making them larger than life. That's what we see with all that. It's a LeBron James and Steph Curry. Now it feels like the WNBA have got their own new stars for the generations to come.

Gentlemen, thank you for joining us on this podcast today and we'll catch you on the next one.