Why Ally Financial doubled down on women’s sports

Ally Financial is one of the winners of Fast Company’s 2023 World Changing Ideas Awards. Explore the full list of projects we’re honoring for making the world more equitable, accessible, and sustainable.



Women’s sports have been surging in popularity in recent years, and yet they receive as little as 5% of sports media coverage. In fact, it can often be hard to find ways to view even the biggest games. It was with this in mind that Ally Financial unveiled a bold plan in May 2022, committing to spend equally on men’s and women’s sports within five years.



As part of this pledge, Ally upped its media buy for the National Women’s Soccer League’s championship game and worked with CBS to move the game to its first-ever prime-time slot. This “primetime-ification” of women’s sports was wildly successful: Viewership was up 71% over the previous year, and it became the most-watched match in the league’s history. Ally Financial’s campaign to level the playing field between men’s and women’s sports is the winner of Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas Award in the Media & Entertainment category.



The push for equity wasn’t just a feel-good PR move or part of a broader corporate social responsibility program. As Justin Nicolette, the director of public relations for Ally’s sports and entertainment division, says, it’s also really good business. “It’s a deep passion point for people,” Nicolette says, citing a study from the Sports Innovation Lab that found women’s sports fans are incredibly loyal to the brands that sponsor them. “People are so driven to support the brands that are supporting women’s sports.”



Through its sports and entertainment division, which launched in 2018, Ally already had partnerships with MLS and NBA teams, as well as the PGA; it became a sponsor of the NWSL in May 2021. In the ensuing months, the league was rocked by an abuse scandal. But Ally Financial doubled down: In February 2022, it announced a sponsorship with the players’ union, which helped increase staffing as well as provide funding for the Support the Players Emergency Trust.



“It’s not about publicity rights or spokespeople or activations or anything along those lines,” Nicolette says. “It’s an intentional investment in the players and in the health of the people who make the league.” In October 2022, Ally further solidified its commitment by signing a five-year contract with the NWSL.



“We believe in women’s sports, and we care for the players,” Nicolette says. “And we want to make sure that the resources that we put into the ecosystem of sports sponsorship help create fundamental change [and] help create sustainability around the organization.”



The company’s 50-50 pledge is a big part of that. Nicolette admits that when the announcement was first made, Ally’s numbers “were really out of whack.” It upped its investment in women’s sports by 300% in 2022, although that still only brought the company to a spending ratio of 80-20.



An innovative partnership with Disney, announced in February 2023, will see Ally putting 90% of its media buy with the company into women’s sports; as a result, there will be expanded game highlights and features on ESPN programs, including Sports Center, and more engagement with college teams. (This investment will bring Ally closer to 60-40; Nicolette says the hope is to hit 50-50 even sooner than 2027.)



Despite being optimistic, Nicolette acknowledges that it’s still an uphill battle. “There’s just not enough inventory right now. We need media companies to increase the capacity of women’s sports media so we can put more money into it,” he says.



Nicolette is encouraged by other companies that are amping up their commitments as well, including Canadian Tire, which will become a founding partner in Canada’s forthcoming women’s soccer league, and Google, which announced a partnership with The Athletic to double women’s sports coverage. Last month, two female venture capitalists announced that they’d raised $100 million for their Monarch Fund, with a mission to “accelerate equity in global sports.”



“We just see such high returns on the women’s sports side, unequivocally. It’s amazing how good for business women’s sports is,” Nicolette says. “So when you pair [that with] Ally’s culture of a ‘do right’ mentality and being able to apply our resources to areas that need fundamental change, women’s sports was a no-brainer.”