When most people think of sports content sponsors, brands like Nike, Adidas, Lululemon, and Athleta likely come to mind.
Sports newsletter and media company The Gist, which just announced that it crossed the 1 million newsletter subscriber mark, has worked with all of those brands—but it didn’t increase its ad revenue 20 fold in the past two years by targeting typical sports marketers alone, Jacie deHoop, co-founder and head of partnerships at The Gist, said.
“We certainly bring on a lot of sports-endemic partners, but it’s been so fun to work with that next layer of partners too, that maybe historically haven’t really put their stake in a sports tentpole or in a sponsorship,” deHoop told Marketing Brew.
The Gist isn’t the only sports property to experience increased interest from a more diverse group of brand categories—there’s been a number of less traditional sports sponsors and advertisers in leagues like the NFL and WNBA in recent years. At The Gist, deHoop said experimenting with sports veterans and rookie brands has helped grow both its revenue and its audience.
Same, but different
Many of The Gist’s sponsors have been sportswear brands like Lululemon, which haven’t only activated with traditional newsletter ads, deHoop said. Within a year of its debut, The Gist teamed up with Lululemon to host a Super Bowl party, which, deHoop said, helped open the door for similar brands.
- Nike was the first brand to sponsor on-the-ground event coverage from The Gist, which was tied to Nike’s NYvsNY basketball tournament last year, according to deHoop.
- Aflac was the inaugural sponsor of The Gist’s men’s and women’s March Madness brackets last year, and serves as the first presenting partner of its podcast, The Gist of It, this year.
- A Modelo sponsorship around this year’s Concacaf W Gold Cup marked the first time The Gist “really integrated athlete talent” into its content, deHoop said, when the media company worked with women’s sports marketing and sponsorship platform Parity to have athletes from Parity’s network tell their stories in branded content.
“We’re really open with our partners about it being our first time doing [something],” deHoop said. “The right partners are like, ‘Yeah, we see the opportunity in this space, and we want to jump at doing this for the first time, too.’”
Welcoming committee
While The Gist has worked with plenty of sportswear companies and other brands like State Farm, Verizon, and FanDuel that have deep experience in sports marketing, it’s also leaned into partnerships with less usual suspects, deHoop said.
- Jewelry brand Mejuri, health and feminine-care companies Vagisil and Sunny Period, and QuickBooks, the B2B software brand, have all sponsored The Gist, she said.
- Dating app Bumble, which kicked off sponsorships with the WNBA and the New York Liberty over the summer, has also been a recent sponsor of The Gist.
- The Gist has also worked with brands in the travel, airline, and tourism space, and is making inroads in auto, according to deHoop.
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DeHoop partially attributes interest from those categories to The Gist’s audience profile. “She’s booked, she’s busy, she has disposable income, and she’s making a lot of those spending decisions for the household,” she said.
Ring the bell
The Paris Olympics helped drive engagement and revenue for The Gist, deHoop said.
- The Gist saw more than 100 million engagements on Olympic content across its newsletters, socials, and podcast, per The Gist.
- On social, impressions were up by six times and engagements were up by nine times during the Olympics, and The Gist podcast saw an increase of more than 18% in downloads per episode, according to The Gist.
Across channels, The Gist’s audience grew seven times faster during the games, according to the company, and deHoop said she’s already expecting LA28 to be similarly beneficial. In the meantime, deHoop said her team plans to continue embracing experienced sports sponsors while finding growth opportunities with newer players in the space.
“That next layer of growth for the entire women’s sports industry is, How do we bring on more of these beauty brands, fashion brands, that next layer, where a female fan is an incredibly valuable consumer?” she said. “Sports is a really interesting way to be able to reach her and engage with her in an authentic and oftentimes really fun way.”