The financial services firm Ally has worked to carve out new roosts in sports that in years past might never have been shown on TV.

Ally is a major sponsor of the Unrivaled three-on-three women’s basketball league and plans to invest ad dollars in “Women’s Sports Sundays,” a new showcase from ESPN that will replace the long-running “Sunday Night Baseball” this summer. If Andrea Brimmer, the company’s chief marketing and public relations officer, has her druthers, Ally will increasingly be able to put ads alongside Professional Women’s Hockey League Games in more prominent TV slots.

This wasn’t the case just four years ago. In 2022, executives at Ally learned that 94% of women in C-suite roles had played sports at some point in their lifetimes, but that women’s sports received less than 5% of overall media coverage. “We did some quick back in the napkin math and said, ‘How much are we spending in women’s sports?’” recalls Brimmer. “And at the time, we were spending 90% of our budget in men’s sports and 10% in women’s sports. And we said, ‘Okay, we’re part of the problem. So, let’s fix it.”

Ally decided it would take five years to devote 50% of its sports spending to women’s sports. It has accomplished the task one year earlier than expected.

Ally’s drive to its goal may be watched closely. More advertisers — even those that in the past didn’t seek to court a sports-focused audience – find they cant make efficient investment in advertising without getting their messages in front of large groups watching the same program simultaneously. With more consumer watching scripted dramas and other series at times of their own choosing, sports – with dramatic storylines that expire the minute a game or match ends – have become the one sure thing left in media for much fo Madison Avenue.

That is one factor driving the NWSL, WNBA and a host of emerging leagues tied to women’s hockey, volleyball and other games, to new attention. WPP Media, which represents Ally, found that overall viewer impressions in women’s sports impressions grew 79%  in 2025 compared with 2024, , with ad spend on women’s sports up 69%. Ally’s ads in women’s sports generated 85% higher engagement compared to commercials that ran in non-sports programming on broadcast and cable, WPP Media found.

To find more money for women’s sports, Ally opted to overhaul its ad spending in traditional non-sports cable. “We have gone to zero in terms of any of our cable investment” that isn’t tied to sports, says Brimmer. “We have gotten out of certain media that we just don’t use anymore,” she says, while keeping its spend steady in men’s sports.

The company couldn’t just flip a switch and rework its sports allocation When Ally first unveiled its goal, other advertisers had the best ad positions in WNBA games and Unrivaled had yet to launch. But Ally was able, over time, to cut new ad deals with Disney, CBS and Scripps that in some cases called for moving championship women’s game to primetime or getting networks to pick up rights to women’s sports they had not linked up with in the past. Ally also kept its eyes out for recap shows and video podcasts built around women’s sports that it could sponsor.

Such programming could win more support over time, says Brimmer, who cites new efforts by Sue Bird and Billie Jean King as highly entertaining. “I think fans have a different relationship with female athletes than they do with male athletes. And they have a rabid interest in knowing as much about them as they possibly can. And these emerging platforms have started to exist, they are able to give that,” she says. “I’d like to see that continue to grow.”

Ally will continue to keep its eye on women’s sports, says Brimmer, citing a need “to make sure we don’t fall below the 50/50.” Still, there are other sports plans in the works.

“The average fan needs about $1,600 a year to attend the sporting events they want,” she notes, “and there’s not a lot of disposable income to do that.” Ally will aim in the future to help fans gain access to games, in various ways. Perhaps an Ally-sponsored watch party or an event at an Ally facility might give consumers “the ability to be in the moment while they might not necessarily be in the stadium,” she says. “Let’s make sure the fan doesn’t get left behind.”