Just a week before confinement, in March 2020, the Teika company launched what would be the first album of trading cards of female athletes. “Before there had been one from Panini with soccer players, but here they came from all disciplines,” recalls Berti Barber, director of Marketing and Sustainable Projects at Teika. The publication had to be completed with the stickers that were in the Grefusa bags that could be purchased from their vending machines. Thus the circle was closed, but “the effort was left out, because we either had to switch to the app… It could have turned out much better,” explains Barber.
Teika opted for women’s sports in 2018 and theirs is the “They play, we all win” campaign printed on bus shelters or subway stops, where Levante UD soccer players or Valencia Basket basketball players pose in uniform. “First we were betting on minority sports, although of both genders, but there came a time when we decided to sponsor only women’s sports: we saw that there were inequalities and we believed that we were capable of giving a twist to that niche that exists, working on the idea that women in the world of sports they do not have the same conditions.
The inequality in sports that Barber appeals to has been, for weeks or months, a topic of popular conversation. The message has permeated society and both the triumph of the Soccer Team and the Rubiales case have a lot to do with it. Barber is clear. “I didn’t like that certain things have to happen for the population or companies to activate, but I’m happy because the more companies join, the more things will change,” he says.
Teika currently sponsors 16 clubs, for basketball, football, handball, hockey, rugby, volleyball and athletics, all in their female form except the last one, because they have worked with the team since the company’s origin. Now they explain that there are many companies that ask them “how to sponsor women’s soccer” and they also receive many requests to sponsor.
Things are changing. This is also believed by Enrique Pernía, general secretary of the Mediterranean Marketing Club, who explains that “in sports sponsorship we see many brands and a diversity of brands interested in this type of sponsorship because other values ??are made visible.” The triumph of Alexia Putellas or Jenni Hermoso carries a message of equality to which many firms want to adhere.
Pernía also explains how “the virtuous circle is that women’s sports attract more audiences, attract more sponsors and have more relevance.” And the vision they have in Valencia Basket, which this year celebrates its ninth season with a women’s team, coincides with this perception. “Yes, it is true that women’s basketball has allowed us to expand audiences for basketball,” explains Merche Añón, business director of Valencia Basket.
For Valencia Basket, champion of the LF Endesa this year and for the first time in its history, the triumphs of its athletes have caused them to also end up becoming references, essential according to Añón, since “if you don’t have references, you don’t have “You generate an audience. This is like a circle, as they play and win or participate in the national team, the sale of women’s shirts grows throughout Spain.”
Currently 70 brands work with Valencia Basket. They all contribute to both and others are more committed to the feminine. They are a claim, but, explains the directive, she perceives a deeper change. “Before they wanted brand notoriety, but now they are looking for something more like strengthening the values ??with what they sponsor, in our case with the culture of effort.”
In the matches, however, nothing changes, he points out, because the strategy is the same. “The entertainment is the same and our investment is the same, there is a DJ, a speaker… People enjoy it a lot, perhaps the men’s game is more intense but the women’s game is a more relaxed game and the audience, more familiar, is equally involved,” he argues. Añón.
For her part, Yael Morera, marketing manager of the Royal Spanish Tennis Federation, believes that “brands have a very important gap with the sponsorship of women’s sports and as part of their strategy in their marketing and commercial plans for the coming years. “And it adds data such as those provided by the recent study by the Spanish Sports Association, which ensures that fans of women’s sports are 85% women and 15% men.
Regarding the profile, Morera explains that they are between 18 and 40 years old, they are people who have sport integrated into their lives, and normally consume sport on open television, they demand to increase the visibility of women’s sport, they admire other female athletes, they are very active in sustainability and climate change and the most critical of barriers towards women. “Brands are looking for a consumer/client who clearly associates with the values ??that female athletes transmit,” she concludes.
