It may be football season now, but fútbol season in the US is close behind.
Some brand planning for the upcoming FIFA World Cup, which will be hosted in North America this summer, is well underway for the men’s tournament, but marketers still have plenty of time to score in women’s soccer.
With LA hosting the Olympics in 2028 and the Women’s World Cup coming to the US and Mexico in 2031—plus two professional domestic leagues in the country now—Parity, a partnership platform for pro women athletes, partnered with SurveyMonkey to poll 2,385 US adults in April about their fandom for women’s soccer and thoughts on sponsorships in the space. The survey found that soccer boasts “the most loyal, purchase-ready audience in women’s sports.”
Bought in: Fans of women’s soccer aren’t just buying soccer merch, they’re game to purchase other products, according to the Parity report.
- More than a quarter of fans said they’ve purchased something from a company because of a sponsorship.
- That makes women’s soccer fans 58% more likely to buy because of sponsorships than fans of other women’s sports.
- However, 60% of women’s soccer fans said brands still don’t invest enough in women’s sports, making them 35% more likely to hold that opinion than other women’s sports fans.
Brands that ink athlete sponsorship deals could also benefit from positive feelings fans have about their favorite players. About three-quarters (78%) of women’s soccer fans said they trust women athletes, making them 34% more likely than other women’s sports fans to say they trust women athletes “a lot,” Parity found.
Women’s soccer fans said that they’d most like to see brands activate through “athlete-driven product collaborations,” with almost half saying they’d likely interact with a company that does so, per the report. Mixing these kinds of sponsorships with team, league, and tournament deals, as well as media buys, will likely lead to the greatest ROI, according to Parity.
Categorically: While apparel, food and beverage, and health and beauty brands have the biggest awareness among women’s soccer fans, travel, tech, banking, and insurance companies are “making a unique impact” in the space, according to the report.
- Fans of women’s soccer are about 2x as likely as fans of other women’s sports to be aware of travel brands that are activating.
- They’re 1.5x as likely to be aware of tech brands activating, and 1.4x as likely to be aware of banking and financial services brands, as well as insurance companies.
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Auto, retail, and restaurant brands are “not yet on consumers’ radars” in the women’s soccer space, but can “grab mindshare” before their competition if they start showing up soon, the report’s authors wrote.
Crossbar challenge: Of all US soccer fans, 25% said they exclusively watch women’s soccer, indicating that brands investing in the women’s game can potentially reach net new audiences than they do in men’s soccer or other sports. Tylenol, a new NWSL sponsor, for instance, is accessing “unduplicated reach” through its league and team deals, an exec recently told Marketing Brew.
With 38% of US soccer fans saying they watch both men’s and women’s games, sponsors that spend in both “will maximize reach,” per the report, especially considering the upcoming World Cups.
Update 09/19/25: This story has been updated to reflect changes made to the Parity report after publication.
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