It’s no secret that sports fans love content about their favorite teams. These days, that doesn’t just mean live games on legacy TV networks.
Some major US leagues, it seems, are well aware. As football season kicked off, the NFL inked a content partnership deal with sports newsletter and media company The Gist, plugging the league directly into The Gist’s 1-million-plus subscribers, many of whom are millennial and Gen Z women. Earlier this week, The Gist announced a similar content deal with the NWSL.
Both partnerships are designed not only to serve the media startup’s audience with deep dives into their favorite sports, but also to drive fandom for the leagues beyond the audiences they’ve already been reaching for years, The Gist co-founders Jacie deHoop and Ellen Hyslop told Marketing Brew.
“We really saw that traditional sports media was very much focused on an avid male sports fan, and we really felt like there was an opportunity for us to engage with this next-generation female fan and create a community and create a media platform for her,” Hyslop said. “We knew that this audience…was going to be valuable to the teams and to the leagues that wanted to reach her, but didn’t necessarily have the right way.”
America’s sport
Both the NFL and NWSL were, according to deHoop, “dream partners” for The Gist, which was founded in late 2017 as a sports newsletter covering men’s and women’s sports equally. The NFL, which is the biggest league in the US, could have easily “laughed in our faces,” deHoop said, but she said league execs were “open and receptive” when talks started at the Super Bowl this year.
For The Gist’s readers, the NFL is their “No. 1 favorite sport,” according to Hyslop. Through the partnership, subscribers will have access to more NFL content, including a pick ’em challenge that allows participants to guess which team will win each matchup of the season for the chance to win prizes.
“Women are so often left out of any fantasy league, the office pool, the survivor pool, and a big reason why we want to be that source is because we actually want to create a community where they feel welcome,” Hyslop said. For its part, the NFL, she said, gets to “continue to grow and lean into that female fandom.”
To further support the content partnership, The Gist will also up its presence and coverage around NFL tentpoles like the draft and the Super Bowl, Hyslop added; earlier this year, Gist staffers covered the Super Bowl in person through a partnership with Verizon.
The other football
For Servi Barrientos, director of media partnerships at the NWSL, working with The Gist opens an avenue not just to acquire new fans, but to turn casual fans into avid ones through storytelling, he said.
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On one level, Barrientos said he hopes to see the partnership drive game tune-in, which could also stand to benefit the league’s legacy media partners, including CBS, ESPN, Prime Video, and Scripps Sports. The Gist’s support will mean even more media coverage for the league, he added, keeping it in the news cycle more often than just during major games.
“We want to make sure that fans know where to find us and where to watch the game,” Barrientos said. “It’s important to have the right storytellers to be able to tell these stories of not only the players, but the leagues themselves, and continue to put out content…We live in a digital world now. The more content, the better.”
On a deeper level, Barrientos said he thinks that content can help create league superfans. The NWSL is giving The Gist an “inside look” at the league and access to players with the intention of driving more emotional stories that can “turn fans into passionate fans or avids,” he said.
Something for everyone
Increased content coming out of the partnerships also opens up more branded content opportunities, which could benefit The Gist and the leagues. League sponsors already have access to tentpole moments like championship games; now, The Gist can cover those same moments more deeply and offer that content up to its brand partners, deHoop said. Meanwhile, new content, like the pick ’em challenge, is also sponsorable real estate.
“It gives our marketing partners an opportunity to extend their programming,” Barrientos said.
The content partnerships represent more than an opportunity for brands to target more sports fans—they open the door for marketers to tap into content that’s geared toward modern fans.
“Audiences are changing; their relationship with fandom is changing,” Hyslop said. “The folks at all of these leagues…are recognizing what they need to be doing to set up the league for success five, 10, 15 years down the line.”