The NWSL has agreed to a multiyear partnership with computer software giant Adobe, which the league announced Tuesday. This marks the league’s first new partnership in more than six months since CarMax and SiriusXM came on board last July.
In its new role as the league’s official creativity partner, Adobe (NASDAQ: ADBE) will look to help share the stories of the league and its athletes, offering access to its creative and digital marketing software tools and facilitating personal brand-building workshops for players.
Mitch Poll, the league’s chief revenue officer, led the Adobe deal for the NWSL with assistance from Allied Sports. Terms of the pact were not disclosed.
“The remarkable athletes who play in the NWSL are some of the most accomplished soccer players in the world, but the players of the NWSL are more than just athletes,” said NWSL Commissioner Jessica Berman. “This partnership with Adobe will help our athletes tell their stories in creative ways and truly showcase the diverse and dynamic individuals who take the pitch each week in our league.”
Adobe joins the NWSL ahead of its 2023 campaign, which will begin March 25, and at a tough but transformative time for the 11-year-old league.
The NWSL spent much of last season in the shadow of allegations of years-long abuse and sexual misconduct, actions that were confirmed at most of the league’s teams throughout its history in a pair of investigations—one commissioned by U.S. Soccer and led by former U.S. deputy attorney general Sally Q. Yates, the other a joint probe conducted by the league and its players’ association—that concluded late last year. Both came down hard on the sport for significant systemic failures that the NWSL and women’s soccer as a whole are now working to rectify.
The jarring scandal, though, didn’t slow down owner interest in the 12-team NWSL, which will expand to 14 teams in 2024, with the additions of teams in Utah and the Bay Area at record sale prices, and 15 shortly thereafter with another expansion franchise based in Boston. Nor did it dissuade fans from supporting the league; the league finished the season with record attendance with more than 1 million fans attending games in 2022. A record 915,000 viewers watched the Portland Thorns, which spent much of the season at the center of controversy, win their third NWSL title in primetime in October. The 71% increase in viewership from 2021 made the championship the most-watched game in league history.
One of the league’s key sponsors, Ally, made the first-ever primetime spot possible for the NWSL’s championship game with a financial commitment to broadcast partner CBS. At the end of last season, the bank extended its partnership with the league for another five years through 2027. The NWSL’s only other sponsor locked in for longer than Ally is Nike, which renewed its agreement through 2030 in November 2021 amid the turmoil. Nike is the league’s largest corporate partner.
Corporate partnerships are a significant revenue stream for the league, which does not command the sort of media rights money many of its peers rely on. Its partnerships with CBS, which is set to expire at the end of the upcoming season, and Amazon’s Twitch are worth just $4.5 million and $1 million, respectively.
And while sponsorship revenue was up 87% last year, according to NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman, as existing sponsors doubled down and a handful of newcomers including Delta Air Lines and UKG joined the league early in the season, sponsorship news had slowed as the season, and the concurrent investigations, unfolded. Last summer, the league also lost a huge partner in Voyager—the cryptocurrency brokerage with which it signed a significant multiyear deal in December 2021, just months before it filed for bankruptcy—making the Adobe deal a welcome start to 2023.
Adobe will also sponsor a professional program for women creatives with a passion for soccer. Each season, four participants will be selected to partake and earn commissions for projects.
