In an announcement that went public earlier today, Publicis Sports and WSC said it’s already made several investments, including a partnership with Disney Advertising (ostensibly to access ESPN inventory), in Women’s Sports Now, a weekly talk series from Roku, and a student-athlete program developed by NBCUniversal Local’s Sports Partnership Development team and sports media brand The GIST.

“The Women’s Sports Connect platform will include all sports across both the professional and college levels, ie WNBA/NWSL, NCAA women’s college basketball and softball as some examples,” said Jon Tuck, president of Publicis Sports. “The programs that we build for brand partners will be customized to reach their objectives.”

Tuck declined to offer spending investment specifics, but noted that particular categories of growth were clients against CTV, digital, social/influencer and sponsorships.

“The future of sports is being rewritten, and those that don’t invest in women’s sports will find themselves left on the sidelines,” said Disney Advertising’s global president Rita Ferro, in a statement provided to Digiday by Publicis. “Through our longtime relationship with Publicis, we are collaborating on a framework for brands to engage women sports fans authentically, at scale.”

Women’s sports has been red hot over the last year — 11 months ago, WPP’s GroupM said it planned to double its spending in women’s sports, and later in the year declared mission accomplished, without saying how much it actually spent. Among the main instigators are highly competitive and exciting games in women’s basketball, which churned up greater interest in the WNBA as college stars entered the league (looking at you, Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese). 

Some marketers have been pushing for greater investment in women’s sports for years now, notably Andrea Brimmer, CMO of financial service Ally, who held up millions in ad spend to get media companies and networks to improve the time slots for women’s sports. 

There remains a disparity in spend in women’s sports — after all, some advertisers dropped $8 million for a 30-second spot in the Super Bowl, which granted did deliver its biggest audience ever at 126 million, according to Nielsen. But that’s why Publicis Sports has suited up.

“Our efforts are less focused on disparity and moreso on the opportunity for brands to grow their business by reaching this valuable audience of 65 million engaged fans,” said Tuck. “We want to address the marketplace fragmentation to make it easier for clients to make scaled investment. Other industry efforts talk about disparity/inequity but not the barriers we need to overcome to truly shift spend.”