“Women’s Sports = Good Business.” “A Movement Not A Moment.” “Women’s Sports; Are You Watching Yet?”
Those slogans, along with other symbols promoting women’s sports, will be in an unusual place next month: a NASCAR racetrack.
Ally Financial, which sponsors Alex Bowman’s No. 48 car, has chosen to use its NASCAR Cup Series paint scheme at the March 23 race in Homestead, Fla., outside of Miami, as a promotional vehicle for Unrivaled, the new 3×3 women’s basketball league which has been playing its games 30 miles north of the racetrack and will hold its championship one week prior to the race.
“I hope NASCAR fans are going to be curious,” said two-time WNBA MVP Breanna Stewart, who co-founded Unrivaled with Napheesa Collier. “I hope they’re going to be like, ‘What is this? Why is the car this color? What’s Unrivaled?’ And then just be able to educate themselves on what we had just finished.”
Last year, a YouGov survey found 41 percent of NASCAR fans are women. But NASCAR itself has struggled to find its footing amid growing interest in women’s sports; despite an ongoing search for a female driver with the talent to race in the top-tier Cup Series, no woman has made it there since Danica Patrick retired after the 2017 season.
That makes NASCAR an unconventional place for Ally to promote its role as Unrivaled’s founding partner, but one Ally CMO Andrea Brimmer said it fits the company’s strategy around “unexpected allies.”
Bowman’s purple, pink and blue Chevrolet will sport a design created by artist Sophia Chang and feature a variety of Easter eggs as a nod to both Unrivaled and the women’s sports movement.
“We’ve got such a massive footprint in women’s sports,” Brimmer said. “… We thought, ‘Why not bring it into NASCAR … where we could shine a light on that with a group of fans who appreciate sport but don’t know much about it?’ What better way to do that than on a car that is going to be going around a track 160 mph?”
In a time when diversity and inclusion have come under fire, Ally has become somewhat of a standout in the NASCAR world. Bowman’s cars have run a Pride Month paint scheme (in addition to promoting other causes like the Best Friends Animal Society).
Ally’s initiatives, Brimmer said, are “not meant to defy the traditions of NASCAR” but rather “have only been done to widen the aperture for more fans to come into the sport.”
“While there have been some negative voices and there have been some haters, there have been way more fans who have said, ‘This is awesome,’ and, ‘This is good for the sport,’” Brimmer said. “This is good for everybody to just have more fans and have more people love the sport that we all love, and that’s been the spirit in which we’ve done it.”
Said Bowman: “We have a good fan base. You see a—holes on Twitter (now X), but other than that, everybody has been super positive on everything we’ve done with Ally.”
Unrivaled is now the latest. While Stewart has never been to a NASCAR race, she told about memories of her grandpa watching races. She would go to his house on weekends and have dinner, and NASCAR would be on the TV.
She’s hoping to attend the Homestead race and possibly bring some of the Unrivaled players with her after experiencing a promotional video shoot day at the track.
“I’m excited to dive into it a little bit deeper,” she said.
That’s music to Brimmer’s ears. In her mind, connecting NASCAR with women’s basketball is “not any kind of statement other than, ‘We should all love sports.’”
“Sports are the great equalizer where everybody can come together and have an awesome experience,” Brimmer said. “And that’s really the thesis by which we continue to push on this.”
Brimmer, a former Michigan State soccer player, sits on the board of the Women’s Sports Foundation, founded by Billie Jean King. Long before the rise of women’s sports, she suspected there was an untapped market when she attended WNBA games and noticed more than 60 percent of the crowd was men.
She thought the problem facing women’s sports was simply access rather than interest; if they could find the right time slots on TV, get more mainstream media attention and the ability to reach more viewers, it would be something all sports fans would want to consume.
Unrivaled, intended to provide WNBA stars an alternative to traveling overseas for games during their offseason, has just been the latest investment in that regard. The games are held in a small arena (which holds 870 people) and has pushed new concepts (like a recent one-on-one tournament).
Bowman attended one of the first games in late January and said the crowd was “super hyped, a lot of energy, really cool vibe.” He’s hoping to return the favor if Stewart is able to attend the Miami race.
“The resources that are coming out of Unrivaled and partnering with Ally and now being here with NASCAR, it’s just a connection that I wouldn’t have thought was going to be as good as it was,” Stewart said.
NASCAR on the surface might not appear to fit Ally’s target demographic, but Brimmer said that was not the case. NASCAR fans, she said, are “exceptionally engaged and loyal.”
“I think people have this perception that NASCAR is like one-size-fits-all in terms of audience, and that’s just not the reality when you look at the numbers,” she said. “And from our standpoint, we love where the sport is trending, and we’ve been part of something that’s growing and getting hot and has got its mojo. That’s a fun place for us to be.”
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
WNBA, Motorsports, Sports Business, NASCAR
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