As Toronto Tempo fandom hits fever pitch, brands sense an opportunity | Canada Voices

On a Tuesday night in mid-August, Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena drew a sold-out crowd of more than 19,000 fans to see the Toronto Tempo face off against the Indiana Fever.

In the four months since Canada’s first WNBA team started its inaugural season, numbers have proven that an interest in women’s sports is here to stay. According to an August report, all home games at Coca-Cola Coliseum have sold out, and in July, 21,000 fans attended a Montreal game against the Dallas Wings, breaking a WNBA regular season record. On that Tuesday night in Toronto, Tempo fever was palpable, on par with anything you’d see at a Raptors game.

The unquestionable momentum in women’s sports in Canada goes beyond sports fandom. Yes, there’s the athleticism, as well as the unpredictability and excitement of watching the competition unfold. But there’s also something more – with a new fan base comes new marketing opportunities, tied into brand activism.

Allison Sandmeyer-Graves, CEO of Canadian Women and Sport, a non-profit that advocates for equity and inclusivity in sport, said that for spectators, there’s an underlying sense of purpose. “They see [women’s sport] as connected to women’s empowerment,” she explained. “They see it as a space that is women-coded and women-celebrating.”

That makes it an appealing draw for brands looking to leverage a highly engaged audience and align themselves with women-centred causes such as reducing stigma about menstruation and raising awareness of the declining number of teenage girls in sport.

“I think it’s one of the unique and exciting things about the development of women’s professional sport here in Canada,” said Sandmeyer-Graves. “Brands get to show up in a different way, and different brands get to show up.”

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Tampax, the Tempo’s official period partner – yes, players have to compete while on their period – is prominently featured on the scoreboard and around the stadium with the phrase, “Protect the home court.” Its logo also pops up on the jumbotron during the “De-fense” chant. The brand’s product is also handed out to the loudest-cheering section every game. Lisa Ferkul, the Tempo’s chief revenue officer, remarked that she loves seeing men leaving the stadium with a box of tampons.

“Ultimately for us, this partnership was really about continuing to allow conversations about periods and about women’s health to be normalized,” said Chelsey Harshman, senior director for North America Tampax.

Then there’s Sephora, a founding sponsor of the team. The beauty retailer had been looking at women’s sports for some time after noticing how its audience was growing. “Our brand ambition is to really expand the way the world sees beauty and drive more inclusivity of who belongs in beauty and who belongs at Sephora. So getting into women’s sport really helped us do that,” said Allison Litzinger, senior vice-president and chief marketing officer at Sephora Canada.

This idea is the focus of the brand’s “Pretty Badass” campaign featuring Tempo players Marina Mabrey, Kiki Rice, Temi Fágbénlé and others. It pokes at a tension that exists for many women, not just in sports but in life: the way women are often put into one-dimensional boxes. “It’s ‘brainy or beautiful,’ ‘strong or feminine,’” said Litzinger. “We intentionally wanted to challenge these outdated stereotypes to show that you can actually embrace this multidimensionality that women are.”

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Outside of basketball, beauty brands Clinique and Dove have joined forces with AFC Toronto, a professional women’s soccer club, to combat declining numbers of teenage girls in sports (according to Canadian Women and Sport, 62 per cent of teen girls do not play sports at all, a drop of 14 per cent in the last decade). Clinique’s messaging emphasizes individuality and highlights the benefits of being part of a team, while Dove’s “Keep Her Confident” campaign features jerseys with images of the AFC players as kids and the individuals who helped them stay in the game.

“What women’s sports offers [brands] is commercial impact and social impact going hand-in-hand,” said Sandmeyer-Graves.

Seeing women excel at their sport feels meaningful because of how long and hard they have had to fight for the opportunity to play at all, she added.

“For the opportunity to play at that level. For the right to be respected. And celebrated.”