Sports Innovation Lab Elevates Women’s Sports and Transforms Media Buying at IAB NewFronts
The first-ever NewFront at IAB dedicated to women’s sports media inventory will feature 25+ publishers and personalized addressable audiences at scale
BOSTON – THURSDAY, APRIL 25TH, 2024
Sports Innovation Lab’s Women’s Sports Club NewFront, the first-ever NewFront dedicated to women’s sports, will be held on Thursday, May 2 as part of the official 2024 IAB NewFronts lineup in New York City. The invitation-only event will host more than 200 media buyers and Fortune 500 brand marketers at the NeueHouse penthouse.
Breaking the traditional mold of NewFronts being led by media companies and focused on inventory presentations, this unprecedented event brings an advanced approach to data and new levels of scale to the women’s sports media buying experience:
The event is hosted by Sports Innovation Lab, a data, analytics, and insights company that has built the industry’s first deterministic, purchase-based set of addressable audiences custom to sports, media, and entertainment. The proprietary cookieless-ready audience data is anchored in the purchasing habits of more than 80 million U.S. consumers and is available to NewFront buyers to bring precision targeting with domain expertise to their media plans.
Buyers will have access to unique women’s sports media packages from more than 25 publishers and partners as part of Trailblazing Sports Group’s new Trailblazing Marketplace, the first advertising marketplace dedicated to women’s sports. The platform innovatively showcases commercial opportunities for women’s sports across teams, leagues, athletes, and media all in one place, spanning digital media channel mediums as well as mainstream and emerging sports.
Sports Innovation Lab’s Women’s Sports Club NewFront and the Trailblazing Marketplace will feature new media sponsorship opportunities from partners including: Altius Sports Partners, Athletes Unlimited, Bleacher Report, ByUS Media, Darius Rucker Intercollegiate, Naomi Osaka’s Hana Kuma, HANG, Impakt Partners, Just Women’s Sports, OneTeam Partners, Parity, Playfly Sports, PowHER, RE—INC, Scripps Sports, SHE Media, The Athletic, The Gist, TOGETHXR, Tradable Bits, USA Today, Women’s Sports Network, World Surf League, and X Games.
Additional guest speakers include U.S. Women’s National Team gold medalist, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of RE—INC, and FIFA World Cup champion Tobin Heath, professional football player and athletic shoe company founder Santia Deck, WNBA champion Theresa Plaisance, 15x Guinness World Record-holding street soccer star Laura Biondo, U.S. Women's National Team Players Association (USWNTPA) Executive Director Becca Roux, Emmy & Peabody Award-winning journalist and podcast host Sarah Spain, renowned women’s sports journalist & Senior Writer at The Athletic Meg Linehan, and 13-year-old broadcaster Pepper Persley. Sports Innovation Lab Co-Founder Angela Ruggiero and CMO Gina Waldhorn will emcee the uptempo event that will mirror the energy and momentum of the surging women’s sports industry. Additional special guest speakers will be revealed at the event.
“As part of our Women’s Sports Club research last year, brands cited a lack of scaled inventory across different sports and leagues and access to the right consumers as being major challenges to increasing their media investment in women’s sports,” said Gina Waldhorn, CMO of Sports Innovation Lab. “They asked for easier, more scalable, and more targeted data-driven opportunities to buy women’s sports and connect with the right consumers improving their media return. Today that inventory is here in the form of Sports Innovation Lab Audiences and the Trailblazing Marketplace.”
Trailblazing Sports Group founder Sara Gotfredson added, “From women’s soccer, to tennis, to the latest NCAA Women's March Madness, and the WNBA Draft, the world is finally seeing the value in women’s sports media. We saw this day coming, and we are poised and ready to utilize our expertise to offer brands and our agency partners powerful partnerships with scale and engagement."
***Sports Innovation Lab has partnered with Underdog Venture Team and their experiential events agency to bring this larger-than-life event to fruition on May 2nd.
About Sports Innovation Lab
Sports Innovation Lab enables brands, media, and sports properties to improve targeted advertising, build more effective sponsorships, and enhance fan and consumer experiences. Its data cloud of observational, transactional, and deterministic individual-level data is evolving how organizations use data to understand their customers and acquire more of them - beginning with media, sports & entertainment. Learn how global brands including the NFL, Nike, NHL, Ally Financial, WNBA, and NASCAR use Sports Innovation Lab’s data, audiences, and strategic advisory to drive revenue by visiting sportsilab.com or following on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter.
About Trailblazing Sports Group
Trailblazing Sports Group is a female-founded, mission-driven commercial partnerships firm specializing in women’s sports – aiming to be THE go-to source for clients and agencies to turn to when looking to invest in women’s sports media & sponsorships.
PR Contacts
Sports Innovation Lab
Anthony Baldini
anthony@athletestrategies.com
Trailblazing Sports Group
Sara Gotfredson
sara@trailblazingsports.com