After the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team won the FIFA Women's World Cup in 2019, the biggest story wasn't their unprecedented fourth title. It was that female soccer players were being paid 12x less than their male counterparts. Equal pay became the biggest news story in the country.

While many attributed the pay discrepancy to gender discrimination, Budweiser dug deeper and found it was also driven by a massive gap in sponsorship. The MLS, the men’s soccer league in America, had 24 official sponsors. The NWSL, the women’s league, had only three.

As one of those three sponsors, Budweiser wanted to drive change. In order for Budweiser to help close the pay gap we had to address the sponsorship gap.

Although massive strides in female empowerment have been made in American culture, real change was nowhere to be found when it came to equal pay in sports. And there was no sport more glaring than women’s soccer, where women made 12x less than the men who play the same game. Every four years, America rallies behind the US Women’s National Soccer Team (USWNT) as they compete in the World Cup. Fans and brands come together to create the world’s biggest bandwagon. But when the World Cup ends those same players return to their domestic clubs in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) and are greeted with empty stadiums and virtually no brand support. In fact, the NWSL had only 3 sponsors, 8x less than the men’s league in America. No sponsors meant no money for the league. No money for the league meant they couldn’t pay their players fairly. In fact, since 1999, the USWNT has won three World Cup titles while two women’s domestic leagues in America have folded from lack of support. In 2019, the NWSL was on a similar course. We realized that the best way to close the pay gap was to close the sponsorship gap.

Introducing: The Future Official Sponsors of NWSL. We didn’t just talk about the sponsorship gap. We actually filled it by creating 9 placeholder products for some of the biggest sponsorship categories in sports to show brands what they were missing out on. This approach completely went against everything it meant to be a sponsor of a league. Brands spend massive amounts of time and money to become sponsors of leagues because it gives them access to a passionate fan and customer base. It benefits them substantially. So no brand wants to share that real estate. But we had to do things different because that’s what the league needed. And in the process we changed what it means to call yourself a sponsor.

Scholars, media, and athletes had been talking about the pay gap in women’s sports for decades. Still nothing had changed. So we knew we had to take a different approach. Our strategy for this campaign wasn't to tell brands why they should sponsor the NWSL. It was to prove to them that there was value in doing so. So we used one of our audiences, women’s soccer fans, to reach the other, potential sponsors. We noticed these fans were extremely brand loyal. What they lacked in scale they made up for in passion and purchase-intent. We experienced this first hand after signing up as one of the league’s first sponsors. Our mentions on social media filled up with fans thanking us for our support by buying our beer.

We asked fans of the league to use their voice, and our campaign, to drive real change.

Introducing: The Future Official Sponsors of the NWSL. We didn’t just talk about the sponsorship gap. We actually filled it by creating 9 placeholder products for some of the biggest sponsorship categories in sports, everything from toiletries to timepieces. We created an online marketplace where people could browse the Future Official Products, pledge to purchase them, and even share on social and tag the brands they wanted to see fill that sponsorship vacancy. We used global soccer icon Megan Rapinoe to promote these products on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and in print as if they were real so brands no longer had to imagine what sponsoring the league could look like, they could literally see the benefits of sponsoring the NWSL for themselves. Thousands of fans ran with the campaign, urging their favorite brands to become sponsors and force change in the league. In the end, brands answered the call.

For the 2020 season, the NWSL added 6 new sponsors (P&G, Secret Deodorant, CBS, Twitch, Google and Verizon). But the biggest impact was when the NWSL announced an increase in their salary cap by almost 20%. Columbia University applauded the campaign saying, “Budweiser has redefined the sponsorship model.” And The Athletic added, “Budweiser is upping the ante on what it means to truly support women’s sports.”