Football (soccer) is the most popular sport in the world, with billions of fans globally.

Launched by Johnnie Walker, “Watch Women’s Sports” encouraged fans to follow the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup action in Australia and New Zealand by signing up for Match Day Memos created in partnership with the world's most beloved soccer boss, actress Hannah Waddingham.

As women’s soccer was set to take the global stage, Johnnie Walker seized the opportunity to redirect this excitement for local women athletes.

SPORTS VISIBILITY

Organized sports boast viewerships of unparalleled size—by some estimates, football (soccer) alone captivates more than four billion people worldwide. With events like the Olympics and FIFA World Cup drawing visibility across continents, cultures, and communities, there are few things as universal.

WOMEN IN SPORTS

Despite massive sports audiences, women's representation in sports, and especially sports media, is not universal. Though women make up more than 40% of all athletes, they receive less than 10% of total sports news coverage in the United States, an unacceptable lag behind their male counterparts. This systemic challenge results in fewer sponsorships, unequal pay, diminished opportunities, and lowered empowerment, while more visibility for women athletes can lead to more funding, resources and accurate portrayals in culture.

FIRST STRIDES INITIATIVE

Johnnie Walker introduced our First Strides initiative in 2022 to channel the brand’s defiantly optimistic “Keep Walking” motto into a movement of collective progress by celebrating, inspiring and enabling those who break boundaries to move culture forward. Prior to First Strides, Johnnie Walker was already a sponsor of the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) team Angel City FC (ACFC) to celebrate their trailblazing spirit, as the world's first majority women-founded, owned and operated pro-sports teams. As part of our ongoing commitment to foster a culture that uplifts underrepresented communities, Johnnie Walker enacts dedicated programming across four key impact pillars: access, funding, mentorship and visibility. These efforts seek to inspire and enable more firsts—because without the first, there can be no seconds, thirds, or fourths.

WALKING IN HER CLEATS

The world’s #1 Scotch whisky, Johnnie Walker reaches beyond the category’s traditional consumer. Seeking to engage an unexpected community, there was an opportunity for the brand to walk with women sports fans.

WOMEN’S WORLD CUP

2023 put the global spotlight on women athletes with the FIFA Women’s World Cup. With the U.S. national team breaking viewership records and 17.3MM Americans tuning in, our goal was to drive love for the brand and women athletes.

BRIEF

To reinforce Johnnie Walker’s equity in sports mission as part of its First Strides initiative, we would activate against one of the largest cultural moments. Our goal was to create a more inclusive culture by driving awareness around the visibility gap for women in sports, showing the positive impact with more visibility and redirecting the excitement around the tournament to inspire new and existing fans to watch women’s sports.

AUDIENCE INSIGHTS

Despite sports media promoting every game imaginable, only 10% of this attention is dedicated to women's sports. And most of that is during big moments, like the World Cup. Our truth is driven from the fact that women’s sports reach well beyond the stereotypical niches, and fans want to engage. Sometimes they just need a relevant and timely nudge.

TARGET AUDIENCE

•Advocates for cultural progress - especially progress for women.

•Young, diverse people who enjoy spirit - both team spirit, and the kind matured in barrels.

•Global sports community, with a special emphasis on football fans.

COMMUNITY BUILDING

Our activation would be talent driven, supported by press outreach, impactful nonprofit and cultural partnerships, creative merchandising, and content to be distributed across an integrated ecosystem of MMS/SMS messages, dedicated campaign website, and paid and organic social media.

The Women's World Cup is the largest women's sporting event globally with over 1.5 million spectators and reached an estimated 2 billion people in 2023. We wanted to inspire fans to continue to watch women's sports even after the World Cup to support their local teams.

To start the conversation and supercharge a movement for equity in sports, we partnered with actress Hannah Waddingham, from everyone's favorite football show, Ted Lasso. Together, we issued our nation-wide rallying cry: ‘Watch Women Sports’. A powerful video created with our non-profit partner Women’s Sports Foundation, shared curated insights that underscored the positive impact made by tuning into a game.

To sustain fan engagement, we created the Match Day Memos—a series of short video reminders from Waddingham sent via text messages on match days, twelve hours before kick-off.

Our message was clear: Watch Women Sports. This season. Next season. Championship tournaments. Local matches.

Fans connected with Waddingham’s video on social media, calling for audiences to Watch Women’s Sports and sign up for her Match Day Memos.

We announced our campaign during Johnnie Walker’s first-ever Women’s Empowerment Game, played between the brand’s longstanding NWSL partners Gotham Football Club and Angel City FC. It was streamed on Paramount+ and onsite fans enjoyed team-inspired Johnnie Walker cocktails. We commissioned Illustrator Monica Ahanonu to design limited edition Johnnie Walker jerseys which both teams wore to symbolize the one team approach to achieve gender equality. The designs were available for purchase, with a portion of proceeds donated to the Women's Sports Foundation.

Out-of-home and digital campaigns drove fans to watch or attend women's soccer matches in their local communities. Through a watch party series with SB Nation, local guides with Eater, and pre-game celebrations at ACFC and Gotham FC stadiums, we showed fans how to Watch Women's Sports.

MEDIA RESULTS

•750MM+ earned impressions including USA Today, Forbes, People and Variety.

•18.7MM impressions across talent-driven social media, with paid media generating an additional 72MM. Waddingham’s post alone garnered a reach rate of 1,230% (3,860% higher than our initial goal).

CAMPAIGN RESULTS

•2MM+ visits in the weeks following the announcement to our landing page on Just Women's Sports where fans signed up for Match Day Memos.

•$100,000+ was donated to the Women’s Sports Foundation from the limited edition merchandise.

•The Women’s Empowerment Game became Gotham FC’s most-viewed match, drawing 11,010 viewers on Paramount+.

•30K+ fans attended watch parties and game day fan festivals hosted by Johnnie Walker.

IMPACT ON GENDER EQUALITY

•AFCF digital/social audience grew 57.8% YOY since Johnnie Walker’s partnership.

•Through Player 22 – which provides grants for off-field development opportunities for NWSL players within sports – Johnnie Walker helped raise $2M+ for the community with 127K+ Angelenos served.

Attention for women's sports needs to take its rightful place on the global stage. But, coverage of women's sports in the media has barely changed since the 1980s - more than 40 years ago.

And even though more than 40% of all athletes today are women, they receive less than 10% of total sports news coverage. It's time we change this.

Through Johnnie Walker's First Strides Initiative, we helped to celebrate the many achievements in women's soccer and rally everyone to be part of a movement for equity for women's athletes.

Our ask: "Watch Women's Sports". Because when you watch women's sports, you are demanding more attention, more news coverage, more resources and more respect for women athletes. We drew awareness to these barriers and rallied fans to help overcome these challenges through our call to action during one of the biggest cultural moments of the year.