“The lack of coverage in women’s basketball has always existed,” said WSLAM director Camille Buxeda. “The formation of this magazine now is a representation of reaching a new point of varied content about women’s basketball.”

WSLAM’s upcoming 82-page special issue will be sent to SLAM’s print subscribers for free and available for purchase on SLAM’s ecommerce site, slamgoods.com, for $8.99. The magazine is timed to publish before the women’s basketball playoffs (and will be available in most WNBA arenas for free) and the week the regular WNBA season ends. Buxeda sees this issue as the potential kick-off for a WSLAM annual magazine, though she did not give exact figures on how many ads will be in the print publication or how many subscribers it has.

WSLAM’s deal with the WNBA includes digital and social extensions of the publication as well. Stories will run online, and video and graphic assets featuring Betnijah Laney, Diamond DeShields and Arike Ogunbowale, the three WNBA players on the cover of the WSLAM magazine, will be distributed on social. The same production, design and sales resources for SLAM’s magazine issues are behind WSLAM’s issue.

The deal with the WNBA is WSLAM’s biggest direct deal so far, according to Camille Buxeda, WSLAM director, who declined to share how much money the WNBA had put down. It’s also WSLAM’s first campaign with the WNBA. “We’re in talks to do a couple more,” Buxeda said (before joining SLAM in 2019, she worked at the WNBA in social and digital content). While the magazine would have been “possible” even without the WNBA’s support, the league’s backing gives the product “a stamp of authenticity,” said Adam Figman, chief content officer of SLAM.

Advertisers’ interest in women’s sports

Women’s sports content has not historically attracted the same level of advertisers’ interest or investment as men’s sports. That might be changing — slowly. Sports marketing agency rEvolution has seen an uptick from brands and sponsors “who have expressed interest in getting more involved in women’s sports and are looking for opportunities to be more equitable in their sponsorship strategies,” said Larry Mann, evp of media and business development at rEvolution.

Kristi Wagner, director of Content+ at media agency Mindshare, said she is seeing a shift in interest from brands in women’s sports. “I would not say it’s as if a switch has flipped and the space is getting flooded with investment, but the interest is noticeably growing,” she said. Her team is in discussion with multiple brands about the landscape of female sports and the opportunities that exist within it.

Big brands are backing women’s basketball. Google announced in May that it would sponsor the WNBA games to bring them …read more

Source:: Digiday

Author: Aaron