“State Farm has jumped into NIL in a way that is smarter, more data-driven and more aggressive than any brand I can think of,” Krim said. “The fans are gonna follow Caitlin into the WNBA. State Farm is going to follow with them, and that kind of money is going to flow through.”

But you don’t necessarily have to have Clark or any other player on the roster to reap the benefits of women’s basketball fandom. During the Final Four, another insurer—Geico—saw ESPN viewers 393% more likely to engage with its ads than a standard primetime spot. By the national championship game, they were 710% more likely to hear what the gecko had to say.

That passion worked in Wendy’s favor as well, as the fast-food chain’s ads during the title game proved 439% more effective than its normal primetime ads.

“I think there’s the perception that you have to have a specific creative for a certain environment, which is fantastic and contextual creative definitely works,” Brown said. “But there’s also an alternative, which is just to have great creative.”

As Disney’s Maddock added, it also helps when a brand’s great creative shows up for women’s sports marketing. EDO pointed out that the top-performing brand in all women’s sports programming last year was New Balance, which was 203% more effective than the average women’s sports advertiser thanks to a campaign with Coco Gauff. 

That intent, according to Deloitte, is why every dollar spent marketing within women’s sports generates more than seven in “customer value for that organization.”

“I don’t know that there’s an exact science to what the recipe for success is,” Maddock said. “But I do think that the first step to that is the intention … being very thoughtful about supporting women’s sports in a way that is new and that makes fans sit up and take notice.”