Brands turn to emerging women’s sports leagues to reach young digital natives

Softball. Baseball. Lacrosse. What do these sports have in common? In 2025, they all fielded brand-new professional women’s leagues.

🥎 Athletes Unlimited (AU) branched out beyond softball tournaments to create its first traditional sports league, Athletes Unlimited Softball League (AUSL). Its first season was a smash, drawing record crowds and prominent MLB and ESPN partnerships, with two expansion teams on deck for next year.

🥍 Although AU shuttered its lacrosse arm, the sport is thriving in the new Maybelline Women’s Lacrosse League (WLL). Like AUSL, the WLL kicked off with four teams in healthy markets, and will build on that success with its first full season in 2026.

⚾ Still in its early days, the Women’s Professional Baseball League (WPBL) held tryouts and a draft in 2025 ahead of its inaugural season this August.

This boom in new women’s leagues — which also includes new properties in basketball, soccer, volleyball, and hockey — proves that investing in the professionalization of women’s sports pays off. Despite being in their infancy, these challenger brands are attracting major sponsorship investment, even from newcomers to the sports industry.

Sponsors are turning to emerging leagues because of their unique offerings, especially in terms of audience demographics, digital footprint and reach, and brand affinity and awareness. Plus, there’s plenty of white space at an accessible price point that allows companies to come in as league title sponsors. Getting in on the ground floor.

We’ve seen several brands popular with young girls and women turn toward emerging leagues to break into the sports space. Girls empowerment champion Rebel Girls spotlights all kinds of women making their mark on history, but in 2024, the brand noticed how fans lit up when they saw their favorite women athletes. That December, 45% of its top 20 most-watched YouTube videos focused on sports.

So Rebel Girls decided to lean in, creating a dedicated sports channel (Rebel Girls Sport) and launching partnerships with two emerging women’s sports leagues: League One Volleyball (LOVB) and AUSL. By October 2025, Rebel Girls Sport’s YouTube channel had 8.4M views and 236K hours watched.

As a youth-focused brand, Rebel Girls is looking to reach young Gen Z women and rising Gen Alphas who have demonstrated a love for these sports.Over 1M girls aged 6 to 17 played softball in 2024 as it remains a top five sport for high school girls, while volleyball is one of the most popular sports among high school girls, second only to track & field.

And Rebel Girls is just one example. Lifestyle and wellness trends are fueled by Gen Z, which is why brands like Tonal, Revolve, Hyperice, OnRise, Yeti, and Spanx have all partnered with LOVB. For Spanx and Revolve, these represented their first-ever sports partnerships. Sephora also entered its first-ever sports partnership with innovative basketball league Unrivaled last January, then followed up by striking deals with the WNBA’s Golden State Valkyries and Toronto Tempo, along with AUSL. Beautiful.

Why are these brands choosing emerging leagues over more established options? It all comes back to who and where.

Players were the focus of Sephora’s first-ever sports partnership, and the brand’s content around them primarily lived online. In addition to traditional in-arena signage, they energized the game’s biggest players with glam suite supplies and a branded tunnel walk, where players snapped pregame pics in all their ring-lit glory. Among them was Angel Reese, who even used it to promote her partnership with McDonald’s.

Sephora knew what to do: If it gave players beauty supplies and a place to shine, they would do the rest. It created buzz for the brand as its name was plastered across the photos posted by athletes on social media.

This is how a smart sports partnership operates in 2026, and it’s why brands can lean into emerging sports leagues. In upstart leagues, athletes often drive the conversation, especially on social media, resulting in authentic endorsements from trusted perspectives. We also know that women’s sports fans love brands that support their favorite sports, so sponsoring an emerging league in a significant way wins points with the women’s sports crowd while remaining cost-effective.

Naturally, Unrivaled tunnel walks often went viral, prompting Sephora to double down on its investment in December with an expanded partnership. This includes professional makeup application for athletes, more behind-the-scenes storytelling, a Sephora tunnel walk for fans, and activations at their Miami store. A strong foundation.

Being an early adopter of a women’s sports league leaves a lasting imprint on fans, which fosters brand affinity. In March 2024, Canadian Tire executive Ashley Curran highlighted that after becoming the PWHL’s first sponsor and founding partner, brand affinity shot “through the roof.” In August, Ally sports and entertainment marketing head Stephanie Marciano told us customers who joined through the bank’s sports initiatives are 10x more loyal.

And brands interested in women’s sports audiences are still streaming in. Unrivaled signed Maker’s Mark in its first-ever sports league deal and became Thorne’s first women’s sports deal in December, while Canadian branches of DoorDash and Aveeno recently signed deals with the PWHL. And PWHL newcomers are seeking market-specific visibility through its Takeover Tour: Ally activated in Detroit, where it holds headquarters, while BJ’s Wholesale Club presented the Dallas game amid aggressive expansion plans in the region.

Meanwhile, the white space in less saturated leagues has its own appeal. For example, Maybelline became a title sponsor for the Women’s Lacrosse League based on the league’s rising popularity and Olympic runway leading up to LA28 — all without the IOC price tag. Maybelline New York marketing SVP Jessica Feinstein was drawn to lacrosse because it’s one of the fastest-growing sports in the U.S., especially among high school girls.

Next up to the plate is the WPBL, which tees off next August but has already inked substantial partnerships with media production house Fremantle and iconic hatmaker New Era. Now’s the time to take a swing.