Want to know what being an ally actually looks like?
Ally Financial (no pun intended) signed on as Unrivaled’s founding partner in July 2024 when the league was basically just an idea and two WNBA stars with ambition. There was no venue yet, no media deal, and most players hadn’t even been announced.
Heck, not a single game had even been played by that point!
But Ally had already spent time figuring out what was actually holding women’s sports back. And it wasn’t the talent or the fans, because both of those existed. It was that nobody was spending money on media to let people actually watch.
That realization led them to launch their 50/50 media equity pledge back in 2022, a commitment to spend equally on men’s and women’s sports media. What set it apart was the honesty. Ally admitted they were part of the problem, spending 90% of their sports media budget on men’s sports just like everyone else. They said it publicly and tracked their progress publicly.
At a panel discussion in Miami this weekend, Stephanie Marciano, Ally’s Head of Brand and Sports Marketing, explained how they got there. “We stepped back and asked, what is holding back this industry? What are the biggest barriers to the growth of women’s sports? And all the insights were telling us that the disparity in media was what was holding women’s sports back. The fact that ninety percent of media was spent on men’s sports and only ten percent was spent covering women’s sports. How could an industry thrive if they only have ten percent of media coverage?”
Now they’re on track to hit that 50/50 goal in 2026, a year ahead of schedule. The company’s brand valuation is up 31% while the financial services category overall is declining.
So when Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier announced Unrivaled in July 2023, Ally saw their opening. They’d been looking for an entry point into professional women’s basketball. Within 12 months they’d signed on as the founding partner.
Ally backed that commitment with a media spend, which gave Unrivaled leverage when they needed to negotiate broadcast deals. Media deals make or break startup leagues, and Ally’s early money helped Unrivaled secure their partnership with TNT Sports, which gave the league the kind of visibility it needed to attract players, fans, and more sponsors.
“We believed in the leadership and the vision—building something that was player-built and player-owned,” Marciano said. “They gave us a seat at the table. So coming on as a founding partner, they asked us so many questions. What do you guys want to see in this league? And you know, let’s try to help, let’s try to build this together.”
For Unrivaled, having Ally attached from day one sent a signal. Kirby Porter, the league’s Chief Brand Officer, said it gave them credibility with other sponsors (now have over 20). But it also aligned with how Unrivaled wanted to build: digital-first, storytelling-first, giving fans the kind of access to players they’d never had before.
“If you build a league with the intent of being digital first, storytelling first,” Porter said. “You’ll see how social-first we are and how much content we’re pumping out for the league in a way where it’s really just provided a new level of access to the players, to the fans.” The goal, Porter explained, was to extend the women’s basketball season, keep players visible year-round, and build deeper connections with fans.
That visibility piece is exactly what Ally’s been working toward. Marciano described their approach as making it easier to be a women’s sports fan. “The fandom was there. The product on the court was there. But we’ve got to be able to get the product to the fans and serve that fan demand. And that’s what all this work with media equity has been about.”
She added that Ally’s 50/50 pledge was designed to change the media imbalance at the root of the problem: “It was about getting better time slots for women’s sports, growing the storytelling and the narratives.”
The numbers from Unrivaled’s first season show it worked. The league averaged 221,000 viewers on TNT and truTV for the season, reaching 11.9 million total viewers. They generated over 589 million social media impressions, and the aggregate social following for all Unrivaled players grew by 947,000 since January 2025. Oh, and did I mention they sold out a 20,000-seat venue in Philadelphia for their first road game?
But maybe more important than viewership is what the league did for the players themselves. Unrivaled kept them in the U.S. during the WNBA offseason, paid them the highest average salaries in women’s basketball, and gave them equity stakes in the league. That’s money directly in players’ pockets and a different model for how women’s professional sports can work.
Ally’s been making power moves like this across a variety of women’s sports, too. They worked with the NWSL and CBS to move a professional women’s championship into primetime for the first time ever in 2022, and they became the WNBA’s official banking partner in 2025, signing top draft pick Paige Bueckers, who’s also now playing in Unrivaled’s second season alongside veterans like Stewart.
The question both Ally and Unrivaled are asking now is what comes next. At the panel, Marciano posed it directly: what does the industry need now that it didn’t need five years ago, but that it needs now?
Part of the answer seems to be more brands willing to make early commitments that actually matter (and not just slapping logos on things) but investing in the media infrastructure that lets fans watch and follow women’s sports in the first place. “Our touchstone has always been ‘make it easier to be a women’s sports fan,'” Marciano said.
Turns out when you remove the barriers to watching, people will watch. Unrivaled’s proof of that. And Ally’s bet that media equity could help build something from nothing is looking smarter every day.