On the latest episode of JaneWallStreet Presents: At The Table, a biweekly podcast exploring the intersection of sports, media, and finance through the lens of (mostly) female decision-makers, JaneWallStreet Executive Chair Deirdre Lester sits down with ATHLOS Acting President Kayla Green.

In this 50-minute conversation, the pair discuss a multitude of topics including:

Gender-Neutral Branding

ATHLOS takes its name from the ancient Greek word for athlete, a nod to the competition’s competitive spirit and to Seven Seven Six’s own Olympic-era inspiration. Of course, 776 BC is the year of the very first Games. 

The decision to avoid a moniker explicitly signaling that the sport features female athletes was an intentional one.

“As a marketer working in women's sports today, we're really thinking about how do you build something that isn't gendered? 'Cause you don't have to. It should just be sports, not women's sports,” Green said. “If you were to talk to anybody at the NWSL or the WNBA, they would tell you, ‘We'd love to drop the W. We'd love to just be the league.’ So, when we were building ATHLOS, there was always this [mentality] of like, why would you have to create a gendered name? [Branding is part of what is] really exciting about starting something new.”

Turning Athlete Access into a Competitive Advantage
  
ATHLOS’ biggest commercial advantage may be its flexibility. The league can connect brands directly with its athletes as part of large sponsorship packages.

“What we've been able to do with brand partners is, because we built this league ourselves [and] don't have a CBA, we don't have layers to work through and a players' association to get to [a specific] athlete, [create a more direct path between sponsors and talent]. A brand comes in and we say… ‘who do you want to go ahead and work with’. It's a little bit like a marketplace,” Green said. “It's a newer model, especially in brand sponsorships.”

But its early sponsorship success is not simply a byproduct of access. ATHLOS has made those partnerships easier to execute, faster to activate, and more useful to both the brand and athlete.

“That's where the speed to feed, quality of the storytelling, the athlete platforming and content, really being intentional about building with [sponsors] and [embracing] feedback [makes a difference],” Green said. “Brands see [the output] and they're like, ‘wait, this is so easy. We love this. We're coming back again.’”

Using Esports’ Playbook to Grow Fandom

ATHLOS NYC drew 4.5 million television viewers in year two after adding ION as a linear TV partner in the U.S. The meet drew another 25mm+ impressions across social channels. That scale is a byproduct of its esports-influenced approach to cultivating fandom.

“The idea of being non-exclusive…it was really about creating accessibility [to] the sport and making sure that the distribution was as far and wide as it could possibly be,” Green said, including across individual streamer channels. “Some of my work in gaming really played into this. In 2019, viewership of [the] League of Legends World Championship eclipsed that of the Super Bowl. Why [was] that...It was all of the Twitch streams of all of the creators that are commentating on top of the live stream…[Well,] there are creators in every sport…and we went and found them [with]in the world of track and field.”

📺 Watch the full episode on JohnWallStreet’s YouTube page.
🎧 Listen or watch on Spotify.

We’ll be back with the next episode of JaneWallStreet Presents: At The Table in two weeks. Former CBS News President & CEO, former ABC Owned Television Stations President, and current beehiiv and Merzigo advisor Wendy MacMahon will be our guest.

Catch previous episodes of At The Table, including our sit-down with LOVB Chief Growth Officer Stephanie Alger, Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) Global Head of Sports Julie Souza, Head of Fubo Sports Network & Fubo Studios Pamela Duckworth, and former Barstool Sports CEO & current Mule Media Co-Founder Erika Badan on JohnWallStreet’s YouTube channel.

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