The anatomy of a sports marketing deal with Ally CMO Andrea Brimmer

**Kamiko McCoy** (0:10)
Hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of The Digiday Podcast, a show for anyone scouting out the next frontier of the sports marketing landscape. I'm Kamiko McCoy, Senior Marketing Reporter here at Digiday.

**Tim Peterson** (0:22)
I'm Tim Peterson, Executive Editor of Video and Audio at Digiday Media. What's up, Kamiko, how you been? It's been weeks since we talked. You were at Cannes, and I was out for a couple weeks.

**Kamiko McCoy** (0:31)
I was just about to say, what's up is a loaded question at this point.

**Tim Peterson** (0:35)
Yeah, fair enough. All I am really up to date on is what's been going on in the World Cup. That's what I spent maybe too much of my time while I was out. Although it was fun because San Diego had its county fair going on, and that, well, somewhat fun.
That I went when Mexico and England had their matchup in the World Cup. And so they were just viewing parties all over the fairgrounds because the ton of Mexico fans in the area. Obviously, we're near Mexico. Not so fun for the Mexico fans in the end, but I just got a bunch of World Cup. And so I'm very much in a sports mindset at the moment. And you got a sports episode for us this week.

**Kamiko McCoy** (1:23)
Yes, absolutely. So we teed that up perfectly because this week, I got to talk to Ally Banks CMO, Andrea Brimmer.
One of the things that's interesting about them is a couple of weeks ago, they had reported that they had reached a level of solidarity when it comes to their spend on women's sports and men's sports, which has been a long time coming. But I think what made the most interesting part of the conversation is how a bank like Ally is punching above its weight to strike deals in the sports marketing landscape. And also what becomes the next frontier. There's been a ton of advertisers that you've seen and I've seen flooding the World Cup, flooding basketball, flooding football. So where Andrea and Ally Banks got their eyes on next, as it becomes a bigger play.

**Tim Peterson** (2:09)
So no full spoilers because I want to listen to the conversation and get up to speed that way. But tease it out for me a bit. Like what's on the frontier? What's the next horizon here in sports marketing?

**Kamiko McCoy** (2:20)
Okay. I won't give away too much. But one of the things that she said was very interesting is obviously looking toward creators, athletes as creators in their own rights.
But also what does a crossover look like between something like, for instance, golf and hockey and having a creator that does a podcast kind of show up in social media space. So it's really kind of spaghetti noodles at the wall for some of these things. But I think she's being really, and the team is being a lot more imaginative when it comes to what a sponsorship could look like and how to move beyond just plastering your name everywhere.

**Tim Peterson** (2:53)
Okay. I'm curious about this golf hockey crossover, because all I can think of is Happy Gilmore at the moment. But maybe that is what you both were talking about. Now, I'm definitely interested to listen to this interview. So I guess, should we just cut to it right now?

**Kamiko McCoy** (3:06)
With no further ado. Andrea, welcome to the show.

**Andrea Brimmer** (3:16)
Thank you so much, I'm glad to be with you again.

**Kamiko McCoy** (3:19)
I am so glad to have you on. I think it would be a very low statement to say that sports marketing is booming right now.
We just had the 2026 NBA playoffs that just finished. The FIFA World Cup is wrapping up, and then you turn around and you've got the WNBA All-Star Game that's starting up. So live sports advertising is a big moment. I think I saw that it was reported to become a more than $20 billion business next year, and I'm sure this year's ad spend is not too far behind. So a lot of the headlines that I see tend to focus on these big billion dollar league rights and Super Bowl sponsorships and global partnerships that are coming, that are maybe out of reach for a lot of marketers. Ally has taken a different approach. So that's what I want to dig into in this episode and think of it as a sports marketing playbook guide. So super excited to have you on the show to talk through how Ally decides where to invest and what makes the sponsorship worth pursuing and what marketers should do to negotiate things beyond logo placement and all of that good stuff. How's that sound?