- Key Insight: A full year sooner than expected, Ally Financial has achieved gender parity in its sponsorship of men's and women's sports.
- Supporting Data: From 2022 to 2026, Ally changed its ratio of sports advertising from 90-10, in men's favor, to 50-50.
- Expert Quote: "I'm going to give myself a minute to celebrate this over the course of the next week, and then we're going to get right back to work on it," said Andrea Brimmer, Ally's chief marketing officer.
In 2022, Ally Financial made a pledge to spend equal advertising dollars on men's and women's sports. It was an ambitious goal, but company executives believed they could do it in five years.
As it turns out, it only took four.
On April 14, Ally announced that it had reached gender parity in its sports media spending, a full year ahead of schedule.
"I'm really proud of our company," Andrea Brimmer, Ally's chief marketing and public relations officer, told American Banker. "This took a lot of people to support it, to believe in it, to continue to encourage us to invest in it."
Just four years ago, the $196 billion-asset company, which is best known for its auto lending business and its online bank, was devoting about 90% of its sports media buys to men's athletics.
Then came the 50th anniversary of Title IX, the landmark civil rights law that mandated equal educational opportunities, including in sports, for male and female students. To honor that anniversary — a meaningful one for Brimmer, who played on Michigan State's first varsity women's soccer team — Ally decided to change that 90-10 split to 50-50.
The bank announced its pledge on May 4, 2022. At the time, Brimmer said, she "totally underestimated" how well that goal would pay off.
"It blew up, in a good way," Brimmer said. "It just became this galvanizing moment where women's sports started to get incredible momentum."
Over the next few years, the popularity of women's sports exploded. In 2025, the Women's National Basketball Association held its most-watched season ever, and the National Women's Soccer League's championship match drew more than 1 million viewers for the first time in its history, according to
Meanwhile, Ally's logo started appearing on a growing number of women's jerseys and in sports arenas. The Detroit-based lender became the official banking partner of both the WNBAand the NWSL, the presenting partner of the U.S. Women's Open golf championship, and a sponsor of the Atlantic Coast Conference's women's basketball, soccer and lacrosse championships.
As Ally's spending benefited women's sports, those sports began to benefit Ally as well. Josh Mabus, CEO of the marketing firm Mabus Agency, believes Ally immensely improved its brand image by associating itself with the "W" leagues.
"When you can do well by doing good — meaning, you can increase your goodwill, you can prove your values to the community through this vehicle, and that aligns with your brand message of being an ally — those are the things that begin to add up as a no-brainer," Mabus told American Banker.
Ally says it didn't reach its 50-50 goal by spending less on men's sports. From 2022 to 2025, Ally maintained a consistent level of expenditure on men's events, all while rapidly ramping up its support for women's leagues, according to the company.
Mabus said Ally's commitment to gender parity may put pressure on other brands to follow the same principle.
"There's just more scrutiny," he said. "When people begin to look at your balance sheet and see you putting an unequal amount towards men's sports, … some may say, 'Maybe I won't look good because of this.'"
Today Ally has fulfilled its pledge, but Brimmer says the bank won't stop there. In fact, she said, by the end of the year its sports spending may well reach a 60-40 split — in women's favor.
"This is the bar now. We're not coming off of this bar," Brimmer said. "I'm going to give myself a minute to celebrate this over the course of the next week, and then we're going to get right back to work on it."
