The Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) has stormed out of the gate since the league kicked off in January. An audience of 2.9 million viewers in Canada watched the first PWHL game on New Year’s Day on CBC, Sportsnet, and TSN. Then Toronto hosted Montreal in the “Battle on Bay Street” at Scotiabank Arena on March 3, with 19,285 in attendance, the largest crowd ever for a women’s hockey game.
The PWHL has announced partnerships with Hyundai Auto Canada, Royale, Molson, Barbie, Rogers, AIRSUPRA, Discover, Women’s Sports Network, Air Canada, Line Change, Bauer, CCM, Bread Financial, and Canadian Tire Corporation, and they have an exclusive license with Upper Deck.
In addition, last Friday, the league reported a partnership with e.l.f. Cosmetics, with the beauty brand now an Official PWHL Partner and presenting sponsor of PWHL Takeover Weekend, March 16-17 in Detroit and Pittsburgh. Deals have been flying around like the tic-tac-toe of puck movement on a power play. Impressive.
So where’s the betting sponsor?
Bigger-name operators tripped all over themselves to tie down expensive sponsorship deals with sports leagues, individual teams, and players when when the Ontario igaming market launched in April 2022.
“To be honest, I am a little surprised that there hasn’t been a sportsbook partner for the PWHL, especially after watching some of the games and seeing how competitive and high quality the hockey is,” said Aly Lalani, an igaming-industry consultant. “Reach is still the primary issue. The main goal of a sponsorship, in my opinion, is the reach it provides to the fan/user/customer.
“As of right now, I think most operators see the reach as being a little limited still for the PWHL, so the sponsorship dollars are still going to what could be termed second-tier men’s sports (curling, golf). I think another part of this is the (perception) that only women watch women’s sports, so operators see these marketing dollars outside of their core acquisition demographic.
“I think there are two misconceptions there. First, as someone who is a frequent watcher of women’s tennis, golf, and UFC, as long as the quality of the competition is similar to the men’s game, the audience will be more diverse than operators think (and the PWHL definitely fits the bill in terms of quality play).
“The second misconception is that women don’t bet on sports. Again, if compared to the male counterparts of most large operators’ databases, women are a much smaller percentage of total, but I bet that in most cases, it’s a growing percentage.”
Calls and email from CDC Gaming Reports to speak with someone at the PWHL about this were not returned.
Amanda Brewer, an igaming-industry consultant, said that two years into the Ontario open market, igaming operators who have deeper pockets for advertising and sponsorships and who were in the market in the first year are shifting budgets from acquisition to retention. She also pointed to the impact of recently implemented changes to provincial-regulator advertising standards, forbidding operators from using professional athletes in ads that promote igaming, the exception being ads that promote responsible gambling.
“There might be an unwillingness to sign up more individual athletes who can now only be used for RG,” she said.
Professor David Soberman, Canadian National Chair in Strategic Marketing at the Rotman School of Management of Toronto, says it’s still early for the PWHL; thus, people thinking about sponsorship deals on the igaming end have very limited information on PWHL viewership. Betting operators likely need more time to gauge its popularity and viewership numbers.
And where are the PWHL betting markets? Quick glances at BetMGM (2024 PWHL Champion futures), FanDuel, and BetRivers (betting on this past weekend’s games, and futures betting on the league champion) show that’s slowly changing, with more being offered. However, DraftKings, Proline, and PointsBet Canada, for example, were offering no markets this weekend.
The curiosity of the people at Betty about doing a sponsorship deal with the PWHL has piqued, even though Betty doesn’t offer sports betting. Betty is a female-focused online-casino platform, going hard at the Ontario market.
Betty’s Head of Marketing Riona Mohan said she attended a PWHL game at Scotiabank Arena a few weeks ago with a group of girlfriends “and the energy was incredible.”
“It’s really interesting that they haven’t secured an igaming sponsor yet,” Mohan said. “If there was an opportunity to engage with that audience and support the PWHL in the future, I’m sure we would seriously consider it. Based on our player demographics, specifically locations, I’m quite certain our players are hockey fans. I’m really curious about that now. I’m going to ask a cohort of players what their affinity towards sports/women’s sports is like.”
The PWHL regular season wraps up May 5. Maybe during the course of our reporting, we’ve stumbled across an opportunity for Betty. Or maybe there’s a deal brewing with another operator. We’ll report back as that does, or doesn’t, evolve.
