WBD Bets on Gen Z Star Power to Promote Basketball World Cup
Warner Bros. Discovery is promoting its first FIBA Women's Basketball World Cup with personality-led content and YouTube co-streams, betting that stars like Caitlin Clark can draw fans and advertisers.
Updated
The brief
- This is WBD's first year holding FIBA rights; coverage runs on TNT, TBS, and HBO Max across all 36 tournament games.
- WBD co-streamed two Team USA games on YouTube—a first for the company—aimed at younger audiences.
- Tournament sponsors include halftime presenting partner Arkay Spirits, AT&T, Tissot, and DraftKings; Arkay also sponsors game recaps on House of Highlights' YouTube channel.
Warner Bros. Discovery is promoting its first year holding FIBA Women's Basketball World Cup rights with a strategy built squarely on athlete personalities—and on reaching younger fans where they already watch.
The US Women's National Basketball Team is competing in Berlin for its fifth consecutive gold medal at the FIBA Women's Basketball World Cup. With the WNBA season on break to accommodate the tournament, US fans can watch all the action on WBD platforms, including TNT, TBS, and HBO Max.
Though this is WBD's first year holding FIBA rights, women's basketball properties like Unrivaled and college hoops are a key focus of the media company's sports rights portfolio, according to Stefanie Rapp, SVP of sports strategy for WBD Ad Sales.
With a roster that includes international starpower and women's sports fandom growing around the world, investing in the Women's Basketball World Cup made sense for WBD, Rapp said—along with promotion plans designed to drive tune-in.
"Usually, we put more of a cookie-cutter promotion plan in place," she told Marketing Brew. "We're not doing that with this, and I think a big reason is because we want to make sure we get behind the scenes, and make sure the personalities of the players are front and center."
Young and talented
This year's Team USA roster skews younger. Paige Bueckers, Angel Reese, and Caitlin Clark are all making their debuts on the senior national team. With A'ja Wilson and Kelsey Plum out due to health reasons, Sonia Citron and Kiki Iriafen—both in their sophomore WNBA seasons—are playing as injury replacements.
Many of the debut players are already household names, which is why WBD is centering its tournament content largely on the athletes, Rapp said. Ahead of Team USA's first game on Friday, the WBD content team began posting tune-in messaging across its accounts, including Bleacher Report, House of Highlights, and B/R W, the Bleacher Report women's sports page.
From the start, the content highlighted the players' eccentric personalities—the younger cohort calls itself the "Young and Turnt Crew"—featuring everything from Bueckers twerking on a wall to player superlatives, impressions, and clapbacks. Now, with the tournament in full swing, the social content mixes player personality videos and on-court highlights "across all distribution points," Rapp said.
Beyond social posts and coverage of all 36 games, WBD co-streamed two Team USA games on YouTube—a first for the company, designed to reach younger fans.
"There's this big misconception that the younger generation has no attention span," she said. "They're not watching live TV, which is true, however, they are consuming live games if you distribute them on the platforms where they already are."
Brand ball
The Team USA athletes don't only bring viewers; they also attract advertisers. Sponsors of WBD's tournament coverage include halftime presenting partner Arkay Spirits, AT&T, Tissot, and DraftKings.
Some brands are also sponsoring assets outside the game itself, Rapp said. Arkay Spirits, for instance, sponsors game recaps on the WBD-owned House of Highlights YouTube channel in addition to its in-broadcast signage.
The FIBA tournament doesn't carry the same US profile as other international sporting events, but the Team USA players' names carry enough weight to help kickstart the ad sales process, Rapp said.
"You talk about the players, and it just speaks volumes," she said. "These have become, crazy enough, real household names at this point. For some of them, it's the first time they're on our platform…For others, like Paige [Bueckers] with Unrivaled, we know that when Paige has a role on our platform, we see spikes in audience, so you start putting the puzzle together, if you will, for these advertisers."
Based on Marketing Brew; instagram.com
Filed under warner-bros-discovery, women-s-basketball, sports-marketing, gen-z, fiba
Amara Osei
Show full bio
News editor covering industry trends and analytics at Marketing Herald.