What Australia’s Top Women’s Sponsors Reveal

And Who’s Leading the Charge.

The visual map of major sponsors across AFL, NRL, netball, cricket, football, basketball, and rugby offers a snapshot of the high-stakes competition and commercial opportunity playing out in women’s sport in 2025. Source: Scout Sept 2025

Key Takeaways: Sponsorship Surge and Strategic Splits

• Women’s sport sponsorship is accelerating, with brand investment now spread across traditional blue-chips (finance, automotive, insurance) and new-gen disruptors (health and wellness, tech, community retail).

• Codes like AFL and netball have attracted notably deep and varied sponsor pools, showing stronger tier-1 commercial activation and more cross-category innovation.

• Football and cricket, while highly visible, rely on a narrower group of repeated sponsors, risking over-reliance and missed diversification.

• Rugby and basketball reveal less crowded partner lists, pointing to untapped visibility and room for challenger brands to “own” their space.

Who’s Doing It Well?

• AFL & Netball:
  The diversity of sponsor logos, spanning household names (nab, Harvey Norman, Hyundai) to specialist brands (Sixt, Outsource, Pepper Money), signals both high market confidence and league-led commercial strategy.
  These codes excel at forging broad, values-led brand partnerships that connect with both participation and fan experience, offering differentiated activation opportunities (grassroots, community programs, digital).

• Basketball:
  Basket-focused partners like Chemist Warehouse and Harvey Norman are bringing sport-wide cohesion and “retail-to-fan” innovation, leveraging sponsorship for national campaigns tied to local activations.

• Netball:
  Satellite brands in health, energy, and services point to netball’s prowess in engaging female decision-makers at family and community levels.

Who Needs to Watch Out?

• Football & Cricket:
  Codes must guard against sponsor monotony, while legacy banks and insurance brands deliver reach, they risk becoming invisible or commoditised if not refreshed with local, purpose-driven partners. Expansion into nutrition, tech, and broader lifestyle can unlock new audiences.

• Rugby:
  Fewer major sponsors suggest a need for renewed commercial strategy, rugby should offer platforms for challenger brands, women’s health, and education to cultivate deeper engagement.

• NRL & Basketball (Breadth vs. Depth):
  NRL has breadth but needs to double down on values-led brand storytelling to convert logos into cultural relevance.

The Brand Opportunity

For new entrants and “rising” sponsors:

• Women’s sport is the fastest-growing space for shifting brand sentiment and driving measurable conversion with Australian families, women, youth, and communities.

• High recall is earned by sponsors that activate locally, tell athlete stories, and lead on issues like health, education, diversity, and sustainability.

What’s Next?

Brands already embedded in major codes must avoid complacency. The power lies not just in logo placement, but in leveraging the partnership to drive movement-building content, digital engagement, and athlete-aligned campaigns. Women’s sport in Australia is an open field and as tiers deepen, the brands who innovate, activate, and embed purpose will win the next sponsorship era.