Latest / The BIG LIFE / Wrapping Up Season 2 with Andrea Brimmer: The Evolution of Women's Sports and Ally's 50/50 Pledge

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Wrapping Up Season 2 with Andrea Brimmer: The Evolution of Women's Sports and Ally's 50/50 Pledge · The BIG LIFE

• 0:05
  Hey socceristas and welcome back to the
• 0:07
  big life podcast we are so so thankful to
• 0:10
  have you guys here and so thankful so that you guys always tune
• 0:13
  in week after week to the big life you know
• 0:16
  i know that this season has been a bit crazy with jordan and
• 0:19
  i getting used to being on different continents trying
• 0:22
  to continue to get out content that you guys really can
• 0:25
  relate to and discuss as we talk about our lives and
• 0:28
  everything that's going on and i'm so grateful for everyone
• 0:31
  who's tuned in on this journey for everyone who's reached out this
• 0:34
  season has brought so many memories of vulnerability and
• 0:38
  highs and lows from both jordan and i and i couldn't be more
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  thankful for our audience to keep supporting us that being said this is unfortunately
• 0:45
  the last episode of this season yes of the season we will be back come end of
• 0:51
  july august we will back covering women's college shocker from afar from my
• 0:55
  perspective and in close from Jordan's perspective,
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  as well as what the fall can look like as a professional athlete and continuing
• 1:03
  the highs and lows of this Swedish season for me and the Domos Vonskin.
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  There's so many moments and so many memories that I look forward to continuing
• 1:11
  and going forth. But with summer, we're going to take a little break.
• 1:14
  Jordan's going to enjoy her last summer before going into her senior year.
• 1:17
  We can't bog her down with too much work.
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  And I'm in the middle of my season. I have four more games before a little bit
• 1:23
  of break during the end or middle of July.
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  And then we are back at it with the second half of our season.
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  So, so many exciting things going on in the world with the big life.
• 1:33
  And we're just so looking forward to coverage, you know, in the next season,
• 1:36
  we're going to be talking about the Olympics. We're going to be breaking down games.
• 1:39
  We're going to be talking about moments leading up to college soccer,
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  what those moments are like, what early fall games, you know,
• 1:45
  last year we talked about them from both of our perspectives. So it'll be interesting.
• 1:49
  What the big 10 looks like. There's so many questions that we will have answered
• 1:52
  when we come into next season.
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  And I'm so, so excited to cover that all with you guys, Jordan,
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  unfortunately, like I said, we're balancing being on different continents,
• 2:01
  time schedules, all these things.
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  And I actually am super, super lucky.
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  And my mom just got to Sweden this week. And then it's going to be followed
• 2:08
  up by a little bit of summer of some amazing guests, including our own girls
• 2:12
  soccer network, Maddie Sabatier, who edits these podcasts and does great things.
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  So I'm so excited to see her in Sweden.
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  So with some of my visitors kicking in, I have to be respectful for the people
• 2:22
  that flew across the world, but also continue to give you guys all my focus.
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  So we're going to take a little bit of a break.
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  That way, when we're back, we're back and we're big and bigger than ever.
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  This is an incredible interview that Jordan has done with Andrea Bremer over
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  at Ally talking about the growth of women's sports, talking about all the ways
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  that Ally has supported women's sports and so many different things about the
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  the investment of the game and how we've seen it grow.
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  So it's truly an inspirational one to leave us on season two on a high note,
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  talking about so many exciting things in the future of the women's game that
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  we're so, so thankful to companies like that for contributing and giving us their time.
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  So this is an incredible interview to wrap up season two, and I cannot wait
• 3:02
  to keep you all updated with season three.
• 3:04
  As always follow girl soccer network on Instagram, follow Sam,
• 3:07
  Carrie, follow Jordan, Wicca's keep to date on our journeys,
• 3:10
  ask us questions, reach out.
• 3:12
  We're over than happy to help but for now listen to
• 3:14
  this incredible interview hey though see you guys
• 3:17
  all right welcome back everyone to the
• 3:21
  big life podcast today we have very special guest miss andrea brimmer so you've
• 3:26
  made history and are leading the change in women's sports from a business perspective
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  but before you were the chief marketing and pr officer at ally financial you're
• 3:34
  the leading from the field as a member of michigan state's first ever women's varsity soccer team.
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  Can you tell us a little bit about you and your soccer journey?
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  Yeah, it was a long time ago. I always joke and tell my kids it was like we
• 3:46
  used to carve our ball out of a stone when I actually played.
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  But I started my soccer journey very early in the YMCA League in Livonia,
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  Michigan. I think I was in like fourth grade.
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  And it was the first time soccer was even available to anybody in the community.
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  And I just absolutely fell in love with the game and really played my kind of entire youth journey.
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  Played. We didn't really have travel teams. They were more like select teams back then.
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  So I played a lot of select soccer, played high school soccer,
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  and I played at Livonia Stevenson.
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  Livonia Stevenson was like a soccer powerhouse.
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  And I made the team as a sophomore, the varsity team as a sophomore,
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  and played three years of varsity soccer at Michigan State.
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  And my senior year was the first year they actually had a state championship for girls.
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  And we won the State Championship that year at Flint Atwood Stadium.
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  We beat Sangin up 7-0, which is a pretty good beatdown for a state championship.
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  And then came up to Michigan State. And when I came up to Michigan State,
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  it was still a clump sport, but there was a lot of emphasis and focus around
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  trying to achieve our city status.
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  And so the girls kind of came together and we bombarded the athletic department
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  and talked to anybody we could talk to and played as full of a schedule as we
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  could play and tried to bring as much awareness as possible to why we should get varsity status.
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  And we were able to achieve that while I was there. And I got to play four years at Michigan State.
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  We were only the second Big Ten team to have varsity status.
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  So it was pretty cold. But unfortunately, when I graduated, you know,
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  my soccer career had to end. There was nowhere to go.
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  You know, I played ODP, but there really wasn't a national team.
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  There was no such thing as, you know, national camps like there are now.
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  There was no professional women's soccer league of any sort.
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  And so I had to, you know, I had to get a job and go into real life.
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  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I've heard that's a big part of your story is that
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  you want to be able to push so that no kid has to go and kind of end their career
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  without any options for her.
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  Yeah, I mean, honestly, it was a big hole in my heart, like it still is today.
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  My biggest dream would have been to play for the national team,
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  you know, play in an Olympics or play in a World Cup.
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  And that just wasn't a possibility. And so a lot of what I have committed and Ally has committed,
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  particularly with our 50-50 media equity pledge between men's and women's sports,
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  is that no little girl is ever going to have to feel like she's got a dead end
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  in her sports career or she isn't worthy of prime time or any of the things
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  that I felt as I transitioned out of sports and just like,
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  you know, you come out of college and you're in prime shape, you're in prime playing.
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  Condition and it just ends and it's really abrupt and it's a really hard transition.
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  Transition and for those people that don't want to
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  have that transition I don't want them to have to feel like there's
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  nowhere to go absolutely and you know
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  me and Sam talk about it a lot just how much everything's changed
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  in our time here I'm going into my senior year Sam is now playing professionally
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  over in Sweden she's normally the co-host here unfortunately because she's in
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  Sweden she couldn't make it today but just how many options there are for us
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  now that weren't even here when we started this process and how much women's
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  sports and especially women's soccer is growing.
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  Yeah, it's amazing. And it's awesome. I'm so happy for you guys.
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  Yeah, thank you. And we owe it a lot to you. And you guys paved the way for us.
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  Especially being a Michigan State alum, I love hearing the story of how you
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  guys got the varsity status that I can now just sit back and enjoy. And it means so much.
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  And you mentioned Allie's 50-50 pledge, which I definitely want to dive a little
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  bit into because as you trailblazed at Michigan State leading the way there.
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  You also led the way in terms of media rights and equity and equality in terms
• 7:53
  of women's and men's sports for Ally Financial.
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  Can you tell us a little bit about the pledge and what it means?
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  Yeah, absolutely. And before I do, just on your note about us paving the way,
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  you guys are definitely making us proud.
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  So back-to-back Big Ten championships, deep run in the tournament.
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  It's incredible to see how you guys seize the opportunity and what's happening with this program.
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  And I saw a stat in social media the other day about Jeff having one of the
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  highest winning percentages, like right up there with legendary coaches like
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  Anson, which is just really cool to see Michigan State in that company.
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  So kudos to you guys. But the pledge
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  really emanated out of the 50th anniversary of Title IX and is a product of
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  Title IX and also being on the board of the Women's Sports Foundation that was
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  started by Billie Jean King with a really big primary focus to protect Title
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  IX, which is coming under siege.
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  There's a lot of pressure around Title IX.
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  We wanted to do something substantive to recognize that 50th anniversary and
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  to celebrate the power of what Title IX has done, particularly for so many women.
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  And we saw this really interesting insight that less than 5% of the media coverage
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  was going to women's sports.
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  And we did some quick back of the napkin math and realized that as a brand,
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  95% of our investment was going into men's sports media and about 5% was going into women's.
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  And we never would have thought about it if we hadn't seen that stat, to be honest with you.
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  And so we just came up with this crazy idea of what if we could get to 50-50
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  and what if we could pledge that publicly?
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  And I'm really good friends with Julie Foudy, who was, you know,
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  one of the 99ers and a pretty big name in the soccer world from her time with
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  the national team and ESPN and all the things that she does there.
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  Has a good podcast of her own, Left or Permitted, which is awesome.
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  And I called Foudy. She was hosting the ESPNW Summit. And I said,
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  hey, we've got this big announcement we want to make.
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  Can we make it live at the summit? And she's like, absolutely.
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  So we live streamed into the summit and surprised everyone.
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  My team, all the people that were in the audience, and people just went wild. And it's pretty cool.
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  Two years later, by the end of this year, we're going to be within spinning
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  distance of being right at 50-50 between men's and women's sports.
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  That is absolutely incredible. And it breaks my heart a little to hear the initial
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  stat, less than 5%. That's a tough pill to swallow as a woman in sports.
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  So to see you guys kind of paving the way, what kind of pushback did you get?
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  I And I don't assume that that was an easy thing to do. That's a large jump. Yeah.
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  You know, the biggest pushback is that there is this misperception.
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  I don't know that many people believe it today, just two years later.
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  But at the time, there was this massive misperception that nobody wants to watch women's sports.
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  And, of course, when it's on at 3 o'clock in the morning on ESPN 10,
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  no, nobody wants to get up and watch it.
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  But when you put women's sports in primetime slots, you put them on Saturday
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  afternoons, you put them on primetime slots on the weekends,
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  the numbers have demonstrated that people will watch.
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  And I could rattle off a whole bunch of statistics, but we were instrumental
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  in getting the NWSL championship game moved to primetime.
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  And there was a 76% increase in viewership. We had almost a million people that
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  watched the game that night versus.
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  Really low number the year before when it was on, you know, 12 o'clock on a Saturday afternoon.
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  Look at the women's, you know, basketball championships. I don't think anybody
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  needs to repeat those numbers.
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  Outperformed men's March Madness the last two years in a row.
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  NWSL is shattering all kinds of viewership records this year just by having
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  a broadcast contract that has a lot of prime time slots and access.
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  And so the biggest pushback was really that, that people don't care about women's
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  sports. Nobody's going to watch.
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  And we had to overcome that by creating the media and forcing the legacy media
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  platforms to think differently about the opportunity.
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  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So when you say you had to change kind of the media and create it,
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  when you're trying to buy 50% of media rights for women's sports,
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  did you have to create the media to buy yourself or is it moving around? How did that look like?
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  Yeah, so I'll give you a great example. We did a multi-million dollar deal with
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  Disney, who owns obviously ESPN and ABC and Hulu and a lot of big platforms, right?
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  And I sat with Rita Farrow, who's the head of Disney Advertising and Sales,
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  and we talked about this vision for 50-50.
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  And we literally sat down, her team and my team, and part of the multi-million
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  dollar deal was that we said 98% of our investment had to go into women's sports. And...
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  The women's sports that they carried, whether it was soccer,
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  volleyball, basketball, softball, had to be moved into track and field,
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  had to be moved into prime time slots that we would not accept like a 3 a.m.
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  Softball game on ESPN.
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  So we literally sat for months and the network moved around media and programming
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  to put them into time slots that were acceptable to us.
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  And then we also created what we call in the industry shoulder content.
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  And it was really cool. What we did is we worked with ESPN and we produced two
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  different sports center segments that were all written by women,
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  all women anchors, all women behind the camera, 100% female produced,
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  created, and delivered.
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  And that was shoulder content that surrounded the media that focused on the
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  sports that we had moved into primetime.
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  So that's one great example. The other example was the work that we did with
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  CBS and NWSL to move that championship game into primetime. And,
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  you know, I know we talked about it before, but think about it.
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  That was two years ago. It was the first time a women's championship game in
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  any sport had been played in Network Prime.
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  And that was because we demanded that the game get moved and put together a
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  substantive media package around it that would allow CBS to be able to monetize
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  and drive revenue off of having it in primetime.
• 14:47
  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's
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  a huge undertaking and we've seen how it's grown in the past two years.
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  And you have the shirts where everyone watches women's sports.
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  You got the Caitlin Clark era in the WNBA now.
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  You're building stadiums for women's only sports. It has grown so much.
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  And a large part of that is what you guys started there with this 50-50 pledge.
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  So you talked about the conversations in the media and being able to obtain
• 15:10
  those from an outside view.
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  How was it like getting your team on board with this idea and the company convincing
• 15:16
  them to move, you know, 45% of your funding from wherever it was into women's sports? Yeah.
• 15:23
  You know, look, from the team perspective, it's really interesting.
• 15:27
  My sports marketing team is primarily all women and everybody's a former athlete.
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  So you've got myself obviously playing at Michigan State.
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  My head of sports marketing was the captain of the basketball team at Princeton.
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  Or no, Yale. I'm sorry, she'll kill me if I say Princeton, Yale.
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  That's like saying we went to Michigan. again.
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  Never. Everybody played a sport.
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  I've got softball players, soccer players, basketball players.
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  And so there was a lot of heart and a lot of pride for doing this.
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  And the point that I think is really important that I want to underscore there
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  is that when you have women sitting at the the table in decision-making positions,
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  you can have different conversations.
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  And so that part was a really easy conversation. I would say across,
• 16:21
  you know, our CEO and kind of across the C-suite and our board,
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  it's also been a huge pride point. Everybody.
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  Believes in this, not just because it's the right thing to do,
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  but because it's delivering business results.
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  Our brand value is the highest it's ever been.
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  It took a 32% jump year over year, the highest it's been in five years.
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  We're at historic highs across all of our KPIs that we measure.
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  We've delivered billions of impressions. The amount of attention that we've
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  gotten as a brand, you know, in the media, in the process, being the architect
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  of this movement is incredible.
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  And so it's been this unreal pride point across Ally.
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  And I think the thing that I like about working here is this is a culture of like innovation.
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  And if you've got an idea, try it. If it works, great. If not,
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  fail fast and move on. And so I really didn't get any pushback.
• 17:17
  I think the harder part was just doing the actual work. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 17:23
  So you mentioned that your team is full of athletes.
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  What are some of the qualities that you think, you know, led to that?
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  Are you searching them out or do they have certain characteristics?
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  What are the benefits of having athletes surrounding you in a job?
• 17:36
  Yeah, I'm a huge fan of hiring athletes for a number of reasons.
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  And I think I watch my team exhibit a lot of these characteristics.
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  First, athletes are highly competitive. We have a drive and a spirit to win.
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  And that's important in the business world. You know, you are part of a team
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  and you want your team to win.
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  You want to go out there and be able to kick some ass. And it's fun to have
• 18:02
  soldiers around you that want to do the same thing.
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  Second, I think athletes kind of take no for an answer.
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  And, you know, like set them up and we'll knock it down.
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  And so much of this work is so hard to get done. And I love the drive that the team has.
• 18:20
  Third, you know, you know, as an athlete, the time management is paramount, right?
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  Your life is not the same as somebody that's not playing a sport at Michigan State.
• 18:30
  You're trying to get your schoolwork done. You've got to maintain a certain grade point average.
• 18:34
  You've got practice. You've got training. And, oh, by the way,
• 18:38
  you've got to get on a plane and go fly across the country and play,
• 18:41
  you know, play a soccer game.
• 18:43
  And so the time management skills are so critical, particularly with how full
• 18:50
  and how busy our plates are.
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  And then lastly, I think just the team camaraderie and, you know,
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  everyone's got each other's back.
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  And, you know, you come by it naturally as an athlete.
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  You want to lift one another up. You want to see your teammates succeed.
• 19:09
  And that team aspect is so important. And so those characteristics ring,
• 19:13
  you know, really true for me and what I see exhibited with my folks every single day.
• 19:18
  Absolutely. I love that. You know,
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  you're obviously speaking to a group of athletes here as the audience.
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  So I love that the characteristics and qualities that we have on the field also
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  translate off the field and to see you're surrounded by them in the business world is incredible.
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  It's a superpower. And for the athletes that are listening, like really,
• 19:38
  when you go out to the professional world and you start to do your interviews
• 19:41
  and you start to try and sell your brand, make it a big part of your conversation
• 19:46
  because it, number one, it resonates.
• 19:48
  And number two, there's a lot of truisms in it that employers are looking for.
• 19:53
  So I would definitely make it a big part of, you know, your kind of elevator pitch.
• 19:58
  Absolutely. I love that. Yeah. And I love that you mentioned the benefits that
• 20:01
  you had from this 50-50 pledge as well, that it wasn't a charity case, right?
• 20:05
  You saw the payoffs. It was an investment in women's sports and you got to watch it grow.
• 20:09
  And there was payoff for Allie Financial and you guys, you paved the way in
• 20:14
  that way and you got the payoff as well.
• 20:16
  I think that's what a lot of people think when you throw money at women's sports
• 20:20
  and you're starting something like that. Was it a charity case?
• 20:24
  Yeah. There are a lot of brands that kind of had this perception,
• 20:29
  especially when we started this, because the other aspect of what,
• 20:32
  you know, I think all of us have tried to do on the team here at Ally is have
• 20:37
  a really open playbook and share that with other brands.
• 20:40
  Like how did we do it and encourage other brands to do something?
• 20:44
  We started this thing called the Women's Sports Club and we've done it with
• 20:48
  an organization that's run by Angelo Ruggiero, who was the captain of USA Hockey's
• 20:54
  won a bunch of gold medals and.
• 20:57
  And she works at a company called Sports Innovation Lab. And the Women's Sports
• 21:01
  Club is several hundred brands strong now.
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  And you can't just join it. You have to be invited.
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  And the ticket in is you have to commit to doing something meaningful in women's sports.
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  And so part of what we've done is open the playbook to say, here's how we've done it.
• 21:21
  And this isn't something like sits in your charitable giving budget. it.
• 21:24
  Like you've got to make it a meaningful part of your marketing mix and you have
• 21:30
  to go out and do real things and it will pay an annuity,
• 21:34
  but it takes a, you know, it takes a different type of thinking because you
• 21:39
  can't today value women's sports in the same way that you value men's sports
• 21:44
  and a little bit of it, it has to be investment minded.
• 21:47
  And so that's been a big part of what what we've tried to do with,
• 21:51
  with our focus on women's sports as well as bring others along on the journey with us.
• 21:57
  Absolutely. I love that. I love the call to action. Cause you know,
• 22:00
  as much as you guys have done, you're only one, you know, one,
• 22:03
  you know, it takes, it takes a village.
• 22:05
  Yeah. A thousand percent. And that's what we say, like, we're not going to be
• 22:08
  able to climb the whole mountain by ourselves.
• 22:10
  We need the state farms of the world. We need the Googles of the world.
• 22:14
  We need these big other brands and you know, the deltas of the world.
• 22:19
  And it's been awesome to see how they've come into it in a big way.
• 22:25
  Yeah, absolutely. I've heard you tell the story of when you found out that the
• 22:30
  AFC women's team, when they bought the team, they didn't even know there was
• 22:34
  a woman's side to it. Yeah. That's crazy.
• 22:38
  Isn't that crazy? So Rob and Ryan, especially Rob,
• 22:43
  super, super focused on women's sports, loves women's
• 22:47
  sports his home all better production companies producing
• 22:50
  a lot of content around women's sports really believes in the
• 22:53
  thesis you know i actually
• 22:56
  filmed an integration for rexum that's actually going to be on tomorrow night
• 23:01
  on rec and on welcome to rexum and so tomorrow would be june 7th they'll be
• 23:05
  out tomorrow night on welcome to rexum so check it out if you get a chance but
• 23:09
  what he was stunned by is that when they bought the team Whole year,
• 23:14
  no one ever told him there was a women's team.
• 23:17
  And then they went, and the women are good. Like, they're ballers.
• 23:21
  And they were crushing it. He said that he was appalled at where they were playing.
• 23:28
  If anybody's been watching Rex on their stories, they're all so interesting.
• 23:33
  And they were chagrined to find out that it just never occurred to anybody to
• 23:39
  tell them there was a women's side.
• 23:41
  I don't even understand how that could possibly happen. That is so mind-blowing
• 23:46
  to me that it's over a year before you even know that there's a whole other
• 23:50
  side to what he bought it. I think it shows the, you know, it's funny.
• 23:54
  I'm surprised at how much further behind in terms of some of the progress a
• 23:59
  lot of the European nations are relative to equity in women's sports.
• 24:04
  But I think this last World Cup changed a little bit of that.
• 24:07
  And, you know, focus like Wrexham, etc.
• 24:10
  Are helping with that. I'm hearing rumors that maybe the next time Lasso is
• 24:14
  going to be focused on a women's AFC team, which could be really fun.
• 24:18
  So you know we'll see but
• 24:21
  yeah it's it's pretty mind-boggling and
• 24:24
  I think uh Rob and Ryan were pretty ashamed to know
• 24:27
  that it wasn't part of anything that anybody told them about and I know they've
• 24:30
  got big aspirations for that Wrexham team yeah yeah I love that and obviously
• 24:35
  this is a woman's soccer kind of podcast so I'd love to dive into a little bit
• 24:39
  with your partnership with the NWSL a bit more um yeah yeah how did how did
• 24:44
  you guys get involved with NWSL, what drew you to them?
• 24:47
  Well, I came by it naturally, being a huge soccer fan.
• 24:50
  And, you know, we looked at our sports portfolio. I mentioned that stat of less
• 24:55
  than 5% of the media coverage.
• 24:56
  Well, to compound the pain, less than 1% of brand sponsorships go into women's sports.
• 25:04
  And when I looked across our portfolio, we had always partnered with WICC,
• 25:10
  the Women's Friendlies.
• 25:12
  WNBA was taken by U.S. Bank and if you think about it really the only other,
• 25:19
  professional women's league out there is NWSL and
• 25:22
  we originally thought about doing a team deal be in front of kit for a team
• 25:27
  and that didn't fully materialize and so I started talking to the commissioner
• 25:32
  of the NWSL at the time and said hey you know what's available for our category The category is open.
• 25:39
  So if you want the category, it's yours.
• 25:42
  And we can do a sleeve sponsorship because it's a league-owned asset and you
• 25:47
  can be on the sleeve of every kit.
• 25:49
  And it was cheap at the time. I mean, it was really cheap.
• 25:53
  And we jumped in immediately and have really blown it out.
• 25:58
  And it's really exciting to see today. day
• 26:01
  not only did we extend our relationship with the nwsl we
• 26:04
  are official partners of the players association as well like
• 26:08
  i said we're on every kit we've built tons of content around
• 26:11
  it we're bringing it to life every single day
• 26:14
  we're you know proud media partners with espn who carries a lot of the nwsl
• 26:20
  games so it's been really cool to see how his sponsorship has grown over the
• 26:25
  years and the things we've been able to do yeah yeah absolutely obviously being
• 26:29
  a soccer fan that's That's kind of the first time I was introduced to your guys'
• 26:32
  brand and then you start seeing it everywhere and you start seeing the NWSL
• 26:36
  grow and obviously your guys' advertisement and support with it.
• 26:39
  It's been incredible. And as you said, being a part of the advocacy for the
• 26:44
  players and that players group as well, not just on the business perspective,
• 26:48
  but being able to be there for the actual players on the field is incredible.
• 26:52
  Yeah, part of it, Jordan, that was really interesting to me was getting to know
• 26:57
  so many of the players on a personal level and understanding their stories and their journeys.
• 27:03
  You probably know starting salary in the NWSL is $35,000 a year.
• 27:09
  Right? What are you going to do with $35,000 a year?
• 27:13
  Spending time talking to people like Ashlyn Harris and her telling me,
• 27:18
  you know, I played on two, you know, I played in two world cups,
• 27:23
  played in Olympics and played professional soccer for 15 years.
• 27:28
  And as I retire, I've got to figure out, you know, where to go from here because
• 27:35
  I'd never made enough money playing soccer to support my family or sustain my life.
• 27:40
  You know, you heard those stories over and over again from players that we've all idolized.
• 27:46
  Michelle Akers, Julie Foudy, Hallie Wagner, Ashlyn, you know,
• 27:53
  the list kind of goes on and on.
• 27:55
  And then what happened a couple of years ago with all the scandals that plagued
• 28:02
  the NWSL and those stories,
• 28:04
  you know, we really wanted to jump I've been to the Players Association because
• 28:07
  we wanted to show players that they had a voice, they used it,
• 28:10
  and we were not going to abandon them for doing the right thing.
• 28:16
  And so a big part of our sponsorship has been about how do we shine a light
• 28:21
  on the sport and how do we help the athletes monetize?
• 28:24
  And whether it's putting money directly in their pocket through Team Ally and
• 28:28
  letting them be brand advocates for us, or just the sponsorship itself and the
• 28:33
  media investment that we're making, which allows player salary to grow.
• 28:38
  Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. I love that. I love that you were there for them.
• 28:41
  Like that, cause that's, that's probably one of the biggest fears is that everyone's
• 28:44
  going to leave as you go through all those controversies and you start to stand
• 28:47
  up and hear their voices.
• 28:49
  So I'm sure that meant a lot and has continued to mean a lot throughout your
• 28:52
  guys's partnership with them.
• 28:54
  What do you hope the future looks like for women's sports and it's women's soccer specifically?
• 28:59
  Yeah. I mean, I think the, I hope that this country becomes the place where
• 29:05
  the best players in the world play.
• 29:06
  I do think the NWSL is attracting an incredible caliber of athletes.
• 29:13
  You look at all the international players now that are coming here.
• 29:16
  Barbara Banda's like tearing the league apart right now, right?
• 29:20
  So there's the saying within the NWSL, the best played here.
• 29:24
  And I hope that that brings true.
• 29:27
  I'm super excited for the direction of the national team. I love Emma Hayes.
• 29:31
  And that's a great story. In January, I get this text.
• 29:35
  Andrea, you don't know me. I'm Emma Hayes. I coach Chelsea. I'm going to be
• 29:40
  the new coach of the national team.
• 29:42
  I love what Ally's done for women's sports.
• 29:45
  I'd love to spend some time talking to you. And I was like, what?
• 29:49
  Is this a prank? And so I got on a call with Emma and first thing she said is
• 29:57
  I want to open an Ally bank account because I want to support you guys,
• 30:00
  which I thought was incredible.
• 30:01
  And we spent a lot of time with her and I love the direction of what she's doing with the team now.
• 30:06
  And I feel like all the players, like you really see their level of play coming
• 30:12
  up because they realize they're not going to be in the same old, same old anymore.
• 30:15
  You want a spot on this national team, you're going to have to earn it, keep it.
• 30:18
  So I hope we get back to world dominance in terms of the national team.
• 30:22
  And then I think in general, my hope is that you start to see the league expand.
• 30:29
  You know, we get to a healthy number of teams
• 30:32
  that there's more opportunities and places for players like yourself
• 30:35
  to play and that they make a real salary and
• 30:38
  that they're able to sustain themselves and and
• 30:42
  create a good life for themselves through through athletics and that we get
• 30:46
  to a point where we're not calling it women's sports anymore it's just sports
• 30:50
  you know did you did you see the AFC game last night or did you see the you
• 30:56
  know Angel City game last night or Or did you see the KC list?
• 30:59
  Instead of having to say, oh, did you see the women's game in Kansas City, right?
• 31:04
  I hope we can get to a point where women's sports becomes ubiquitous and,
• 31:08
  you know, synonymous. I think we're getting there.
• 31:11
  One of the things that I love seeing is how many little boys are in those stands
• 31:16
  trying to get, you know, female athletes autographs and autographs.
• 31:22
  That a lot of female athletes are becoming their idols. And I think that's really cool.
• 31:27
  Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I love what you said with it being,
• 31:30
  you know, on the equal playing field with men's sports where you don't have
• 31:32
  to say it's a woman's sport.
• 31:34
  Cause I always used to remember filling out like paperwork for physicals or
• 31:37
  whatever it may be, where it's like, check what sport you do.
• 31:40
  And it was like soccer and women's soccer.
• 31:42
  I was like, okay, like if you're going to do one, like that's men's soccer,
• 31:47
  right? Like, what do you mean?
• 31:48
  Like even like the Instagram handles and stuff that I've definitely
• 31:51
  seen change throughout the recruiting process now but when
• 31:54
  I was going through it like they would have like Michigan
• 31:57
  men's team and then they'd have you know a Michigan
• 32:01
  or they'd have the Michigan State soccer team
• 32:03
  and they have the Michigan State women's soccer team and you're like why like
• 32:07
  what they're like what like yeah yeah I didn't always it always made me angry
• 32:12
  so I love that you said that and we're definitely seeing the change in it now
• 32:15
  and like you said I see a bunch of guys where I'm gonna buy them for my brothers
• 32:19
  that Everyone watches women's sports shirts, and they're everywhere.
• 32:22
  And it's been great to see kind of the change throughout it.
• 32:26
  And I got to ask, can you explain the tattoo? I love the story when you came
• 32:30
  and you spoke at Michigan State, your little tattoo and the story behind it
• 32:33
  on your arm. Can you give a little bit on that?
• 32:36
  Yeah, I got the tattoo, and I'm actually wearing a bracelet that was a birthday
• 32:40
  gift to me. It says, like a girl.
• 32:42
  That was a gift, actually, from Ashlyn Harris and Sophia Bush, which is pretty cool.
• 32:47
  So i've always hated when
• 32:51
  people refer to like oh you throw
• 32:53
  like a girl or guy you kick like a girl like it's it's
• 32:56
  something that i feel like men have
• 32:59
  said to us our whole lives and i even hear
• 33:02
  other women say it like oh don't throw like a girl or don't
• 33:05
  do this like a girl and i felt like
• 33:08
  the double entendre take your power back yeah
• 33:12
  you're damn right i kick like a girl you want want to feel it
• 33:15
  come over here you know you're damn right I punch like a girl
• 33:18
  you want to see how I throw like a girl and so to me the tattoo was acknowledgement
• 33:23
  of taking our power back number one and number two for me it's something that
• 33:29
  I look at all the time like if I'm in meetings where I feel like the conversation
• 33:34
  is not going in the right way I might touch the tattoo too.
• 33:37
  Like it's, you know, my little, my little secret kryptonite.
• 33:41
  And it reminds me that I have this incredible platform and that I have to use
• 33:46
  the platform to help other women.
• 33:50
  And so for me, there's this duality in the notion of, of what like a girl means
• 33:56
  that reminds me every single day that while it's a good day for women, it's not a great day yet.
• 34:02
  There's a lot of work that That needs to be done still, particularly in women's sports.
• 34:06
  And this is just my like, keep going, head down, keep going, don't stop.
• 34:12
  I love that. I cannot tell you how much I love that. That is incredible.
• 34:17
  I love the tattoo. And I know you're very, very busy and I appreciate your time coming on.
• 34:21
  Do you have any advice to leave our audience with here? What do you hope they take away?
• 34:26
  Yeah, no. And first of all, it's been a blast being on it. So I'm happy to.
• 34:30
  So thank you guys for the invite.
• 34:31
  I appreciate it. I wish Sam could be with us too, but give her my regards.
• 34:36
  You know, advice that I would have is what you're doing as a student athlete is very special.
• 34:42
  It's an incredible time in your life.
• 34:45
  Stay in the moment. Enjoy it. I know it's hard and I know it's a grind,
• 34:50
  but, you know, the joy comes through putting the time in on the grind and it's
• 34:56
  going to pay off for you, not just in your athletic career,
• 34:58
  but as you graduate and go into the professional world.
• 35:03
  You know, I think I was telling you guys when I was up at Michigan State last
• 35:06
  time, it's amazing to me. You know, I'm a CMO at a Fortune 250 company,
• 35:12
  and the first thing everybody wants to talk about is, oh, you played soccer at Michigan State?
• 35:17
  That's so cool. Tell me about it. No one's like, oh, tell me what it's like
• 35:20
  being a C-suite executive, or tell me about this.
• 35:23
  It's always about my time as a student athlete. and
• 35:26
  it's a very very special time so enjoy every
• 35:30
  minute of it embrace the slop of it all and and
• 35:33
  draw on everything that you're learning whether you're
• 35:36
  going to go into professional sports or whether you're going to go into the
• 35:40
  business world or whatever you're going to do when you're going to go out and
• 35:43
  be an innovator creator an entrepreneur like just draw back on the experiences
• 35:49
  that you've had as a student athlete because they are unique and they'll that
• 35:52
  definitely bode well for you in life.
• 35:55
  Awesome. I absolutely love that. Embrace the slop.
• 35:59
  It's quite the seg, but it's a great, great quote to take away from this all.
• 36:02
  And like I said, I cannot thank you enough for what you have done,
• 36:05
  paving the way for me, particularly as a Michigan State women's soccer player
• 36:09
  now, and then as a women's sports as a whole and what your company has done
• 36:12
  and you forefronting that.
• 36:14
  So thank you so much for everything and especially for coming on today.
• 36:17
  I really, really appreciate it. And yeah, I've learned a lot.
• 36:21
  Thanks. My pleasure. I'm excited to come up and watch you guys and see you on
• 36:24
  the pitch. Awesome. Thank you.