WTA Enlists Gauff, Osaka to ‘Rally the World' for Brand Refresh
The tour's commercial arm WTA Ventures developed a new logo and slogan—'Rally the World'—to bring greater brand awareness to the tour and its athletes, designed in concert with London-based agencies ChapterX and Nomad Studio. A new linear and digital ad campaign, with 30- and 60-second ads produced by creative agency Brothers & Sisters, will feature women's tennis stars Coco Gauff, Naomi Osaka, Ons Jabeur, Aryna Sabalenka and Zheng Qinwen. The campaign will present the traditional tennis court not as a field of play, but as a stage for the game's talents to perform and express themselves.
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The tour's new branding, which includes updated graphics for the WTA's global broadcasts outside of the Grand Slams, will make its debut at the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells beginning on March 2.
WTA Ventures chief brand officer Sarah Swanson said the tour set out on a rebrand because its previous presentation wasn't strong enough in market. 'It didn't match the legacy of the WTA and the power of our athletes and women's tennis,' she said in a Zoom interview.
In 2024, the WNBA, NWSL, NCAA women's basketball, volleyball and other competitions set viewership and attendance records. Swanson sees the WTA's brand redesign as a huge opportunity to bring it in line with those leagues.
'Team sports have a league mentality that inherently creates a stronger brand,' she said. 'Individual sports have more of a challenge. But the power of tennis and our players is so strong that it just sort of felt wrong to me that the platform that was creating the ability for these players to be so successful wasn't sort of getting the recognition.'
That reasoning also dovetails with the tour's objective to show that it's not just the organizing body for women's tennis, but also a global entertainment brand that can stand alongside other sports leagues.
'Part of this shift in the brand was thinking of ourselves that way, but then presenting ourselves that way,' Swanson said. 'And we're certainly looking at how to continue to shift the way that we produce the sport, so that we're taking cues from some of the best kind of sports and entertainment properties out there, like the NFL, the NBA, the Premier League.'
Swanson noted that in addition to their play, the athletes selected for the ad spot were considered for a wide range of reasons: Sabalenka's rise to become the world's top player, Osaka's honesty about life on and off the court, the global diversity from Tunisia's Jabeur and China's Zheng, and Gauff's ascension as a role model for American girls.
Such storytelling has pulled in millions of fans around the world. In 2024, the WTA had a 15% lift in on-site attendance while its global audience grew by 10% to 1.1 billion viewers on linear and digital platforms. The tour's social media following also leaped by 25% across all platforms.
The new brand campaign arrives three months after the tour hosted its finals in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, for the first time in December after the WTA signed a sponsorship pact with the kingdom's sovereign wealth fund, PIF, last May. The two sides were in talks to bring the WTA Finals to Saudi Arabia in 2023, but the tour pulled back due to public pressure for planning to host an event in a country with a history of repressive laws against women. Swanson said the decision to go to Saudi Arabia the following year was a thoughtful one and that the players' collective response was positive, with many believing they can be ambassadors for the sport there.
'You know that the brand purpose we landed on is this idea of 'Rally the World,' but the full wording is 'Rally the World to Break Boundaries,'' Swanson said. 'Billie Jean King founded this brand, this league, on the idea of creating opportunity for, particularly women and girls anywhere, to be an athlete. The decisions that we are making now are very much in that same vein.'
Commercial opportunities continue to grow for women's sports, even though no female athlete ranked in Sportico's top 100 highest-paid athletes of 2024. Nine of the 15 highest-earning female athletes come from the WTA Tour, with Gauff ranking as the highest-paid woman in all of sports last year with $30.4 million. Zheng, who is viewed as having a Yao Ming-like marketing impact, pulled in $20.6 million as the fourth highest-earning female athlete, followed by Sabalenka ($17.7M) and Osaka ($15.9M).
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