CBA’s big bet on women’s sports pays off
Commonwealth Bank made a huge bet in 2016 – to terminate its multi-year deal with the Australian men’s cricket team worth up to $50 million, but keep its sponsorship of the women’s game.
It was a risky move for a company aiming to put itself in front of as many people as possible, with men’s cricket among the country’s top sports. And yet the country’s biggest bank doubled down in 2021 when it announced a four-year sponsorship package for the national women’s soccer team.
They became the CommBank Matildas, with captain Sam Kerr as an ambassador.
Monique Macleod, the group executive of marketing and corporate affairs at Commonwealth Bank. Louise Kennerley
The deal was worth an estimated $1 million to $2 million a year, according to sports rights experts. CBA chief executive Matt Comyn would not say how much the bank paid, but said the World Cup had been a deliberate, long-term play that was now paying huge dividends.
“I’ve actually been doing investor meetings – and I don’t know anyone who wasn’t watching it,” he told The Australian Financial Review. “I think it’s fair to say that it’s exceeded our lofty expectations.”
Records have tumbled around the Matildas in their bid for World Cup glory. Since their first game on July 20, the team have progressively drawn larger audiences, resulting in 4.9 million people tuning into their nail-biting, three-hour marathon win over France on Saturday. It is one of the biggest broadcast audiences of the past two decades in Australia.
They line up against England in the semi-final at Stadium Australia on Wednesday night, in a match that could break records again.
It was after joining 85,000 fans at the Melbourne Cricket Ground for the Women’s T20 World Cup cricket final in March 2020,
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