Amazon Web Services has signed its first sponsorship of a women’s professional sports league, joining the WNBA’s Changemaker Collective as the official cloud and cloud AI sponsor.
The multiyear agreement will see AWS creating advanced analytics and data insights to better inform fans as well as serving as the presenting sponsor of WNBA Live, the fan festival during the AT&T WNBA All-Star Game.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
“What’s exciting about AWS obviously is they bring with them so much AI expertise, and the WNBA is ripe for innovation,” Colie Edison, the WNBA’s chief growth officer, told SBJ. “We have a much higher risk tolerance, I think, than a lot of other organizations, so we’re really ready to brainstorm and ideate and think about the ways that AWS’s expertise and innovation can help advance the league in our next iteration of growth.”
The deal includes the launch of WNBA Inside the Game powered by AWS, with the advanced statistics platform leveraging AWS cloud and AI technology to turn real-time player data into insights for fans. Those insights will be available on the league’s app, website and during live games.
AWS joins other Changemakers in the program launched in 2020 to empower players, elevate the league and drive business growth in women’s sports. It puts AWS in the company of Ally, AT&T, CarMax, Deloitte, Google and Nike at the highest level of WNBA sponsorship.
Amazon’s Prime Video is also entering the first year of a new media-rights pact with the WNBA this season.
