Every starter on Michigan’s NCAA championship men’s hoops squad was a transfer. Meanwhile, the Tennessee’s women’s basketball team has nary a single returning player — after finishing the season with eight consecutive Ls, they’re all in the transfer portal. And people ask why my college sports affinities are diminishing.
Words of Wisdom: “Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.” — John Wooden
Fintech firm Albert signed a deal with the WNBA’s Dream for a jersey patch sponsorship. Albert
While it’s a term usually reserved for hockey, we’re calling it a hat trick of sorts for Albert. The personal finance app, which claims 20 million users, has inked its third WNBA ad patch deal over the last 14 months — the latest, a four-year pact with the Atlanta Dream.
“I drank the [WNBA] Kool-Aid,” acknowledged Albert Founder/CEO Yinon Ravid, adding that brand recognition has elevated in the year-plus since the earlier patch deals with the Sparks and the Wings (where Albert is sharing real estate with CVS). “I like their enthusiasm and evangelism, and their customer base is very similar to ours.”
Like Albert’s prior WNBA hookups, aside from the uni patches, the deal includes press-backdrop branding and on-court signage, except in national telecasts. Ravid identified his KPIs on the deal as “brand awareness and recognition, along with the way our brand is perceived, which is a little squishier measure.”
The Dream will wear Albert ad patches for the first time during their initial preseason game on April 29. Excel Sports Management negotiated all of Albert’s WNBA deals. Ravid said Albert is activating those deals in-house.
At 10 years old, Albert is a graybeard of sorts amid an exploding market of competitive fintech startups. According to numbers from Statista, there are now 31,801 fintech startups globally, triple the amount in 2018. Fueling all those startups are aggressive forecasts showing the global fintech market mushrooming from $394.9 billion in 2025 to $1.13 trillion by 2032.
Stephanie Marciano (left) has left Ally for Underdog & Co. Tony Florez
Ally Financial Head of Brand and Sports Marketing Stephanie Marciano is leaving the financial services company to join agency consortium Underdog & Co. as chief strategy officer.
Over Marciano’s 4.5 years with Ally, the brand has been a leader in funding women’s sports, including a “50/50 pledge” to spend equally in media for men’s and women’s sports. Ally backed that with a Disney/ESPN deal and sponsorships with women’s properties, including the NWSL, PWHL and the WNBA.
Marciano, a 2024 SBJ Forty Under 40 honoree, will join Underdog on May 1 and will report to founder Dan Mannix. No surprise here, as we recall him putting women in leadership roles decades ago — and long before others — at antecedent agency Lead Dog Marketing.
“She’s been the biggest game-changer in women’s sports, which is where all the recent growth has been. We want to be the leader among agencies helping brands and properties looking to enter and navigate that space,” Mannix said. “We see even more opportunity coming there, both in college and with the Women’s World Cup [next year in Brazil].”
Marciano worked for Mannix from 2018 to 2021 at CSM Sport & Entertainment, where she rose to SVP Consulting.
Meanwhile, Mannix said the Underdog enterprise is progressing nicely, totaling 160 employees after last year’s acquisition of experiential/event agency BeCore. He expects a few more agency acquisitions later this year.
When the new arena in Mobile, Ala., opens in early 2027, it’ll be called Regions Arena, following a naming rights deal between Oak View Group and Regions Bank that’s for 10 years and worth eight figures, writes SBJ’s Bret McCormick.
SoFi added Justin Thomas as its second PGA Tour ambassador ahead of the Masters, agreeing to a sponsorship that will see him wear the brand on his right sleeve, notes SBJ’s Josh Carpenter.
Wisconsin athletics expanded its sponsorship deal with UW Health to include the company’s logo on Badgers uniforms in women’s basketball, hockey, volleyball and softball, reports SBJ’s Ben Portnoy.
