Amazon Finds Itself With a Problem Madison Avenue Would Envy

There was a time, not so long ago, when selling advertising time on women's sports required a certain amount of persuasion — pitch decks heavy with "growing audiences" and "undervalued inventory" and other phrases that meant, in plain English, "please take a chance on this."

That time appears to have passed.

Amazon, which has been steadily assembling a portfolio of women's sports rights including W.N.B.A. games and National Women's Soccer League matches, now finds itself in the unusual position of having more demand than supply. The company is responding by, as one might put it, getting creative with its offerings — a phrase that in the advertising business can mean anything from innovative packaging to simply finding new places to put logos.

The shift reflects a broader change in the sports marketplace, where women's properties have moved from the "emerging" category (a polite industry term for "not yet profitable") to something closer to "hot ticket" — a phrase that Amazon's sales team has apparently been using without irony.

For brands that once enjoyed leisurely negotiations over women's sports inventory, the new arithmetic is less comfortable. Some advertisers, according to industry observers, have found themselves unable to secure the positions they wanted, a circumstance that Madison Avenue typically reserves for Super Bowl spots and election-year political windows.

(One imagines the conversations in procurement departments: "What do you mean it's sold out?")

The development is particularly notable for Amazon, which has approached sports rights with the patience of a company that does not, strictly speaking, need the advertising revenue — it simply wants you to remember that Prime Video exists when you are contemplating whether to cancel your subscription.

Whether the current demand represents a permanent shift or a cyclical peak remains, as always, a question for the next earnings call.

Original story published in adweek.com: "'We Can't Sell It Fast Enough': Amazon Gets Creative Amid Growing Women's Sports Demand"