{"id":322118,"date":"2025-12-02T05:52:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T05:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/322118\/"},"modified":"2025-12-02T05:52:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T05:52:10","slug":"unrivaled-basketball-and-sephora-are-informing-the-future-of-beauty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/322118\/","title":{"rendered":"Unrivaled Basketball and Sephora are Informing the Future of Beauty"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tBeauty<\/a>\u2018s alliance with women\u2019s sports<\/a> is getting stronger.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhy would we not want to be involved?\u201d asked Jessica Stacey, senior vice president of external communications, experiential and marketing partnerships for Sephora<\/a>, at the WWD Beauty<\/a> Inc Catalysts conference last month in conversation with Kirby Porter, chief brand officer of Unrivaled<\/a>, and Nikara Johns, social media director of Fairchild Media Group.<\/p>\n

\n\tSephora<\/a> and Unrivaled, the new women\u2019s basketball<\/a> organization cofounded by Breanna Stewart\u00a0and\u00a0Napheesa Collier, joined forces in January, at the start of the league\u2019s inaugural season. For anyone in the audience who wasn\u2019t aware of Unrivaled, Porter said: \u201cThere was 36 players. It featured six clubs, and it was a new style of play, three-on-three on a short and full court.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tPorter continued: \u201cAll the players had equity in the league. It introduced a new way to market players in women\u2019s sports in general, and a huge part of that was our partnerships, in particular with Sephora<\/a>.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tWhile there were many reasons the retailer decided to team up with Unrivaled, the players informed the union. \u201cWhat we noticed over the past few years was that not only are they phenomenal athletes, but their self-expression and their personal style were things that we felt we could get behind from a storytelling standpoint, and at the same time, support what these amazing athletes are doing within the fan community,\u201d Stacey said.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tKirby Porter, Jessica Stacey and Nikara Johns at The Catalysts.<\/p>\n

\n\tWith Unrivaled reinventing the rules on the court, Sephora was able to innovate off the court for this first season. Their out-of-the-box thinking resulted in viral activations, including a glam room for players, pre- and post-game, as well as a branded tunnel in the stadium, which is now officially the most photographed tunnel in women\u2019s basketball<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe didn\u2019t want it to just be a logo slap,\u201d Stacey said. \u201cWe sat down. We\u2019re very intentional with Kirby and her team about us wanting to have a presence.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen asked why Sephora was the right partner to tell the Unrivaled story, Porter said it \u201cfelt obvious\u201d given the current conversations surrounding sports and beauty, not to mention the retailer\u2019s position in the industry brought more eyes to the league. \u201cWe\u2019ve been able to show up 360 through the partnership in a way that grows our brand awareness,\u201d she added. \u201cIt\u2019s so important to the league\u2019s growth, it signals confidence in the market, both to investors, to other brands, and then, most importantly, to the fans.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tThe fans are top of mind heading into season two, Porter said. She and Stacey are already brainstorming ideas for pop-ups and venue branding to actively engage the audience from tip-off to the final buzzer beat of every game. \u201cWe\u2019re excited in terms of how we\u2019re thinking about really outdoing ourselves this year, and how do we bring some of the things that were specific to players and to the fan experience to show up on social a bit different,\u201d she continued.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s no secret Sephora\u2019s bet big on the world of women\u2019s sports this year, becoming the official beauty partner of the WNBA Golden State Valkyries, the Golden State dance team, and, of course, Unrivaled. As for why the beauty juggernaut is doubling down on the industry, Stacey said it\u2019s a way for them to \u201csupport and invest in this incredibly important area of business,\u201d and in doing so, the brand\u2019s been able to uplift and empower the arena of female sports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Beauty\u2018s alliance with women\u2019s sports is getting stronger. \u201cWhy would we not want to be involved?\u201d asked Jessica…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":322119,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,5424,93532,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-322118","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-beauty","12":"tag-sephora","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322118\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/322119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}