It was a match made in jingles.<\/p>\n
The New York Liberty were on a run to the 2024 WNBA title when their CEO, Keia Clarke, began getting the question that had stumped her fan base for years:<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy don\u2019t you have a deal with Liberty Mutual?\u201d<\/p>\n
And before she could get a word out \u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, the one with the commercial.\u201d<\/p>\n
And before she could still get a word out \u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cLiberty, Liberty, Liberty \u2026 Liberty.\u201d<\/p>\n
But great minds (or New York ones) must think alike, because talks between the WNBA\u2019s Liberty and insurance\u2019s Liberty commenced midsummer of 2024, leading to an in-person meeting during the WNBA Finals, leading to an ironclad partnership that exemplifies the momentum gained from New York\u2019s first world championship basketball team in 51 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, it\u2019s kind of Captain Obvious,\u201d Clarke said. \u201cLiberty Mutual. We do share a name.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not wanting to miss or mismanage the moment, Clarke and the Liberty have leveraged their title into a string of 18 new partnerships and other year-over-year increases, starting with the theory that a parade can be a marketing tool all by itself.<\/p>\n
In other words, four days after winning their rings last October, the Liberty began working on 2025 by simply steering floats down the Canyon of Heroes in Lower Manhattan.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we turned the corner at Canyon of the Heroes, it was like, \u2018Oh my gosh, this is about the people,\u2019\u201d Clarke said. \u201cI cannot one-to-one correlate that winning feeling as the reason we\u2019re averaging 16,000 fans this season, but make no mistake, there are people [at the parade] who said, \u2018I need to go to a game, or I need to watch when they\u2019re on TV, or I need to order something online, or I will follow them on social media, or I will take the time to learn a little bit about who [Breanna Stewart] is as a mom.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cHow we celebrated this team was important. The investments made in the parade, in rings, in the gratitude for the team and the staff and the partnerships that we have. It was very intentional.\u201d<\/p>\n
In less than 24 hours after their title, the Liberty shattered the WNBA\u2019s previous all-time 30-day record for championship merch sales<\/a>. It wasn\u2019t just Liberty Mutual signing on for 2025: It was Pinterest, Fanatics, Amtrak, Essie, New York Lottery, Lola and Flamingo, among others. It was increased local media rights deals with Fox 5 and My 9<\/a>, putting the team in 7.5 million New York-area homes. It was sponsorship revenue climbing by 50% YOY. It was ticket sales in Barclays Center\u2019s upper bowl rising 68% YOY. It was overall social media engagement spiking 665%. It was e-commerce sales widening 58% YOY. It was in-arena merch on non-game days climbing by 241% YOY, which means random fans were just stopping by. Which all started with the parade.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom where I sit, this should happen,\u201d Clarke said. \u201cWe are not fumbling the moment. We are optimizing. But it is very strongly cut across everything, every part of our business.\u201d<\/p>\n But the face of it all is Liberty Mutual, the brand that is basically the Liberty\u2019s twin, whose logo is stitched across the abdomen of all Liberty jerseys. There\u2019s also indelible Liberty Mutual branding inside Barclays Center, whether on arena seat backs or kick plates, to go with collaborative social media campaigns. Together, they\u2019ve each let the fan base know that the \u201cLiberty \u2026 Liberty \u2026 Liberty\u201d are going for a repeat.<\/p>\n \u201cThe ember has burned from October to this year,\u201d Clarke said. \u201cEverybody\u2019s come in with this mindset of, \u2018OK, let\u2019s do it again.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was a match made in jingles. The New York Liberty were on a run to the 2024…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74400,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[8837,99,23573,434,1765],"class_list":["post-74399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-print","tag-sports","tag-upfront","tag-wnba","tag-womens-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}