Healthcare consortium Kaiser Permanente enters multiyear Golden State Valkyries sponsorship

The GIST: The Golden State Valkyries announced a multiyear partnership with Kaiser Permanente (KP) yesterday, making the Oakland-based healthcare organization a founding partner of the expansion WNBA team and furthering the healthcare sponsorship trend in pro women’s sports. Health is wealth.

The details: As a core jersey partner, the KP logo will feature on the Valkyries’ uniforms, and a portion of jersey sales will be directed to local nonprofits. The company will also serve as the official team physicians for the new W squad. Notably, KP became the WNBA and NBA’s first-ever healthcare partner in 2015 and has a longstanding relationship with the NBA’s Golden State Warriors.

The WNBA trend: Several individual WNBA teams have healthcare jersey sponsors, including major players like Emory Healthcare and the Mayo Clinic, while Blue Cross Blue Shield parent Anthem signed a four-team sponsorship deal in 2021. In April, the league itself also inked a groundbreaking deal with daily birth control OPill.

• WNBA teams were the first to bring jersey deals to the hardwood in 2009, and these days, they’re raking it in: The largest W jersey patch contract to date is the Phoenix Mercury’s $3M annual deal.

The NWSL trend: Healthcare partners are also scoring in soccer. In March, insight platform Luscid found at least half of NWSL teams have front-of-shirt deals with healthcare providers, led by Bay FC’s Sutter Health deal worth around $2M. Notably, Valkyries president Jess Smith was previously Angel City FC’s head of revenue, likely seeing the healthcare trend firsthand. Love a good crossover.

The San Francisco trend: Comparatively, women’s teams represent a low-cost, high-return investment, and considering the sponsor media value in jersey exposure, it makes sense for companies to search for real estate here. Add in the Valkyries’ affluent market and Warriors ties, and the team is poised to benefit from sponsor investment even more (and earlier) than other W teams.

• The franchise has already signed finance giant JPMorgan Chase as a founding partner and received a record 17K season-ticket deposits thanks to buy-in from the fanbase of the NBA’s highest-valued team. Banked it.