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As women’s sports rack up wins, league sponsorships are less about slapping a brand on the game than finding the right teammate to keep the streak alive. That’s where brands like Gainbridge come in.
The Indiana-based finance and insurance firm recently purchased the naming rights to the USL Super League, effective at the start of the upcoming 2025-26 season. Now, through its network of women’s sports sponsorships—including this year’s WNBA All-Star events in Indianapolis—and its support of the Indianapolis 500, Formula 1’s Miami Grand Prix, and race teams in both NASCAR and IndyCar, Gainbridge has a chance to expand its own reach while elevating the Super League from an underdog to a contender.
Reading the pitch
The United Soccer League’s Super League women’s division launched at the end of 2024 as a step up from the USL’s semi-pro W League. At the highest level of women’s soccer right next to the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL), the eight-team Super League is in the middle of its first playoffs after a season in which it didn’t draft players, didn’t have a salary cap, and streamed all its matches on NBCUniversal’s Peacock.
Though the Super League is just wrapping up its first season, the USL has existed as an organization for nearly 40 years and includes a men’s side that has just announced a Division One league for 2027, which would compete with Major League Soccer for attention and talent, allowing for promotion from and relegation to its lower USL Championship and USL League One divisions. Both its men’s and women’s sides have academy systems for player development, while the Super League already has franchises in North Carolina, Dallas, Tampa Bay, and Brooklyn; has an expansion franchise awaiting in Jacksonville next season; and has a seven-city waiting list for teams after 2026 that includes Phoenix, Oakland, and Indianapolis.
“When we launched the league, part of our ethos was about creating more opportunities and more communities for women’s professional soccer so people can watch, work, and play the game that they love in more markets than have ever had access to the professional women’s game,” said Amanda Vandervort, USL president.
So, why did the Super League not only agree to take on Gainbridge as a sponsor and financial services provider, but also rename itself the Gainbridge Super League, starting in the 2025-26 season later this year? Here’s a hint: It’s not just to soften up fans in Gainbridge’s hometown.
Beyond financial backing, Gainbridge is bringing its history as a proven partner in women’s sports.
Before joining Gainbridge’s parent company—the Group 1001 financial collective—as its chief of sponsorship strategy and activation, Mike Nichols spent more than 16 years as an executive with the LPGA, developing relationships between women’s golf and its sponsors and organizers. Since arriving at Group 1001 in 2022, he’s helped Gainbridge forge partnerships with 72-time LPGA tournament winner and World Golf Hall of Famer Annika Sörenstam and her ANNIKA LPGA Tour event; tennis legend Billie Jean King and her Billie Jean King Cup; former US Soccer goalkeeper and World Cup champion Briana Scurry; and the WNBA Indiana Fever’s reigning Rookie of the Year Caitlin Clark (and the building she plays in, Gainbridge Fieldhouse).
For Nichols, the partnership represents the next step in the league’s kickoff.
“What I’ve seen historically was that a lot of investment in terms of sponsorships that was coming into women’s sports was like a wait-and-see… to see whether the property was mature and was going to be successful,” Nichols said. “What we’ve seen with the USL [Super League] is, in its first year, it’s already successful, but there’s a lot of upside, and we want to be a part of growing with the league as opposed to sitting around waiting.”
Dishing out assists
According to Nichols, Gainbridge entered its first sponsorship in women’s sports, with the LPGA, in 2017. Less than a month after announcing the Gainbridge USL Super League partnership, Vandervort was on a panel with interim LPGA commissioner Liz Moore at the Front Office Sports Breaking Barriers Summit.
By May 18, Gainbridge had wrapped Spire Motorsports driver Carson Hocevar’s No. 77 Chevrolet in Indiana Fever and WNBA All-Star colors for the NASCAR All-Star Race in North Carolina—with four Super League players in attendance. On May 22, Vandervort was at a table with Gainbridge during the Sports Business Journal’s Sports Business Awards as it accepted an award for Best Activation after having Clark appear at The ANNIKA.
The quick flurry of activity drove home why Vandervort and the Super League agreed to the Gainbridge deal in the first place: The company claims to spend more than 40% of its sports sponsorship dollars on women’s sports, but follows through by promoting them throughout all its sports partnerships.
“As much as you see Gainbridge, from a business perspective, engaging with our properties and platforms, you’ll see us engaging with theirs, too,” Vandervort said. “Their entire team is dedicated to cross-promotion, growing the game, and building this league with us.”
Early recruiting
Nichols noted that Gainbridge’s sports successes do have their business benefits. In the Super League, for example, it puts the brand into nine markets and allows it to create a national platform through local fan bases. With each team the league adds, it’s another opportunity for Gainbridge to add market share.
It also provides Gainbridge regular access to Peacock broadcasts, which is a benefit English Premier League sponsors already enjoy, and has specific appeal for Gainbridge and its ad inventory. While spots with Scurry, for example, might work well nationally, Nichols noted that the Super League market in Tampa Bay overlaps with an LPGA tournament. The Super League’s North Carolina team in Charlotte, meanwhile, is in the heart of NASCAR country.
Much as it brought Caitlin Clark and Andretti Global IndyCar drivers Marcus Ericsson and Colton Herta into LPGA events, Gainbridge is looking at opportunities in each of the Super League’s markets, at events like the WNBA All-Star, and through connections such as mutual NASCAR and Super League broadcast partner NBC.
“Because of this league, there are 300 more women who can chase their dream of playing professional soccer at the highest level here in the United States, but it also cascades down to where you’re now reaching girls and boys who are playing at the youth level who are trying to find their way up through the professional ranks,” Nichols said. “Those are prospective customers of Gainbridge—not only the people who are fans at the Super League games, but also the folks that are down at the grassroots level that Gainbridge is going to find a way through this partnership to meet where they are in their communities.”
