The Rise Of Period-Positive Sports Marketing

👋 Welcome back to Sponcon Sports, a weekly newsletter dedicated to sponsored content strategy in the sports industry!

In 2025, if you’re popping bottles without branded goggles, you’re leaving money on the table.

The US Open is the latest property to lean into the trend—and rightfully so.

It started with Bud Light and the Philadelphia Eagles’ Super Bowl parade. Then came Michelob ULTRA during the Oklahoma City Thunder’s Finals celebration. And now, in tennis, it’s Moët & Chandon’s turn.

As Moët & Chandon champagne sprayed, champions like Aryna Sabalenka were ready, rocking branded goggles to protect their eyes.

The five celebration posts from the tournament pulled in nearly 6.3M views on Instagram alone.

Branded goggles make perfect sense for celebration-focused content. They don’t take away from the player experience, and they put the sponsor front and center at the moment of peak performance. And if you’re lucky, like with Sabalenka’s celebration, those goggles can even drive earned media—hers stayed perched on her forehead all the way into the post-match press conference.

Consider branded goggles the newest must-have in the sports sponsorship playbook—and expect them to stick around. They’re a small detail with outsized value and visibility.

In Today’s Edition:

• Partnerships With Purpose 🩸 

• King’s Hawaiian Is On A Roll 🥨 

• adidas’ Laced Up Replies 👟

🏊️ DEEP DIVE
How Sports Sponsorship Is Tackling Period Stigma

In 2025, period stigma in sports is finally being met with campaigns that are bold, visible, and smartly delivered.

What’s different this year isn’t just the cause—it’s the execution. Brands are leaning on partnerships with teams and athletes to create content that fans can’t scroll past and messages that stick.

Chelsea FC x Here We Flo

Want to maximize eyeballs on an important message? Drop it during a season opener.

That’s exactly what Chelsea Women FC did for the launch of the “We Don’t Bleed Blue. Period” campaign with Here We Flo, the club’s new Back of Shorts Partner. The team took the pitch in shorts deliberately marked with period blood stains to tackle stigma around menstruation in sport. Side note: back-of-shorts sponsorship here was a brilliant play.

But Chelsea didn’t just hope fans would notice. They teamed up with British GLAMOUR to break the news the morning of the opener.

This was no copy-paste press release. The feature spotlighted Lioness and Chelsea full-back Niamh Charles, who spoke candidly about managing her cycle at an elite level—everything from tampon shout-outs in the locker room to starting her period on the day of the Euros final.

The same day, Chelsea amplified the partnership announcement across their own channels, sharing stats about period stigma in sports. Then, as the club took to the pitch for the Women’s Super League’s first match of the season, they posted a video of the stained shorts with the caption: “No shame. No stigma. Period 🚫.”

Since their season-opening win over Manchester City, the club has rolled out a four-part video series where players react to the stats, embrace the positives of the menstrual cycle, normalize tampon talk in the sport, and answer quickfire questions (including tampon, or pad?).

The campaign has produced 892.3K views across Instagram and TikTok.

Arsenal x Persil x Dirt Is Good

6 in 10 girls fear playing sports because of period leaks.

That was the insight behind Persil’s Every Stain Should Be Part of the Game campaign. The idea: normalize every stain (blood, grass, mud, etc) so girls can play without fear or shame.

Persil launched the campaign around the Women’s North London Derby at Emirates Stadium. LED boards, a halftime interview, and even a program takeover made the message impossible to ignore for one of the biggest crowds of the season.

Off the pitch, OOH and print connect to a video series (Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3) with Beth Mead, Leah Williamson, Katie McCabe, and Kim Little—sharing guidance for coaches, parents, and teachers to help break the stigma.

The second content wave dropped on International Women’s Day (Part 1 | Part 2), scaling nationwide near WSL stadiums and schools before Arsenal vs. Liverpool Women at the Emirates.

The results speak for themselves: nearly 85M views on Instagram across organic and paid. Note - the videos linked above are those that appear on Arsenal’s channels, but there are several other pieces you should absolutely check out on the Persil and Dirt Is Good accounts.

U by Kotex x WNBA Players

U by Kotex took a player-first approach to sponsorship, teaming up with four WNBA athletes: Breanna Stewart (New York Liberty), Te-Hina Paopao (Atlanta Dream), and the StudBudz—Courtney Williams and Natisha Hiedeman (Minnesota Lynx).

The partnership builds on March’s Play On My Period campaign, where the brand worked with top NCAA women’s basketball players through NIL deals.

What really stood out this time was the StudBudz. They dyed their hair period red to show women and girls that menstruation shouldn’t hold them back in sports. And because they’re known for livestreaming, there was naturally a Twitch element: Williams and Hiedeman hosted a Just Chatting stream, answering fan questions—including plenty about periods—pulled from Instagram.

Yes, the campaign drove 2M+ views, but that’s not the whole story. Scroll through the comments across channels—the real win was sparking open, confident, and public conversations about periods. And this content delivered.

Indiana Fever x Sequel

In June, Sequel became the Official Tampon Partner of the Indiana Fever. As part of the deal, Sequel products are available to both players and fans—with complimentary Spiral Tampons stocked in the locker room and throughout Gainbridge Fieldhouse restrooms.

On the content side, Sequel sponsors 360 Plays—a rebrand of the classic “every angle” format that nods to the spiral design of their product. They also signed Fever guard Lexie Hull, giving the brand access to her 660K+ Instagram and TikTok followers. But it’s not just about reach: Hull is a Stanford alum, just like Sequel co-founders Amanda Calabrese and Greta Meyer, who were both athletes and engineers on campus.

So far, Hull has driven 837.5K views across TikTok and Instagram, but what stood out was the storytelling arc. Sequel’s first appearance came early in the Fever’s season in a simple What’s In My Bag video—a quick brand mention, nothing more. Six weeks later, Hull posted again in uniform, this time sharing the actual partnership news. By August, she followed up with a more personal take on why she chooses Sequel. The kicker? In those last two posts, she linked directly to TikTok Shop, creating an opportunity to earn commission on top of her sponsorship fee.

The Takeaway

It’s easy for brands to say they support women in sport.

What sets these campaigns apart is how they use partnerships. Logos weren’t just slapped jerseys—smart, authentic content was built around the message. That thoughtfulness is what drives attention, sparks conversation, and makes the sponsorship more than a headline.

🔍️ SPONCONSPIRATION
Steal These Ideas

King’s Hawaiian earns the crown for best sponsored series names this week. Bite-Sized Questions with Denny Hamlin (of Joe Gibbs Racing) is pitch-perfect for rapid-fire Q&A content or question of the day. Out west, the Los Angeles Dodgers launched King of the Hill, a clean fit for pitcher highlight reels.

If you’re in soccer, keep tabs on Gino Harreman. His social clips—like this Ball Launcher goalkeeper challenge with Borussia Mönchengladbach’s Jil Frehse—stand out with their eye-catching POV and are natural fits for equipment brands.

More teams need to be doing this. Manchester United and adidas used the comment to video Instagram feature to highlight the F50.

Speaking of adidas, they kept their Audi F1 partnership announcement simple, and it worked! Looking forward to what comes next ahead of their inaugural season in 2026.

Williams Racing rolled out two content plays tailor-made for consumer electronics. First, they recapped the Italian GP shot entirely on an iPhone. Then, Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz dished out life advice straight from fan-submitted questions.

Over at Red Bull Racing, the pit crew pulled off a challenge that was both entertaining and perfectly on-brand—though the real win was in the caption.

After teaming up with Billie Jean King during the US Open, Lyft kept the momentum going with more sports-driven sponcon to promote Lyft Silver. This time, the spotlight was on the New York Liberty and their senior dance squad, the Timeless Torches.

🚨 ICYMI
What To Watch For

Neat Partnerships: Alyssa Meyers’ conversation with Neat VP of Marketing Priscilla Barolo is a great lesson in how to pitch and succeed with B2B focused partnerships [via Marketing Brew].

Premier Belief: Burnley FC’s all-access show, Keeping the Faith, officially launched. It’s the first X Originals content series commissioned in the UK.

Cheez-It, Threez It: No, that’s not the Intuit Dome—it’s Gainbridge Fieldhouse. The Indiana Fever reward their loudest section with Cheez-It crackers. More teams should lean into this kind of fan engagement.

Express Yourself: The Golden State Valkyries turned Wallpaper Wednesday into a sponsored series with Adobe. The wallpapers are built in Adobe Express, and as an extension, the team launched a fan design challenge. The best submissions using a Valkyries-themed Adobe Express template will get featured on the team’s Instagram Stories.

Career Conversations: LeBron James is hosting a new show for Indeed, The Main Thing. He’ll welcome guests from Tony Hawk to Teyana Taylor to explore how their unique skill sets shaped career success [via Fast Company].