The 4-Step Process: How LOVB attracted 30 premium brands for the league’s inaugural season
In just one season, League One Volleyball (LOVB) has transformed women's professional volleyball in America. By establishing partnerships with premium brands like Adidas, SPANX, and REVOLVE—many entering sports partnerships for the first time—LOVB has demonstrated a fresh approach to building brand collaborations in women's sports, with Stephanie Martin, LOVB Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at LOVB of bringing these partnerships to life.
Martin, whose career spans retail and sports, including work on major sporting events like Super Bowl 50, brings a wealth of experience in creating meaningful brand collaborations. Under her leadership, LOVB has developed an athlete-centered, co-creation model that has yielded exceptional results, offering valuable strategies for marketing leaders seeking to establish meaningful connections with predominantly young, female audiences.
Key takeaways:
How to move beyond transactional sponsorships to create true partnerships
The power of building collaborations around athlete narratives and authentic storytelling
A step-by-step approach to co-creating content with brand partners
How to leverage a youth-to-pro ecosystem for lifetime customer value
Building Partnerships Without a Blueprint
For emerging women's sports properties, attracting meaningful brand partnerships presents significant hurdles. With volleyball ranking as the #1 girls' team sport in America yet having no professional outlet for elite players, LOVB faced a unique challenge: how could they establish premium partnerships without an existing fanbase, viewership metrics, or even a men's league equivalent to leverage?
With at least 46 million Americans having played volleyball at some point, the potential audience was substantial and untapped. Despite volleyball ranking as the #1 girls' team sport in America, the commercial market lacked professional pathways for elite players. Until LOVB, America's elite volleyball talent had no choice but to pursue careers overseas, creating a significant disconnect between grassroots participation and professional opportunities. This gap represented both a challenge and an unprecedented commercial opportunity for the right partners willing to invest in women's volleyball.
While some may see this as a disadvantage, building in unchartered territory - LOVB saw the true opportunity.
"We didn't have a blueprint to follow," Martin explains. "There's no men's equivalent league here in the US, so we had the opportunity to build a league for women, both as players and as people."
Co-Creation and Athlete-Centricity
Martin's approach to LOVB’s marketing centered on two core principles:
Co-creating with brand partners
Keeping athletes at the center of every story
Rather than treating partners as simply revenue sources, LOVB embraced them as collaborators in building something meaningful together.
For LOVB’s leadership team, it was obvious: partnerships in women's sports must be built around authentic storytelling that centers on the athletes while aligning with both the league's and the brand's mission.
So, LOVB positioned themselves between traditional sports sponsorships (logo placements) and content marketing (storytelling), creating a unique appeal that leveraged the personal connectivity of their athletes with predominantly young, female audiences.
This then tapped into two powerful narrative streams: collegiate stars transitioning directly to the professional ranks with established fan followings, and elite American players returning home after years competing overseas. These compelling athlete journeys, previously unavailable to domestic audiences, created unprecedented storytelling opportunities for brand partners looking to connect authentically with volleyball's passionate community.
LOVB's 4-Step Collaborative Framework
LOVB's partnership development approach centers athletes while delivering strategic value to brand partners. This not only attracted premium brands to a new league but has created the foundation for long-term relationships built on shared values and mutual success.
Step 1: Lead with Mission Alignment
The first step involves finding partners whose mission naturally aligns with elevating women athletes. "For each of our partners, it's not been about an exchange of assets," Martin says. "It's been about how we elevate women—that's been the core."
LOVB specifically sought out brands that were interested in innovation and supporting women's growth, rather than just gaining visibility. This meant identifying partners who were genuinely committed to championing women, even if they hadn't previously invested in sports.
Step 2: Find the Sweet Spot Between Brand Goals and Athlete Stories
Before proposing specific activations/campaigns, Martin's team takes time to thoroughly understand each partner's business objectives. "We always meet with the partner to understand their goals,” she adds. “That's part of our process—to sit down and say, 'What do you want to get out of this partnership? What are the key audiences you're trying to reach? What's important to you this year for your sales goals?' It’s important to us to understand where they are in their business and how our partnership can help support those goals."
This dialogue-based practice enables them to tailor partnership elements that will deliver measurable impact for brands while boosting the league and its athletes. This collaborative method also transforms old school sponsorships into true partnerships, ensuring both parties are invested in and satisfied with the final product.
Step 3: Develop Athlete-Centered Content Opportunities
After understanding partner goals, the next step is content development. "All of our partners have understood the power of content and how it enables brands to authentically shine through," Martin notes. "Storytelling is so connective, especially for fans of women’s sports who are as interested in athletic performance as they are in the athletes themselves.”
For example, with REVOLVE (a fashion retailer new to sports partnerships), LOVB focused on the tunnel walk—the pre-game arrival moments when athletes showcase their personal style. "Being a company that embraces and celebrates individuality, REVOLVE understood that investing in tunnel walks meant investing in each of our athletes and giving them the opportunity to truly express themselves through fashion. REVOLVE made our players feel seen and cared for, and that could be felt through the millions of impressions generated and engagement with LOVB x REVOLVE tunnel walk content throughout the season.”
This recognizes that athletes are whole people with stories that begin long before they step onto the court. By tapping into these authentic moments—where individuals express themselves before they don their uniforms —LOVB created natural integration points for partners that celebrate athlete individuality while building brand affinity.
Martin also highlights volleyball's unique position at the intersection of fashion and sport: “We sit at a very interesting place with volleyball,” she adds. “Our sport is very graceful in its movement - from how you hit the ball, to how the athletes leap to incredible heights, how they can fly through the air from back court to net.” It serves as a distinctive quality that allows LOVB to create partnerships that celebrate both athletic performance and personal expression.
Step 4: Co-Create and Collaborate on Execution
LOVB involves brand partners throughout the creation process rather than developing partnerships in isolation. "We do the concepting with them, from ideation to storyboarding to how their partnership comes to life for the fan,” she adds. “We spend intentional time together not just at inception but throughout the course of the season, so again, it's a true partnership.”
For example, with SPANX, they created a content series featuring athlete-mothers in the league. "As organizations that shared a collective interest in elevating and empowering women, we turned to content to help introduce our athletes as multi-dimensional women, and elevate each of them through their stories,," Martin shares. This not only highlighted the athletes' authentic experiences, but also naturally integrated SPANX products into their daily routines in a way that didn't feel forced or promotional.
LOVB’s Measurable Impact in Meaningful Partnerships
LOVB's strategic collaboration with brand partners has generated substantial commercial momentum in their inaugural season. By centering athletes in their storytelling and fostering true partnerships rather than traditional sponsorships, Martin's team has delivered measurable impact. These significant results validate LOVB's partnership philosophy while establishing a foundation for sustainable growth in women's professional volleyball:
Premium Brand Partners New to Sports
LOVB successfully attracted premium brands that had never previously invested in sports partnerships. "It was exciting for us to be able to work with partners that are new to sports," Martin says, referring to being the first sports partnerships for both SPANX and REVOLVE.
By appealing to brands interested in reaching young female audiences, they created entirely new revenue streams that weren't previously available to women's volleyball. It also opened historic pathways for retailers to partner across all women's’ sports leagues.
Exceptional Digital Engagement
The partnership content has driven exceptional engagement metrics. "Our current engagement rate is 5.9%, across our social platforms, with the industry standard at 5.5%. On TikTok, we were at 10.3% engagement rate this season, and during the LOVB Finals, we had 1.1M views of our match play content, " Martin notes. “With an audience that is more Millennial and Gen Z, it was important for us to reach our fans where they want to consume content, through content designed for them.”
LOVB has built a highly engaged digital community:
29.3 million followers across its channels, such as @lovb
Nearly 10,000 pieces of content went directly into athletes' hands for social sharing, using LOVB partner Scoreplay
Supplying athletes with social assets was also a game-changer for both brands and players—especially those having played overseas where this is an uncommon practice. LOVB athlete follower growth grew 3.5 million followers over the course of the season.
Strong Merchandise Sales
The strength of LOVB's brand and partnerships has translated into one million dollars in merch this year alone.
“I think what's interesting to see was how people were interested in buying the LOVB Brand, in addition to our team merch, and you don't normally see fans buying apparel with the League name," notes Martin. While women’s sports are looking for the right partners, brand decision makers should look to leagues like LOVB who’ve built a strong brand of their own. They have the power that comes with an engaged and invested audience already at the table.
Multi-Year Partnership Commitments
Many of LOVB's initial partnerships were signed as multi-year deals, demonstrating strong confidence from brand partners in the league's approach and future. As Martin adds, "It's the difference between being a sponsor and a partner. A partner wants to create with you, innovate with you."
This long-term commitment allows for deeper integration and evolution of partnerships over time. By the end of their inaugural season, LOVB welcomed 30 partners including adidas, ESPN, iHeartRadio, in addition to REVOLVE and SPANX.
By embracing LOVB’s playbook, both emerging women's sports properties and forward-thinking brands looking to enter this space can create authentic partnerships that drive meaningful results while supporting the growth of women's sports.
