Breaking Barriers: Building Credibility in an Emerging Sport

Introduction

In today’s sports marketing landscape, brands rely heavily on data — metrics like social media engagement rates, partnership performance, and ROI — to guide sponsorship decisions. For emerging women’s professional sports such as indoor volleyball, there isn’t yet enough data or benchmarks for brands to evaluate potential returns. Brittany Abercrombie, the 2025 Athletes Unlimited Champion and 2025 Major League Volleyball (MLV) Most Valuable Player, faced this challenge despite her elite performance and strong personal brand.

Challenge: Limited Performance Metrics in an Emerging Market

Brittany lacked historical engagement metrics and partnership benchmarks to demonstrate her marketing potential. Without clear ROI data, brands struggled to assess the value of sponsoring a volleyball athlete compared to those in more established women’s sports. As a result, Brittany’s on-court success wasn’t yet translating into off-court opportunities.

Our Strategy

The Forzaic Group addressed this challenge by building measurable credibility from the ground up — identifying the key metrics that matter most to brands and tracking them closely across all marketing activities:

• Engagement Tracking: Managed Brittany’s social media presence to monitor follower growth, engagement rates, impressions, and content reach, creating a reliable data foundation for future brand conversations.

• Marketing Activations: Organized high-visibility campaigns, including her USC guest appearance and social media giveaway, to measure audience response and community engagement in real time.

• Performance-Based Partnerships: For smaller brand deals, structured unique discount codes to track sales performance directly tied to Brittany’s influence.

• ROI Storytelling: Compiled and reported these metrics to demonstrate tangible value, reframing Brittany’s presence as a measurable marketing opportunity.

Result

By building a data-driven marketing profile, Brittany was able to approach sponsors with real performance insights — transforming qualitative appeal into quantitative proof. This shifted brand conversations from speculation to partnership readiness and positioned her as a credible, data-backed ambassador in an emerging sports market.

Conclusion

Through a combination of audience analytics, strategic activations, and transparent ROI tracking, The Forzaic Group helped Brittany Abercrombie bridge the gap between athletic performance and market credibility. In doing so, we not only strengthened her personal brand but also helped pave the way for future investment in professional women’s volleyball.