What the Women’s World Cup Final Means to Marketing

26,700,000 ... that's the average number of people who tuned in to watch the US blow out Japan 5-2 on Sunday night. Nearly 27 million Americans watched the US women's national soccer team. WOMEN'S SOCCER - 27 MILLION!

In case you don't already know, that number is more than game seven of last year's World Series and the deciding game six of this year's NBA Finals. It is also more than last year's World Cup Final on the men's side and nearly equal to the number of people who tuned in for the NCAA men's basketball championship game.

By late in the game Sunday night, viewership topped out at just under 31 million, which is not far from the college football playoff national championship game which was just over 33 million.

If you're not floored yet, there's this -- Sunday night just flipped sports marketing upside down. ESPN executives were slightly miffed when Fox outbid them for the television coverage rights to this World Cup. Now, they're probably boiling mad.

The declared winner of the World Cup from a corporate perspective was Nike. Why? Because Nike sponsors the US Women's National Team. The social media buzz around the American women and Nike on Sunday dwarfed every other company, even though Nike isn't even a sponsor of the World Cup. Between them, Fox and Nike scored big time with the women's World Cup. The future implications of these wins means marketing, television and sponsorship dollars flowing into women's sports is likely to skyrocket. Ok, scratch that. The gravy train just arrived for women's sports in the United States.

As corporate giants line up to do battle (ESPN vs Fox, Nike vs Adidas, Coke vs Pepsi, Apple vs Microsoft), the winner will be the women's programs. Women's college basketball has long struggled to be viable from a marketing standpoint and the red ink associated with its post-season tournament is proof of that. The same is true for its professional counterpart, the WNBA.

So, what's next? The Olympic Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil is just two years away. The women's sports story lines will be so numerous it's mind boggling. Soccer - basketball - volleyball - swimming - gymnastics - track & field - tennis -- they all will be bursting at the seams with marketing money driven story lines. Heck, even softball will likely get a boost to its case to return to the Summer Games in 2020.

Americans just spoke loud and clear that they will tune in to watch women's sports. Marketing just changed folks.

I promise - no more sports related posts for awhile.