Payment provider Mastercard has signed a three-year partnership with French women’s football team Olympique Lyonnais.
The move aims to show the brand’s commitment to women’s football and gender equality in sports. Mastercard will become one of Lyon’s primary sponsors.
Additionally some of the team’s players have been selected as Mastercard brand ambassadors. These include Ada Hegerberg, the first female to receive a Ballon d’Or; Wendie Renard, captain of the club and former French national captain; Kadeisha Buchanan, also a captain of the club and of the Canadian national team, and Saki Kumagai, captain of Japan.
Raja Rajamannar, CMO and communications officer at Mastercard, said: “By investing significantly in women’s football, as a professional and influential sport, we have an opportunity to directly impact the lives of athletes and help build sustainable programs to which girls and women around the world can aspire.
Thierry Sauvage, MD at Olympique Lyonnais, said the club were proud to partner with Mastercard. “This partnership around the women’s team reflects one of the world’s leader in payment systems sector’ confidence in the Olympique Lyonnais’ strategy and our ambition to achieve parity and balance in football,” he said.
Last weekend Lyon defeated Barcelona women 4-0 in the Champions League final, to win their fourth consecutive European title.
Mastercard isn’t the only payment provider to have shown it’s support to women’s football over the past few months. In March Visa made a pledge to spend as much on it’s marketing of women’s football as it did on the Men’s Fifa World Cup in Russia in 2018. Barclays also made the biggest-ever investment in UK women’s sport by a brand through its four-year sponsorship of the FA Women’s Super League.
