Canadian Tire Corporation may have only announced its multi-million-dollar Women’s Sport Initiative on Tuesday, but it has a pretty good starting base for its goal of spending half of its sponsorship dollars on women’s sports.
“The announcement we made is a good step in that direction,” Kim Saunders, VP of ESG strategy and community impact at Canadian Tire Corporation, told MiC. “We’re already about 30% of our way there, which is a good start. We’re definitely driving towards hitting that objective by 2026, if not sooner.”
The Women’s Sport Initiative is a pledge to have 50% of CTC’s sponsorship spending directed to women’s sports. The company’s existing partnerships already included the Hockey Diversity Alliance, Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association, Canadian Olympic and Paralympic Committees, as well as programs through its own Jumpstart Charities. With the initiative’s launch, it added partnerships with Canadian women’s professional soccer league Project 8, this May’s WNBA Canada Game, the Canadian Women & Sports’ Commercial Women’s Sport Initiative, Toronto Metropolitan University’s Future of Sport Lab and the espnW Summit.
The initiative also includes a media fund designed to increase the visibility of women’s sports across broadcast, digital and social platforms.
Citing confidentiality of its sponsorship deals, Saunders couldn’t disclose the size of its partnerships, exactly how much it would be increasing its investment by or the size of the media fund. But she did say that this is not Canadian Tire simply throwing money at a cause for some good PR.
“We are shifting goals, we are changing our actions and really investing in something we think makes the most sense for us,” she says.
Canadian Tire would, presumably, have more sponsorship money to go around these days. In the fall, while other sponsors “paused” their partnerships with Hockey Canada, Canadian Tire was among the first to permanently pull its funding, citing the scandal-plagued organization’s resistance to meaningful change.
But Saunders stops short of saying the new investments are a direct result of walking away from Hockey Canada. Rather, the fact that Canadian Tire has spent the better part of two years looking at how its sports platform could be used to drive social change is part of what led to its decision.
“It’s part of the evolution of where we’ve been heading,” Saunders states. “When we did part ways with Hockey Canada, we said we would think about putting our dollars into partners and entities that we knew were going to drive the social change that we wanted to see in this country. That’s really where this has come from: it’s about continuing to create the full sports ecosystem in the country and the opportunities that we want to see for all Canadians.”
One notable part of the Women’s Sport Initiative is its focus on women’s professional sports, as much of Canadian Tire’s previous support was at the grassroots and amateur levels. Saunders says that commitment will continue, but as part of a more holistic approach to ensure women have the opportunities to play sports at all levels.
“This isn’t about walking away from organizations – it’s about adding to and really creating an ecosystem in sports that is fair,” she states. “This is about growing up and making sure that every little girl and every little boy can dream to the highest heights of their sports. There isn’t a lot of opportunity for women to play on a professional level in the sport they love and that obviously, inherently, isn’t an equal playing field.”
According to the Women’s Sport Foundation, girls are twice as likely as boys to drop out of youth sports programs by the time they hit age 14. There are a number of social and economic factors that contribute to this, but one of them is a lack of professional role models to look to, plus the lack of professional options causing many youth players to limit their dreams and ambitions.
“We believe it drives the kind of country and sport ecosystem we want to see and, frankly, that speaks to our customers,” Saunders says. “We talk to our customers and see what the issues are that matter to them, and women in sport matters to them. We knew it was a way that we could not only drive change for the country and for female athletes, but it speaks to our customer base, too.”
Saunders also states that this philosophy will extend to all of Canadian Tire’s banners, including Pro Hockey Life, SportChek, Hockey Experts, Sports Experts and Atmosphere.
“Our values are our values and they flow across the company,” Saunders says. “We may activate differently on certain banners. SportChek may tell a slightly different story than Canadian Tire, but the initiative, the commitment and the drive to create an equal playing field in sport is a company-wide thing.”