How ATHLOS’ long jump toward equity paid off

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Notte’s Notes

• Go big or go home. We’ve been imagining Alexis Ohanian as Hugh Jackman in a top hat and coattails because, as Ohanian proved, sometimes a show needs The Greatest Showman. Even if you don’t have a Reddit founder’s deep pockets or willing investors, it pays to have a marketing plan as audacious as your premise. What is your “She Jumps” leap in Times Square? Who’s your Ciara talking about pay equity for women in sports while keeping cookies in the jar? Who’s your Tara Davis-Woodhall, Masai Russell, Brittany Brown, or Faith Kipyegon willing to run through a [metaphorical] wall for the cause?
• Solve the problem. ATHLOS, Cash App, and athletes like Tara Davis-Woodhall work together because there’s a problem that makes sense for Cash App (or a brand that performs similar functions) to solve. Before sprinting to your CEO and CFO with a sports marketing pitch, make sure you aren’t stumbling off of the blocks by suggesting a sponsorship that doesn’t match your company’s mission. A digital wallet, mobile payment, or money transfer firm might help athletes get paid quicker. Your laundry detergent brand? Not so much.
• Find the helpers. Tara Davis-Woodhall spent much of ATHLOS being amped to be there and proving its thesis that people will watch the best athletes in her sport compete at an elite level. If you’re an event, league, or even a brand, you want that kind of passion on your team. A big name is fine, but the game they bring to partnerships matters.

ATHLOS

On consecutive nights with temperatures in the 50s and a packed sports calendar, Tara Davis-Woodhall and Cash App helped ATHLOS and women’s track and field break through the noise and take over New York.

Within the past two years, Davis-Woodhall has taken gold in the long jump at the World Indoor Championships in Glasgow, the Paris Olympics, and the World Championships in Tokyo. On Thursday, October 9, under the lights in Times Square, Davis-Woodhall sprinted down a neon-green runway, soared among building-sized signs for streaming miniseries and Broadway shows, and landed in a sand pit with an LED screen measuring her progress.

Surrounded by thousands of spectators, tourists, and commuters, she hit 6.81 meters on her last jump—first among that night’s qualifying round and more than enough to get her to the main competition on Oct. 10.

On Friday night, in front of a capacity crowd of more than 5,000 at Icahn Stadium on Randall’s Island, Davis-Woodhall won the long jump competition with a leap of 7.13 meters—matching her distance from Tokyo and exceeding her marks from both Paris (7.10) and Glasgow (7.07). After Serena Williams presented her with ATHLOS’ Tiffany crown, Davis-Woodhall immediately received her $60,000 first-place award via Cash App—who jumped aboard as an ATHLOS sponsor in early October.

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“I love track and field so much, and I think it deserves all the hype of any other professional sports league out there,” Davis-Woodhall said. “ATHLOS has been able to set that stage for women and for track and field, and I just wanted to take control…I want to see my sport grow, I want to see it at the top of the food chain.”

Started by Seven Seven Six venture capital founder Alexis Ohanian to bring both attention and compensation to the most elite athletes in women’s track and field after the Paris Summer Olympics, ATHLOS launched last year by bringing 35 athletes to Icahn Stadium on New York’s Randall’s Island to compete for $663,000 in prize money amid performances from Megan Thee Stallion and appearances by celebrity spectators including Lupita N'yongo and Shonda Rimes. This year, the field of athletes expanded to 42 with the addition of long jump, and the prize pool inflated to more than $750,000 as athletes ran past and interacted with a crowd that included Queen Latifah, Issa Rae, Noah Lyles, Flava Flav, and WNBA StudBudz duo Courtney Williams and Natisha Hiedeman.

Ciara not only levelled up for everyone in attendance, but told her track backstory while making her pitch for women’s equity.

Interest grew as well. After ATHLOS drew 3 million viewers on X, YouTube, and ESPN+ in 2024, Scripps’ Ion—a strong supporter of women’s sports that airs doubleheaders of WNBA games on Friday nights and NWSL matchups on Saturdays—signed on as a partner in August and helped increase the event’s audience to more than 3.75 million.

“Ion is proud to make our debut as the broadcast home for ATHLOS NYC 2025—marking the start of an exciting multi-year partnership between Scripps Sports and the ATHLOS league,” said Keisha Taylor Starr, Chief Marketing Officer of The E.W. Scripps Company and General Manager of Scripps Networks. “Partnering with Tara Davis-Woodhall and the ATHLOS team aligns perfectly with our mission to make women’s sports accessible, visible, and part of prime-time television. Just as we’ve done with the WNBA and NWSL, we’re excited to continue championing women’s sports and their stories—bringing these incredible athletes and their energy to fans across the country.”

While Toyota and Tiffany signed on among initial sponsors last year—designing the competitors’ right-sized bibs and winners’ crowns—they were joined this year by Essentia’s water bottles, Tower 28’s glam, Instacart’s race-day bodega, and both Togethxr’s Everyone Watches Women’s Sports and Esther Wallace’s Playa Society’s Pay Some Respect to Women’s Sports gear.

The last capsule collection was a collaboration between Davis-Woodhall and Cash App, whose logos lined the She Jumps runway in Times Square, dotted the red carpet backdrop leading into Icahn Stadium, followed athletes around the track, and accompanied them to the winners’ podium. Davis-Woodhall and Cash App used Playa Society’s tag as a reminder that not only were the ATHLOS athletes drawing millions of viewers and thousands of fans during the MLB playoffs, WNBA Finals, and NFL and college football seasons—but they were doing so as bankable commodities.

“ATHLOS broke through the noise because everything was intentional and authentic,” said Zack Ashley, Cash App's Global Head of Partnerships. “The branding elevated the athletes, and the immediate payouts reinforced ATHLOS' core promise: putting athletes first. Women's sports are rightfully being recognized, and ATHLOS captured the moment perfectly.”

Getting your attention

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In May, ATHLOS announced Davis-Woodhall as an owner/advisor—along with gold-medalist runners Sha’Carri Richardson and Gabby Thomas—for the ATHLOS track and field league set to debut in 2026. Before getting there, however, Ohanian noted that she “wanted to be the center of the universe” for long jump’s debut at this year’s ATHLOS.

That meant getting help from New York City to not only shut down Times Square, but to do so at night when people would be visiting beyond the simple saunter to lunch, the M&Ms store, or the TKTS booth. For Davis-Woodhall, who’d been visiting New York since she was 16, being able to promote the event with a jumper’s silhouette against the skyline was special, but jumping in a competitive event in Times Square at night amid the lights added to what she sees as the purest way to experience the event.

“I think people were just enamored by how far a woman can fling themselves in the air,” she said. “I don't think people could truly understand what long jump is from the TV screen, so when they got to see it up close in person—see how far they can run and, how fast they can run, and how far they can jump—I feel like TV kind of takes away from that.”

To prepare for both the Times Square event and ATHLOS itself, Davis-Woodhall returned from the World Championships in Tokyo in September and continued training each day until the event. ATHLOS offered competitors $60,000 for a first place finish, $25,000 for second, $10,000 for third, and $8,000, $5,000, and $2,500 for fourth, fifth, and sixth, respectively. Cash App, meanwhile, would chip in another $250,000 if an athlete broke a world record.

That is almost out of the question in women’s long jump, where Galina Christyakova’s 7.52-meter mark has stood since 1988. Even the U.S. record—Jackie Joyner-Kersee’s 7.45 meters—hasn’t budged since 1987. But hitting a seven-meter jump is still a tremendous feat in Davis-Woodhall’s sport—where she’s done so five years straight, including her personal-best 7.18 meters last year in New Mexico—and she electrified the ATHLOS crowd by matching her World Championship mark. On a day when she took her crown from Williams and took photos with Willams’ daughter Olympia, Davis-Woodhall also took immediate receipt of her $60,000 prize through Cash App—which she sees as an invaluable step toward creating a better path through track and field for Olympia, her sister Adira, and girls who aspire to be what they see among the sport’s top talent.

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“I feel like the world has no idea how expensive track and field is, and we are spending thousands of dollars just to get to one track meet, not including the money that we spend to get our parents there, our support staff there, our coach there, food while you're there,” she said. “It's so expensive to be a track and field athlete if you're not sponsored or have someone helping you, so getting paid instantly helps reimburse you for what you just had to pay for, where championships take six months to almost a whole year to get paid from a meet that you probably forgot about.”

Sprinting to pay day

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Davis-Woodhall wasn’t the biggest winner at ATHLOS—that was runner Brittany Brown, who took home $120,000 for winning both the 100 meters and 200 meters—but along with athletes including hurdler Masai Russell, she took to social media with the receipts immediately after competing.

The ATHLOS competitions, a performance by Ciara, celebrity appearances, and athlete payments drove more than 16 million social media impressions and, for Cash App, put the brand in the center of the women’s sports pay discussion.

It’s an extension of a strategy that Cash App has now implemented over multiple women’s sports that’s seen the brand team with WNBA star Angel Reese on ads and basketball courts in Chicago. Cash App has also joined the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream as not only a jersey sponsor but an investor in its camps and clinics for girls, debt forgiveness programs for Atlanta families, and efforts with Playa Society to build equity for women’s sports.

As Ohanian touts ATHLOS as the “Formula 1 of women’s track and field,” Cash App has also thrown its support behind women driving on the F1 Academy training circuit.

“Our mission is to be a champion for our community, which means showing up for the cultural milestones that are most important to them, including investment and follow-through for the women’s sports industry,” Cash App’s Ashley said. “For us, it’s about driving financial equity and empowerment for athletes and fans alike to make these industries more accessible.”

While player pay has been a dominant discussion throughout the most recent WNBA season as the league and the players’ union determine their next collective bargaining agreement—and Formula 1 continues to address a nearly 20% gender-based pay gap within its ranks—Cash App saw an athlete pay issue in track and field that its brand could more readily address.

As Davis-Woodhall mentioned, women’s track and field athletes have faced significant delays when receiving payment. Ashley noted that not only could Cash App expedite the process if the money was there, it wouldn’t have to make much of a pitch to its accounting or executive partners about the marketing merits of such a move.

Yes, the brand was featured heavily at ATHLOS events, but actually paying the athletes and providing a live demonstration of the company’s services to millions of fans and potential customers—moving five-figure sums quickly and safely—showed the value proposition immediately. Cash App announced the partnership in early October and worked with ATHLOS during the ensuing days to make sure transfers would land as needed.

The result proved that not only could track and field’s stars deliver on a big stage, but that they didn’t have to chase compensation months after they’d crossed the finish line.

“Runners shouldn't have to wait long periods for the money they've earned and worked so hard to train for,” Ashley said. “It was a no-brainer for us to tap our seamless and intuitive tools, like our peer-to-peer feature, to eliminate financial barriers so these incredible women could focus on breaking records.”


*Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated where Cash App and Angel Reese built community basketball courts. The courts were built in Chicago. We regret the error.