Ally CMO Andrea Brimmer Says Abuse Scandal Led to Bank Going 'All in' on Women's Soccer Investment (Exclusive)

"It was when the abuse scandal broke that I really decided to go all in," Brimmer, a former collegiate soccer player, tells PEOPLE exclusively

The future of the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) looks bright, thanks in part to its primary financial sponsor, Ally Bank, and the company's Chief Marketing Officer, Andrea Brimmer.

In an industry rapidly growing in brand partnerships for talent and organizations, Brimmer and the online bank have gone above and beyond to support the women's soccer league.

Brimmer — a former Division 1 player on Michigan State University's first-ever women's varsity soccer team — says the bank had always been looking to support women's sports. But "it was when the abuse scandal broke that I really decided to go all in," she tells PEOPLE.

In 2021, former U.S. acting attorney general Sally Q. Yates conducted a probe into the league after the NWSL canceled all its scheduled matches following allegations of sexual coercion and inappropriate comments against Coach Paul Riley of the North Carolina Courage.

Yates' investigation included more than 200 interviews with over 100 former and current NWSL and U.S. Women's National Team players. Additionally, it included a review of over 89,000 documents deemed "most likely to be relevant" along with reports from a hotline phone number and email address that were set up for anonymous comments.

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Brimmer was in her car when star player Alex Morgan took to X (formerly known as Twitter) to publicly call out the league, which was sponsored by Ally at the time.

"The league was informed of these allegations multiple times and refused multiple times to investigate the allegations," Morgan wrote in the post, adding, "The league must accept responsibility for a process that failed to protect its own players from this abuse."

"I was driving to Chicago for a girls' weekend and my phone was blowing up," recalls Brimmer. "So I literally pulled over — and I had a thousand text messages. My boss was freaking out. He's like, 'This is a disaster.'"

Players Association's executive director, Meghann Burke, who led the NWSL to its first-ever collective bargaining agreement, tells PEOPLE the period following the exposure of "systemic abuse and institutional misconduct" was the league's "rock bottom" moment.

"We weren't looking for anyone to help at that point. We were looking at each other," Burke recalls, adding that the players association had "a lot of support from other unions," including the NFLPA, MLSPA, and WNBPA after the scandal broke.

Related: Megan Rapinoe’s Soccer Career Comes to Painful End After Injury Minutes into NWSL Championship Final

"It was different to hear from Ally at that moment with a totally different relationship opportunity. As a union leader, I had a little skepticism about what the commercial interest in us was," Burke says of her early concerns in partnering with the bank at such a vulnerable time for the NWSL.

After meeting with Ally's CMO, Burke says she "came to learn that Andrea Brimmer has a vision for being a true ally. I know that’s cheesy, but it’s real. She wanted to show up in our darkest moments."

Brimmer says she was inspired by how "those players did something really, really brave," and when she considered that "their biggest fear at that time is probably that all of the sponsors will scatter, and I want to make sure that we do the opposite, that we double down and go all in."

"And that was the seminal moment, because that was when I reached out to Meghann Burke and we made that commitment to the Players Association. We publicly got just very vociferous about supporting the league, supporting the players, and then ultimately getting to the 50-50 pledge."

In May 2022, Ally pledged to reach equal spending on advertising between men's and women's sports within five years. On the first anniversary of the promise, the bank announced it is ahead of schedule, expecting to reach a near 60/40 split by the end of 2023.

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Brimmer's first order of business following the 2022 hiring of Commissioner Berman was to secure primetime placement for its championship game. "I think there was this belief that there would be nobody that would watch. Why move it to prime if nobody cares?" she says. "And so we started having conversations with CBS, and CBS was like, we'd love to try and figure out how to move it to prime."

This month, the league announced its new broadcast deal. "And I think as you look at the deal going forward, it's not even a question anymore," says Brimmer. "It's a four-network deal. CBS, and CBS has the championship again, Amazon is going to have a game of the week, ESPN will have some games, and Scripps ION will have games."

According to ESPN, the first championship 10 years ago had 9,129 fans in a now-closed stadium, and the following year's final was played at a 5,000-seat stadium in the suburbs of Seattle, where the now-defunct FC Kansas City celebrated their title at a local Buffalo Wild Wings in a strip mall.

This year, 25,011 fans attended the Ally-sponsored championship game, in which Gotham FC defeated the OL Reign at Snapdragon Stadium in San Diego.

"I didn't really see sponsoring NWSL as a risk," says Brimmer. "Of course, the whole abuse thing we had no knowledge of. But I think the double down was deeds over words, a big personal motto I really believe in. And the reality was the players hadn't done anything wrong, and there had to be systemic change."

Related: Ali Krieger's Brother Celebrates Her NWSL Win and Retirement amid Ashlyn Harris Divorce: 'In Awe'

And Brimmer's allyship is just getting started. "We've built an amazing portfolio in a short period of time. We're just getting started, and I'm focused on expanding Team Ally so we can really figure out how to put more money directly into players' pockets," she says.

Team Ally makes up a group of athletes officially partnered with the bank, but Brimmer's vision for the initiative's impact transcends a typical athlete-sponsor relationship.

The group — which includes Ali Krieger and Julie Foudy — was carefully assembled, says Brimmer. "We were very purposeful in that mix of people because those are all the people in the ecosystem of women's sports, and we were really intentional about that," she adds.

"The other aspect of it was we didn't want Team Ally to be brand ambassadors that were just going to do social media posts about how great Ally is because everybody does that," Brimmer says, explaining, "We wanted advisors. We spend time with the athletes, listening and asking, 'What do you need? What needs to happen in order to continue to make change? What do we as a brand need to do to do better?'"

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Brimmer recalls a recent conversation with WNBPA President Nneke Ogwumike. "She told me Ally is the first brand she's been associated with that's asking these kinds of questions.' And we had one of our advisor calls, it was Nneka, and Ashlyn Harris, and a couple of other players."

She adds, "It was supposed to be a 45-minute call. It went two and a half hours, and it was awesome."

Angel City defender Merritt Mathias tells PEOPLE, "Ally really stepped up and supported us in a really big financial way."

Mathias, 33, continues, "I think you need people like Andrea in spaces because she understands she gets it and she wants to support women. When women support women, you can change the world. And I think what has transpired since 2021 in the league, and we're now sitting in 2023 going into 2024, and we've started to set record numbers."

"And it's mainly because people are starting to have access to women's sports like they haven't had before," Mathias adds. "And that kind of comes back to Ally's big initiative. When you're being invested in after proving over and over and over again that you're worthy of being seen, people want to come, they want to watch."

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The Angel City player recalls countless fans who have told her they "ultimately came back because of the environment" of women's sports and the showcase of that value. "The environment within women's sports is very accepting. It's loving. It's a very different atmosphere than going to a men's game from what I've heard, that people feel free to be who they are, what they are, authentically who they are."

"And so you come into these spaces and we build that energy over and over again, that's where it becomes so fun. That's where the community is," says Mathias.

The bank is especially determined to live up to its name, selected by a branding team that included Brimmer. "That was my first assignment when I came over to Ally," says Brimmer. "I spent 20 years on the agency side, and we wanted a name that would stand for something literally and figuratively."

Brimmer is "extremely proud" of the NWSL's growth in just the two years since the scandal shocked the soccer world.

In fact, she sees the league as an already-productive "igniter of our brand," and "our investment is the right thing to do on every level," Brimmer says. "It's the right thing to do for our business. It's the right thing to do for the world. It's the right thing to do for women's sports, and this is a win-win-win all the way around."

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