Eli Lilly has partnered with basketball star Caitlin Clark’s foundation to open three multisport community courts across Indianapolis.
The Caitlin Clark Foundation worked with Lilly and Musco Lighting, a company that designed mini-pitches with the U.S. Soccer Foundation, on the project. Through the foundation, Clark set up mini-pitches last year in her home state of Iowa. As a basketball player for the Indiana Fever, Clark recently worked with Lilly on an ad and has now tapped the drugmaker to bring mini-pitches to her adopted home state.
Indianapolis-based Lilly, along with its collaborators, opened two courts at public schools in its home city and in a park on its campus. Lilly is giving the park and the court to the City of Indianapolis and Indy Parks as part of its 150th anniversary. Local media reported that Lilly donated South Street Square Park to the city in 2019.
Indy Parks will maintain the court next to Lilly’s headquarters and make it freely accessible to the public. Students in Indianapolis Public Schools will have access to the other two courts. Each court is built using Musco’s mini-pitch system, has lighting and is designed for basketball, soccer and futsal.
The initiative is part of a full-court press for Lilly’s birthday celebrations, which last week saw the pharma company fence off part of its campus to erect a stage on South Street Square Park. Peyton Manning, a quarterback who won the Super Bowl during his 14 seasons with the Indianapolis Colts, attended an event at the campus last week to mark the anniversary.
Lilly got its “150 Years of Everything Else” campaign underway last month by publishing a video about how medicine touches lives. The company is running the campaign across high-impact, out-of-home activities, plus national print, digital and social communications, to expand on several years of corporate brand building.