Guard Caitlin Clark #22 of the Iowa Hawkeyes listens as the group cheers after breaking the NCAA girls’s all-time scoring document through the recreation towards the Michigan Wolverines at Carver-Hawkeye Area on February 15, 2024 in Iowa Metropolis, Iowa.
Matthew Holst | Getty Pictures
Ladies’s sports activities reached an inflection level in 2023, propelled by main new broadcast offers, once-in-a-lifetime gamers and record-breaking audiences that dramatically modified the sports activities panorama.
From Caitlin Clark fever in Iowa to a packed home of 92,000 followers for women’s volleyball in Nebraska, girls’s sports activities have by no means been extra on the forefront.
And it isn’t slowing down.
Income generated by girls’s elite sports activities might surpass $1 billion this 12 months, a 300% improve from 2021, in response to estimates from Deloitte.
Greater media offers and extra business sponsors are driving document valuations for ladies’s sports activities, with a number of groups’ values anticipated to exceed $100 million in 2024, in response to Deloitte.
Final 12 months noticed document media offers for ladies’s sports activities because the NCAA and NWSL each inked groundbreaking agreements. And buyers from personal fairness to celebrities are lining as much as get within the recreation.
But, there’s nonetheless numerous work to be executed, particularly, within the areas of equal pay, prime-time entry and even the necessity for extra historic knowledge.
CNBC surveyed a number of the most high-powered girls executives in sports activities, starting from league commissioners to crew house owners and CEOs, to listen to their ideas on the state of girls in sports activities. A few of their solutions have been edited for model, readability and size.
What do you see as the first impediment hindering the expansion of girls’s sports activities?
Renie Anderson, govt vice chairman and chief income officer for the NFL: The impediment, or actually the chance, for at this time is to proceed to amplify the spectacular athleticism of those girls. Moderately than be shocked and shocked that ladies are spectacular at sport, we have to do a greater job of weaving within the message of greatness when highlighting the greatness in males’s sports activities. It is there. It simply would not get the eye it deserves.
Jessica Berman, Nationwide Ladies’s Soccer League Commissioner
Jesse Grant | CNBC
Jessica Berman, commissioner of the Nationwide Ladies’s Soccer League: As a result of the world has woken as much as girls’s sports activities, the expectations on how briskly this could develop, from all stakeholders, is admittedly difficult. We’re 100 years behind males’s sports activities, and so it is to not say that we must always transfer slowly. It’s to say that it’s difficult to type of construct the aircraft as rapidly as so many stakeholders count on it to be constructed — and to do it in a manner that is sustainable and commercially viable.
WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert speaks to the media to award Breanna Stewart #30 of the New York Liberty with the 2023 Kia WNBA Most Helpful Participant Award earlier than the sport towards the Connecticut Solar throughout spherical two recreation two of the 2023 WNBA playoffs on September 26, 2023 in Brooklyn, New York.
David Dow | Getty Pictures
Cathy Engelbert, commissioner of the Ladies’s Nationwide Basketball Affiliation: One of many obstacles is the undervaluation of our property. Whether or not it is a patch on the uniform or an advert purchase on a broadcast, we have to change the mannequin. It is based mostly on decades-old spreadsheet fashions which can be tailor-made to males’s sports activities and in these fashions, numerous issues that firms at the moment are supporting in girls’s sports activities aren’t being accounted for like their range, their neighborhood, the truth that they aren’t the “one and done” sort.
Jessica Gelman speaks through the fifteenth Annual Sports activities Enterprise Journal Awards ceremony at New York Marriott Marquis Resort on Might 18, 2022 in New York Metropolis.
John Lamparski | Getty Pictures
Jessica Gelman, KAGR CEO and founding father of the MIT Sloan Sports activities Analytics Convention: A serious impediment has been out there knowledge on efficiency which helps and enhances storytelling. These tales create curiosity and drive (i.e. see Caitlin Clark’s NCAA scoring record quest). This previous 12 months the MIT Sloan Sports activities Analytics Convention donated to Sports-Reference to assist the addition of faculty girls’s knowledge again to 1987.
Jayna Hefford, senior vice chairman of operations for the Skilled Ladies’s Hockey League: Ladies’s sports activities nonetheless wrestle to safe prime broadcast home windows, constant airtime and conventional media protection. Moreover, the shortage of conventional media protection has traditionally pressured girls’s groups and leagues, in addition to women-owned media firms, to take the lead in selling their very own narratives. This restricted visibility has made it difficult to draw model assist, regardless that analysis signifies that firms investing in girls’s sports activities see profitable returns.
Haley Rosen, Simply Ladies’s Sports activities
Supply: Simply Ladies’s Sports activities
Haley Rosen, CEO and founding father of Simply Ladies’s Sports activities: One of many largest obstacles hindering the progress of girls’s sports activities at this time is counting on the legacy platforms. Legacy platforms aren’t set as much as assist girls’s sports activities and construct on the momentum. Sure, they’re going to air the video games. However there’s solely a lot time within the day for the shoulder programming and protection wanted to amplify the ladies’s leagues, and legacy platforms are all the time going to prioritize males’s sports activities. Viewership numbers are rising, however the relative share of girls’s sports activities protection on legacy platforms hasn’t modified.
Mollie Marcoux Samaan, LPGA Commissioner, speaks through the State of the Affiliation press convention through the first spherical of the CME Group Tour Championship at Tiburon Golf Membership on November 16, 2023 in Naples, Florida.
Michael Reaves | Getty Pictures
Mollie Marcoux Samaan, commissioner of the Women Skilled Golf Affiliation: Ladies’s sports activities at this time face two major obstacles: funding and publicity. On the LPGA we have made some nice strides. Our whole income has gone up 65% within the final 4 years, and whole purses — the prize funds gamers’ play for every week — has grown 70% since 2021. That is due to funding, due to partnerships, due to company resolution makers seeing not solely the numerous business worth of the LPGA but additionally the chance to have a constructive impression on the world.
How can girls’s sports activities leverage milestone occasions like these seen in 2023 to additional develop attain?
NEW YORK, NY – AUGUST 22: USTA President Katrina Adams speaks through the Louis Armstrong Stadium Dedication Ceremony at USTA Billie Jean King Nationwide Tennis Heart on August 22, 2018 in New York Metropolis. (Picture by Steven Ryan/Getty Pictures)
Steven Ryan | Getty Pictures Sport | Getty Pictures
Katrina Adams, former professional tennis participant and ex-CEO of the USA Tennis Affiliation: I believe what the Ladies’s Tennis Affiliation has executed for a few years, is proven different skilled sports activities what will be achieved in the event that they use your voice and their expertise, that they will survive. Whenever you have a look at the gamers of at this time — , we discuss concerning the [Caitlin Clark types] and Sabrina Ionescu and Coco Gauff, who was the best paid athlete final 12 months — there’s so many alternatives for these younger girls to make use of their platform to essentially communicate up and communicate out on what it means to be on a stage enjoying discipline week in and week out.
Berman: I believe we’ve to go from these being moments to being a part of a motion, in order that we get out of the default of getting these reference factors be episodic, or transactional or in isolation, in order that it will probably translate to extra sustainable progress and funding. I believe the extra we are able to reveal and discuss a few of these constant knowledge factors that present that the enterprise is definitely being inbuilt a extra constant manner, the simpler it’s going to be to debunk the narrative that these are one-off success tales.
Pamela Duckworth
Supply: FuboTV
Pamela Duckworth, head of Fubo Studios at FuboTV: Feminine athletes are multifaceted — they’re additionally moms, businesswomen, philanthropists, media moguls and extra. We are able to use the momentum from attention-grabbing sports activities moments to deliver athletes’ tales to the forefront and join with broader audiences that manner.
Engelbert: Sports activities is about advertising, advertising, advertising. For those who look again on the historical past of the NBA that put the league on the map and the multibillion-dollar offers, it was a rivalry popping out of faculty, Magic Johnson and Larry Chicken. Then it was a advertising genius with Michael Jordan and Nike. However you want capital to market and promote. I believe the advertising technique we put in place now that we’ve this capital is to construct family names, create rivalries, and promote video games or occasions of consequence.
Fanduel CEO Amy Howe attends The Way forward for All the things offered by the Wall Road Journal at Spring Studios on Might 18, 2022 in New York Metropolis.
Steven Ferdman | Getty Pictures
Amy Howe, FanDuel CEO: Ladies’s sports activities must proceed to place their star athletes (i.e. Ionescu, A’ja Wilson and Breanna Stewart of WNBA) within the mainstream at parity with their male counterparts – the 3-point competition was an ideal instance. Not surprisingly, all of this funding and assist is fueling larger efficiency from feminine athletes which is driving added success in locations like FanDuel’s enterprise, the place we noticed a 270% improve in wager counts on girls’s sports activities and 101% improve in deal with, or quantity wagered. It is an actual flywheel impact.
Rosen: There are tens of hundreds of thousands of sports activities followers on the market ready to be onboarded into this area. We’ve got to make it simple and enjoyable for them to be a girls’s sports activities fan and never simply depend on the stand-alone moments. Which means assembly them every single day on their feeds, creating content material that engages them and retains them regularly related to this area.
Kelly Laferriere, chief enterprise officer, A-Rod Corp.:
The funding neighborhood and media firms are taking discover. They acknowledge the strategic worth. Distributing girls’s sports activities content material throughout a number of media platforms to achieve the widest attainable viewers will drive new income and hold girls’s sports activities a part of mainstream conversations. The Paris Olympics in July additionally creates a possibility for feminine athletes to shine on the world stage.
How do title, picture and likeness laws issue into the expansion of girls’s sports activities?
Adams: I believe it is a possibility for our girls to lastly be acknowledged and really make a residing. The lads, they’ve had this chance for years, for many years, “under the table,” if you’ll, now the ladies are in a position to do it legally with the NIL. For them to make a bit cash and actually develop the game of their communities, of their cities of their school cities, and so forth. I believe it is nice. They’re studying find out how to grow to be entrepreneurs at a youthful age, and so they’re doing extraordinarily properly.
A portrait of Renie Anderson NFL SVP, Chief Income Officer.
Supply: NFL
Anderson: I believe NIL helps possible a small few by means of their social media. I am unsure outdoors of a handful of wonderful athletes/influencers it is going to be unfold out all through school sports activities for ladies, like it’s for soccer for males. However I assume we wait and see. I do not assume it hurts, however for these few girls that do profit, it is a possibility for them to carry up different girls.
Duckworth: NIL opens doorways for feminine athletes to construct their very own manufacturers in ways in which weren’t attainable earlier than. Why should not a feminine athlete earn a living the identical manner her male counterpart can? Cash equals independence in my e-book. Kudos to main sports activities stars like Angel Reese or Caitlin Clark on exhibiting younger girls simply what will be constructed.
Billie Jean King and Jayna Hefford stroll to centre ice for the ceremonial puck drop earlier than Toronto performs New York of their PWHL hockey recreation on the Mattamy Athletic Centre on January 1, 2024 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Mark Blinch | Getty Pictures
Hefford: The constructive impression of NIL on girls’s school athletics has reverberated all through girls’s sports activities, making a state of affairs the place all boats rise. As extra feminine athletes grow to be family names, the funding in girls’s sports activities is more likely to improve, encouraging extra younger ladies to start out — or proceed taking part in — sports activities.
Rosen: On paper, it is nice and we must always have a good time something that helps girls athletes develop their model and monetize their skills. There are clearly nonetheless some particulars that have to be ironed out, particularly in the case of crew dynamics and the potential for NIL offers to power gamers into taking the short-term revenue at the price of their long-term growth.
