Over the past 30 years, women’s sports have accounted for 5.4 percent of all sports-related TV airtime. That may feel like a comical, unbelievable statistic, but think about tuning in to ESPN or SportsCenter. How often are women the headline story? How many times are female athletes being interviewed? How frequently are they featured in commercials, or see ads for the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) finals, or the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) championship game?
For years, women’s sports have faced various obstacles, from outright refusal to allow their existence to pay inequities and poor promotion. The common defensive refrain from the perpetrators of these obstacles is that women’s sports lack popularity or entertainment value compared to men’s, and therefore are unprofitable, so why invest in paying the players or promoting their leagues? But this excuse that expending resources on women is just not good for business doesn’t hold water. Women’s professional sports have been steadily increasing in popularity for years, while investment in them has not matched this climb. Lack of investment and resources are handicapping the near-unlimited growth potential of women’s sports, perpetuating a cycle of sexism that continually enables this neglect. Investors shouldn’t bet on women’s sports because it is a good deed: they should bet on women’s sports because it is a smart business move.
First and foremost, women’s sports are undeniably on the up-and-up; those who frame them as unpopular or unentertaining are simply not paying attention. The Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) is set to hit record highs in attendance, viewership, and online engagement this season–last year their playoff viewership skyrocketed by 22 percent. On a collegiate level, the women’s basketball NCAA Final Four increased its average TV viewership by 32 percent. In women’s soccer, the USWNT and British national team, the Lionesses, sold out the 78,000-capacity Wembley Stadium in a single day for an exhibition match. The Nebraska women’s volleyball team just sold out their school’s football stadium with a record attendance of 92,003.
None of this is even scratching the surface of what women’s sports are capable of. A Nielsen Sports study found that while 84 percent of all general sports enthusiasts, men and women alike, are interested in women’s sports, over half of them pointed out that they would watch women’s sports if more were available to watch. The popularity of women’s sports is increasing at tremendous rates, but remains constrained by the poor resources, promotion, marketing and visibility that come with lack of investment.
The effect of this popularity is an incredible business opportunity for prospective investors. In a New York Times article about the surging popularity of last season’s Women’s March Madness, Kurt Streeter wrote that its entertainment value and engagement were “symbolic of a steady shift in the popularity of women’s sports,” and focused on how this shift created new investment opportunities unlike those available in established men’s leagues.
While the idea that women’s sports create more rewarding investment opportunities than men’s is not a new one, it is one that is quickly gaining steam. Sponsorship in women’s professional leagues saw an increase of over 100% in 2022. Also in 2022, private equity company CVC Capital acquired a $150 million stake in the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA). These investments are examples of an upward trend throughout sports, one that, as the Washington Post notes, likely results from the fact that their growth potential is far “greater…than it is for their male counterparts.” This is because women’s sports have shown the ability to give their investors a tenfold return on their investments, as seen with the WNBA’s Seattle Storm, who sold a 14% stake for $151 million, over 1000% of the previous league record.
In short, women’s sports are ripe ground for investors, and they seem to be realizing it. But despite this progress, and the obvious upside, we still commonly see insufficient investment in the women’s game. Harkening back to that 5.4% of sports TV airtime, Forbes points out that without investment, it is difficult to fund proper marketing, leading to disparities in media coverage and broadcast quality.
This lack of marketing affects young women too, especially athletes. Thomas Wootton HS sophomore Isabella Caban says that, as a young woman and female athlete, increased promotion of women’s sports “motivates [her] to play harder,” and that “women athletes [definitely] deserve it.”
Nevertheless, women’s sports tirelessly continue to improve their popularity and profitability–during one of the most well-known struggles for gender equity in sports, the USWNT’s 2019 equal pay lawsuit, it was revealed that despite decades of less funding, lower pay, and poorer support, they still earned more revenue than the men’s team.
Thomas Wootton HS sophomore Amelia “Mia” Stubbins refers to this when asked if she believes women’s sports need more investment, saying the success of the USWNT is “absolutely insane,” given that they have “worse training facilities…staff [and] support,” compared to their male counterparts. Stubbins believes women’s sports will become even more profitable when they are given “increased funding and airtime.” The idea that women’s sports are a bad investment is, as ElleVest points out, nothing more than a self-fulfilling prophecy. References to women’s sports as unprofitable or unentertaining will, logically, discourage investment in them. This is crucial because of the ways that investment determines their growth potential. If women’s sports are managing to succeed with, for example, three times less investment than men’s, imagine what they could do with equal resources: imagine how much money investors are leaving on the table. Investment in women’s sports needs to skyrocket with their popularity: anything less is a missed opportunity for everyone involved.
Written by Avni Koenig of Thomas S. Wootton High School
Photo Courtesy of Trinity News