Women’s sports are on the rise

By Brad Ziegler

Even the most casual sports fans have been able to notice the tremendous change in the sports landscape over the past several years as women athletes, the teams they play for and the leagues that they play in have risen in popularity and exposure.  Television ratings for college and professional women’s sports are higher and sponsorship deals are becoming more lucrative.

Fan support of collegiate women’s sports reached new heights this past year with huge turnouts for a University of Nebraska volleyball match held at Memorial Stadium in August, attended by more than 92,000 fans, and a University of Iowa women’s basketball game in November played in front of more than 55,000 fans at Kinnick Stadium.

Turnouts for these games played at alternative sites are also translating into larger attendance at regular season games, both on the home courts of the most popular teams and players, and at road games at the opposing team’s venues.  When University of Iowa basketball phenom Caitlin Clark traveled around the Big Ten this season, new attendance records were set at nearly every opposing team venue.

Television viewership of women’s sports is also on the rise as viewership of the NCAA women’s basketball championship game increased more than 100% between the 2022 and 2023 season and another 80% in 2024.  The 2024 championship game between the University of Iowa and the University of South Carolina outdrew the viewership of the NCAA men’s championship game the following night by nearly four million viewers. The women’s game also drew more viewers than every game of the 2023 World Series and 2023 NBA finals.

Professional women’s sports are also on the rise, both locally with the opening of the KC Current’s new stadium, the first stadium in the world that was purpose built for a women’s professional sports team, and nationally with last year’s US National Women’s Team drawing larger viewership for their Women’s World Cup matches than ever before, even though they were not able to advance beyond the group round before falling in the round of 16.  

Kansas City will soon be one of only a dozen cities to be the home to two professional women’s teams with a new Pro Volleyball Federation team scheduled to compete in the league’s second season beginning in January.  The new league is a venture of Athletes Unlimited, a player-centric women’s sports organization with professional leagues in women’s softball, lacrosse, basketball, and volleyball that began just four years ago.

Deloitte projects that women’s elite sports will generate more than $1 billion in revenue in 2024, up 300% over the same industry evaluation done by that firm just three years earlier.  The growth in revenue is projected to come from not only the increased ticket sales to women’s sports events, but also an even greater increase in sponsorship revenue from national brands who are responding to customer feedback that indicates that the brands should support men’s and women’s sports equally.

Much of the surge in popularity in women’s sports has been driven by the fans of star performers, whether it be Iowa’s Clark, professional tennis star Coco Gauf, LPGA star Nelly Korda, Olympic swimmer Katie Ledecky, or gymnast Simone Biles.  Many of these fans are young girls who themselves are participating in sports in rising numbers beginning at an early age.  While participation in sports by boys is still higher than it is for girls, participation by girls is increasing while participation by boys is decreasing and much of the current difference between the two is attributed to football.  The investment by the National Football League in flag football at a variety of levels around the country will likely further close the gap.

Salaries and access to facilities still disproportionately favors male athletes over female athletes, however.  Cailtin Clark’s rookie contract with the WNBA Indiana Fever will pay $76,500 as compared to the first-year salary of her NBA first overall pick counterpart, Victor Wembanyama, who is making over $12 million.  Clark’s new $28 million sponsorship deal with Nike and additional deals with Gatorade, Nike, and others, will offset the income disparity to some extent, however, as Clark will become one of only three current WNBA players with a shoe deal.  There will also be pressure on professional leagues to reduce the gender-based pay disparity after the victory by the US Women’s National Team a couple of years ago in its pay discrimination suit against the US Soccer Federation, which put other sports governing bodies on notice that significant disparities in pay and working conditions are no longer justifiable.

Higher ratings for women’s sporting events are resulting in more coverage on more accessible networks in better time slots and will continue to fuel growth in viewership and sponsorship revenue for women’s athletic events.  The Summer Olympics in Paris will also reintroduce us to current female stars like Biles and Ledecky and provide a prime time platform for future stars.