For years, ladies’s sports activities was an afterthought for TV, continuously relegated to ESPN2, Fox Sports activities 2 or ESPNNews, in the event that they have been in a position to safe TV rights in any respect. It was a self-reinforcing cycle of denial: Girls’s sports activities didn’t price, so the demand for the rights wasn’t there. However the video games not often obtained play on the most important platforms, so the untapped potential may by no means be met.
However over the past yr or so, it looks as if a dam has damaged, with massive new rights offers for soccer and a surge of curiosity in ladies’s basketball, with each rightsholders, stakeholders, and entrepreneurs searching for a much bigger piece of the motion.
Maybe nothing exemplifies the rise of curiosity in ladies’s sports activities than the April 1 ladies’s school basketball matchup between Iowa – led by Caitlin Clark – and LSU – led by Angel Reese – a rematch of final yr’s championship recreation, with star energy on each side of the courtroom.
The sport averaged 12.3 million viewers, making it the most-watched school basketball recreation in ESPN historical past, and the most important viewers for any basketball recreation on ESPN (sure, together with the NBA) since 2012. That’s, till Iowa’s win over UConn on April 5 drew 14.2 million viewers.
Sunday’s remaining, wherein Iowa misplaced in an awesome recreation to the College of South Carolina Gamecocks, is predicted to high even that quantity, due to its Sunday afternoon timeslot on ABC, doubtlessly delivering the most important numbers for any ladies’s sporting occasion in historical past.
Flora Kelly, who leads ESPN’s analysis division, wrote in a publish on X that “clearly, Iowa & Caitlin Clark have delivered record-breaking audiences within the early rounds of the event, however non-Iowa video games are additionally up +74% YoY, signaling widespread momentum throughout the bracket.”
However the recognition from viewers was a very long time coming.
“Price remembering that ESPN has had the rights to the ladies’s basketball event for many years and solely now’s giving the sport the profile, sources and shoulder programming it deserved. Which solely damage its personal funding. Do not forget that once you see the rankings for these video games,” wrote Jane McManus, a former ESPN columnist, on LinkedIn. “It’s one thing I witnessed first hand there, and I additionally witnessed lots of unimaginable advocates for ladies’s protection who had a tough time discovering actual traction. And on the identical time, ESPN has accomplished extra ladies’s protection, and employed extra ladies, than some other community.”
However even earlier than the Iowa-LSU recreation, curiosity in ladies’s sports activities was rising. The Nationwide Girls’s Soccer League is kicking off a brand new TV rights deal this yr — price an estimated $60 million per yr — with ESPN, CBS Sports activities, Prime Video and Scripps, with all companions promising greater profiles and extra publicity.
And now the WNBA – with Clark and Reese now dedicated for this yr’s draft – is embarking on its new rights talks in tandem with the NBA.
On April 5 Prime Video, which has made sports activities a high strategic precedence, introduced a multi-year extension with the WNBA, a deal that features 21 video games per season together with the Championship Sport of the WNBA Commissioner’s Cup.
And ESPN, the WNBA’s different essential rights associate, is equally enthusiastic.
“I’ve really by no means been extra bullish about ladies’s sports activities and I feel it’s fairly evident that its recognition has grown tremendously,” Disney CEO Bob Iger stated, in response to a query on the firm’s annual shareholder assembly April 3, noting the rankings for Iowa-LSU. “That’s only a large, large affirmation that not solely have ladies’s sports activities arrived, however their potential is so large. And ESPN is happy to be a part of that and expects to be a part of the expansion of girls’s sports activities for years to return.”
ESPN chief Jimmy Pitaro, talking at an Axios occasion March 19, stated that his firm expects to barter the WNBA along with its NBA rights talks, and expressed comparable enthusiasm.
Maybe simply as vital because the renewed curiosity from TV rights companions is curiosity from advertisers. Sports activities stays the highest-profile platform in promoting, however ladies’s sports activities has lengthy lagged behind leagues just like the NBA or NFL, and even the boys’s NCAA March Insanity event.
That’s altering, in a big approach.
“We root for the boys, we root for the ladies. A lot of our sponsors are tied into each properties,” stated Jon Diament, who leads sports activities advert gross sales for TNT Sports activities, which holds the rights to the boys’s March Insanity event. “If you’re an NCAA sponsor, you’re a associate for all 90 NCAA championships, together with the ladies’s championships, so we have now a dozen sponsors additionally activating on property with the ladies’s event, so we want them nicely. They’re a part of the workforce, regardless that they’re broadcast on ESPN.”
Maybe most importantly, on March 27, GroupM (it’s the world’s largest media shopping for company) introduced a public dedication to double media funding in ladies’s sports activities, making a devoted market to transact starting with this yr’s upfront.
Advertisers together with Ally, Uncover, Google, Mars, Nationwide, Unilever and Common Footage have all signed on to the trouble.
“Quick-growing audiences are watching at a excessive clip, and subsequently, ladies’s sports activities programming is within the ranks with among the highest rated broadcasts general,” stated Denise Ocasio, Govt Director of Funding, GroupM US. “Promoting alongside ladies’s sports activities works.”
Nevertheless it all comes again to the media companions: The published networks, cable channels and streaming providers that not solely televise the stay video games, however produce the shoulder programming, and have ladies’s sports activities in documentaries, docuseries, highlights exhibits and different programming.
It’s about creating an ecosystem the place ladies’s sports activities can ship an viewers for rights companions, outcomes for sponsors, and nationwide and worldwide fame for its stars.
On April 4, at a media availability for the NCAA Girls’s Ultimate 4, College of Connecticut star Paige Bueckers was requested who the nest massive star ladies’s participant can be, with school basketball presently overflowing with expertise.
“I feel media protection is vital for the sport. I feel it grows the sport. Freshman yr, I used to be the media darling. All people was so targeted on me and what I did at UConn my freshman yr,” The Huskies guard replied, noting the give attention to herself, Clark, Reese and USC star JuJu Watkins. “However the media can do a greater job ensuring everybody will get love… unfold it out extra.” The media, or no less than the main sports activities rights companions, seem able to step up