THE RISE OF WOMEN’S SPORTS
IDENTIFYING AND MAXIMIZING THE OPPORTUNITY
The rate of change in women’s sports is one of
the most exciting trends in the sports industry
right now. For rights holders, brands and the me-
dia, this represents a chance to develop a new
commercial proposition and engage fans in a dif-
ferent way.
Tennis and golf have led the way in the profes-
sionalization and commercialization of women’s
sports, but more recently it it has been soccer
achieving significant milestones. There is an in-
creasing number of professional leagues around
the world, and the UEFA Women’s Euro 2017 at-
tracted a TV audience of 150 million. In May we
saw a new world record attendance for a women’s
club soccer game, when 51,211 attended the fi-
nale of the 16-team Liga MX Femenil. In England,
1.6 million watched the Women’s FA Cup final
clash between Chelsea and Arsenal, with 43,423
spectators in the stadium. Building on this mo-
mentum, next year’s FIFA Women’s World Cup is
set to engage on a large scale and represents a
great platform for brands to stand out.
In other sports, trek cycling is the latest organiza-
tion to commit to running a professional women’s
road team, and in Australia women’s leagues,
such as the Rebel Women’s Big Bash and the
Women’s Australian Rules Football league,
known as AFLW, are attracting large audiences,
stand-alone sponsorships and broadcast rev-
enue. Individual female athletes becoming stars
is nothing new, and we see this especially in the
U.S., where the likes of Serena Williams, Simone
Biles, Ronda Rousey and Lindsey Vonn are not
only household names around the globe, they are
pushing boundaries and paving the way for gen-
erations to come.
This building commercial momentum is result-
ing in groundbreaking equal pay agreements.
In Norway and New Zealand, women’s national
team footballers now earn the same as their male
counterparts, while Rugby Australia announced
it will pay its men’s and women’s sevens teams
equally for the first time. Furthermore, these ath-
letes feel they are privileged to compete in the
sport they love as a career and genuinely want to
inspire, and make a difference for, the next gen-
eration.
Making sense of an exciting and growing market-
place is fundamental for rights holders, brands
and other stakeholders currently operating in
— or looking to enter — the space. We believe
there has previously been a lack of data around
women’s sports, so we’re excited to share these
insights as a starting point to forming a detailed
understanding of the women’s sports commer-
cial landscape.
WHO’S ENGAGING WITH WOMEN’S SPORTS?
A fundamental part of maximizing the commer-
cial opportunity around women’s sports is de-
veloping a detailed understanding of who’s en-
gaging with events, teams and leagues — and
how. Across the eight markets*, 84% of general
sports fans have an interest in women’s sports
(they stated they had an interest in both male
and female sports, or just in women’s sports). Of
those, 51% are male, which confirms both that
women are also interested in watching women’s
sports and that women’s sports represents a ma-
jor opportunity to engage male fans debunking
the perception that only women are interested
in women’s sports and confirming that women’s
sports represents a major opportunity to engage
male fans.
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