Viewership of women’s sports reached record levels this year – now, sporting leagues are hoping to ride the wave into 2025.
Over the past year, several leagues experienced exponential growth in popularity, Reuters reported. That includes the National Women’s Soccer League, whose viewership grew to 967,900 per game, on average, during its championship run last month – marking an 18% increase from 2023. The Women’s National Basketball Association similarly reported increases. During its regular 24-game season, the WNBA reached 1.2 million viewers on ESPN — a new record — as well as an average viewership of 1.6 million throughout its five-game championship series, the league’s largest audience in 25 years.
The value of both leagues is expected to grow by $1.6 billion within the next three years, according to sports and entertainment agency The Collective. Other insiders agree – a 2024 survey of more than 400 industry leaders released by research and professional services company PwC revealed that 85% of them expect women’s sports revenues to grow by double digits within the next five years, with basketball, rugby and soccer expected to experience the biggest bumps.
“The women’s sports industry is an incredibly valuable and rapidly growing sector,” Thayer Lavielle, managing director of The Collective, told Reuters. “WNBA and NWSL teams are leading the charge, but this growth is not limited to these leagues — it’s about the growth of the entire women’s sports ecosystem.”
This increasing hype around women’s sports has been a long time coming. Though Title IX was enacted in 1972 to prevent sex-based discrimination in educational programs and activities like sports, gaps in representation and participation between male and female athletes still persist. A 2024 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that 93% of colleges around the country saw lower sports participation rates among women students in 2021 and 2022.
This more recent growth in interest may create a future where more opportunities for women athletes exist, experts say. Some are already springing up, in fact. The Premier Lacrosse League already said it will debut its first women’s league next year, while the Women’s Professional Baseball League, another first-ever organization, will host its first season in 2026.
In the meantime, women athletes are refusing to sit quietly on the sidelines – and are refusing to let fellow players miss out. As tennis champion Serena Williams said in her iconic 2012 Nike advertisement, though women athletes face myriad challenges on and off the field, there are three things they must continue to do: “Overpower. Overtake. Overcome.”
