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WOMEN’S SPORTS ISN’T ‘HAVING A MOMENT.’ IT’S A MOVEMENT, NEW STUDY SHOWS

IF IT FEELS LIKE PEOPLE ARE PAYING MORE ATTENTION TO WOMEN’S SPORTS THIS YEAR,
IT’S BECAUSE THEY ARE, ACCORDING TO A NEW STUDY BY PARITY

Updated May 17, 2024 Abby Levene
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Photo: Getty

Sophia Kennedy of Stanford and Haley Herberg of Washington run in the women's
5,000m during the Pac-12 Track and Field Championships. Photo: Getty

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When Jasmin Paris collapsed across that fabled yellow gate marking the finish
line of the Barkley Marathons on March 22, the internet exploded. And not just
the small corner of X (formerly Twitter) that follows the tweets of enthusiastic
Barkley fan Keith Dunn for 60 hours every spring. Major media outlets around the
world—The New York Times, BBC, ESPN, CNN—lined up to share her story of becoming
the first woman finisher in the race’s 37-year history.

It’s true that even Hollywood couldn’t have scripted a better ending—Paris
completed the grueling, cryptic race with just one minute to spare. And it’s
true that Barkley almost always punches above its weight when it comes to the
hype drawn by this quirky event in the mountains of Tennessee.

Paris, 40, is a soft spoken animal veterinarian and mother of two from
Midlothian, Scotland, who over the past several years has eschewed traditional
sponsorships in favor of supporting the Green Runners, a climate change advocacy
group she helped start. She transcends the rest of the eccentric 20 ultrarunners
who have successfully completed all five laps of “the race that eats its young.”
And that includes Jared Campbell, who just 30 minutes previously had become the
first four-time finisher. In fact, the attention her extraordinary feat received
may be the result of a much larger trend—an increased interest in women’s
sports.

PROOF IN NUMBERS

(Photo: Getty)

Talking about madness in March, this year for the first time ever, more viewers
tuned into the ESPN broadcast of the women’s NCAA Division I college basketball
title game than the men’s. Far more—18.7 million on average (24 million at its
peak) compared to an average of 14.8 million for the men’s game, according to
the NCAA. (And it should be noted that viewership of the men’s game was up from
last year’s 14.7 million.)

A month later, tennis superstar Serena Williams’s husband and Reddit co-founder
Alexis Ohanian put a big bet on women’s track and field when he announced that
his venture capital firm Seven Seven Six is investing in a new women’s-only
track meet, the 776 Invitational, slated for the end of September.

Sensing this palpable momentum behind women’s sports, Parity, a company aiming
to close the gender income and opportunity gap in pro sports by matching women
athletes with brands for endorsement deals, set out to find the data depicting
this upward trajectory. Partnering with Survey Monkey, Parity conducted a survey
of over 14,000 women and men in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Australia, asking
questions about their feelings toward women’s sports. The results corroborate
what we feel in the zeitgeist: women’s sports have moved from a moment to a
movement.

Nearly three quarters (73 percent) of survey respondents say they watch women’s
sports at least a few times a year. That’s 8 percent less than the 81 percent
who say they watch men’s sports at least a few times a year. It’s still a gap,
but one much smaller than many anticipated—including Parity.

With the advances in women’s sports, Parity expected viewership to continue its
gradual increase, but data shows the surge happened over the last few years.
Over a quarter of respondents (28 percent) said they’re watching more women’s
sports now than this time last year. In the U.S., more than half (53 percent) of
women’s sports fans said they’ve been watching women’s sports for three years or
less. The appeal is universal. According to a 2023 YouGov poll survey taken
across 18 international markets, men are more likely to watch women’s sports,
with 31 percent of viewership coming from men and 22 percent women.

“It’s not just women tuning into women’s sports. Everybody’s tuning into women’s
sports,” Leela Srinivasan, CEO of Parity, told RUN in an exclusive interview in
advance of the survey’s launch. “And more men, in fact, are likelier to watch
frequently than women.”

RELATED: Jasmin Paris Becomes First Woman to Finish World’s Hardest Race

YOU HAVE TO SEE IT TO BELIEVE IT

Alexis Holmes, Bailey Lear, Talitha Diggs, and Quanera Hayes from the U.S.
competed in the 400 meters and 4×400 meters relay events at the 2023 World
Athletics Championships (Photo: Getty)

So why the sudden surge in interest? Srinivasan attributes it to the trifecta of
increased media attention (live event broadcasts and pre-and post-event
coverage), quality of play, and star power. That hunch is backed up by data. The
number one reason for watching women’s sports is a desire to support women (41
percent), followed by the quality of play (33 percent) and an interest in
following individual athletes (32 percent). Americans and Canadians in
particular are most likely to watch women’s sports thanks to individual star
power (36 and 34 percent, respectively).

Obviously, the first step in garnering greater interest has been making women’s
sports more accessible. The rise of streaming services and the de-consolidation
of cable TV has opened the door to more viewing opportunities.

“I am a lifelong watcher of all sports. I grew up watching everything under the
sun back in Scotland where I grew up,” Srinivasan says. “And as I was reflecting
on it, that meant that when I watched women’s sports, I watched women at the
Olympics and I watched women play in Wimbledon. And those were really the only
times that women’s sports were on TV when I was growing up.”

Now, women’s sports are widely televised—if still a minority of sports coverage.
The infamous statistic that only 4 percent of sports media coverage is of women
has gone up to a whopping 15 percent in the past year, according to a 2023 study
conducted by Wasserman. But the saturation of the TV market means audiences need
to seek the coverage out—and increasingly, they are.

“I do think it starts with media access,” Srinivasan says. “If you can’t access
it, then you can’t watch it. But once they tune in, they’re really discovering
just how much there is to explore and the quality and the style of play and
everything.”

That being said, finding women’s sports on TV can be hard. Half of U.S. women’s
sports fans surveyed said they typically find women’s sports by channel surfing.

Over half of respondents (55 percent) said they would watch more women’s sports
if they could watch it with others. This widespread desire suggests that
Ohanian’s move to purchase the Sports Bra, a women’s sports bar in Portland,
Oregon, and the plan to open franchises in additional cities is more than an act
of altruism.

RELATED: Alexis Ohanian, Gabby Thomas Backs New Women’s-Only Track Meet

A DIFFERENT GAME

While media access is a necessary condition, it’s insufficient to explain the
increased popularity. Women’s sports provide a unique, entertaining style of
play that, it turns out, is not inferior to men’s.

“I think I was also just really excited to see there were answers that related
more to the quality of the play, to the skill level,” Srinivasan says.
“Depending on the sport you’re playing, watching the women’s version of that
sport might be quite different. The classic analog in this country is basketball
because women’s pro basketball does look different from men’s pro basketball
because physically the game is different, but I can tell you having sat
courtside at an NBA game and a WNBA game, it is just as exciting.”

Excitement level, quality of play, and differences in how the sport is played
between women and men were all cited in the survey as primary reasons for tuning
into women’s sports. During the collegiate basketball season, many ESPN and ABC
commentators and retired star athletes—men and women alike—remarked how the
women’s game is much more focused on fundamentals and team play than the men’s.

“The players leave it all on the court,” Srinivasan says. “The skill level and
strategy in the women’s game is just different. And so I think it was
interesting to see that kind of surfacing in some of the feedback that there are
so many reasons that fans are leaning into women’s sports.”

STAR POWER

A young fan shows her support for Caitlin Clark #22 of the Indiana Fever prior
to a game against the Connecticut Sun (Photo: Getty)

In addition to a unique style of play, Parity’s survey shows that women’s sports
are garnering attention thanks to the stardom of individual athletes. It’s
another trend Ohanian seemed to be ahead of when he tapped sprinter superstar
Gabby Thomas to put a face to the 776 invitational.

Going back to basketball, if you remotely followed March Madness this spring,
this news will not come as a surprise. The record-breaking numbers of fans
tuning into the NCAA women’s playoffs is inextricably linked to the Caitlin
Clark effect, the resounding interest in the two-time collegiate National Player
of the Year from University of Iowa who became the top WNBA draft pick of the
Indiana Fever on April 15. Within days, her number 22 jersey became the
top-selling ever for any draft pick in any sport (male or female), according to
the licensed sportswear retailer Fanatics. (That figure was broken 10 days later
after Caleb Williams was chosen first in the NFL Draft by the Chicago Bears.)
The WNBA Draft itself amassed a record-breaking average of 2.5 million
viewers—up four-fold from 2023, ESPN reported.

“In the U.S. specifically, we see more fans tuning in because they follow an
individual and it was a specific athlete that resonates with them,” Srinivasan
says. “And so you see a little bit of that star power almost in the U. S.
numbers, in particular North America in general.”

Srinivasan attributes this star power largely to social media and the athlete
access it provides to fans. In fact, due to the gender wage gap across many
sports, female athletes have more incentive to build brands on social media to
gain additional sponsorships, Srinivasan says.

“In working with these thousand plus athletes, we’re well aware of how
entrepreneurial they have to be in order to kind of stitch together a living
across the multiple things that they do,” Srinivasan says. “That requires a lot
of them to set up and have a robust social media presence and platforms like
Instagram. You see that you see very clearly in this report, the impact of
Instagram in terms of where people are tuning into women’s sports and women
athletes. It’s a great storytelling platform. It allows the athletes to let the
fans inside in some ways and share who they are as people.”

RELATED: Fiona O’Keeffe Reigns Supreme at the U.S. Olympic Trials Marathon in
Historic Debut

PARITY IN PARIS AND BEYOND

Women’s sports fandom may be here to stay, but there’s still a long way to go.

“Fandom has far outpaced growth of infrastructure. And when you look at
collective bargaining agreements and the different, different ways in which the
rules are set regarding money changing hands, that the infrastructure still
needs to catch up,” Srinivasan says. “It will do that, but there will be some
frustration along the way. A betting person would have said, ‘Look, the WNBA is
going to have to fly charter this year because they can’t possibly have Caitlin
Clark and Angel Reese fly coach.’ I mean, that’s ridiculous.”

The starting annual salary for WNBA players this year is $76,535 (for a 40-game
regular season schedule)–less than 10 percent of the NBA’s $1.1 million (for an
82-game season), according to Statista. Money needs to catch up to this
acceleration in fan interest, Srinivasan says, but the rise of brand
partnerships for star athletes—Clark, for example, signed a $28 million,
eight-year deal with Nike—has begun to make a meaningful impact.

(Photo: Getty)

Even with the rise of Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) deals for college athletes
over the past three years, only 9 percent of sports media investment dollars go
into women’s sports. And yet, the majority (57 percent) of consumers across the
countries surveyed say they trust women athletes believe in the products they
promote—that’s 7 percentage points higher than their trust in male athletes. In
addition, fans of women’s sports are 2.8 times more likely to purchase a product
promoted by a female athlete than by other types of influencers.

Armed with this data, Srinivasan challenges brand leaders and marketing leaders
to take a highly educated bet.

“There’s still a great opportunity to experiment. And also, I think ,still
benefit from that halo effect of your brand being involved in doing something
that, as seen in this, this report, the general population thinks is inherently
good,” she says. “They want to see brands invest more. They want to see more
women’s sports media coverage. They know that women athletes haven’t had the
same opportunities. So brands that come in at this still relatively early stage
are going to capitalize on that.”

Srinivasan’s message to brands: Be bolder in women’s sports.

“There’s just a whole world of opportunity out there,” she says. “And hopefully
this report opens people’s eyes to just the variety of sports and the mainstream
kind of opportunity that women’s sports represents.”

RELATED: One Thing Every Female Runner Should Ask Her Doctor

The upswell in interest around women’s sports, while overdue, comes at the
perfect time for the Paris Olympics this summer, which will make history as the
first Olympic Games with an equal number of men and women competing on the
global stage. Although Rule 40, which severely limits athlete partnerships
during and around the Games, immediately impacts how much athletes can
capitalize on surging interest this summer, Srinivasan believes for long-term
exposure, the timing couldn’t be better.

“They hopefully put on the performance of their lifetime and then have the
opportunity to capitalize on that,” she says.

She says that while brands’ marketing budgets generally operate a year out, the
uptick in interest in brands wanting to work with the women athletes with the
Parity network is already palpable.

“We’re having a lot more serious conversations with brands,” she says. “To me,
experimenting with women’s sports is such a no brainer right now. You should
still be doing that with your surplus, your rainy day fund as a CMO in 2024
while plotting bigger things in 2025.”

RELATED: How Women Took Over This Ultra-Distance Relay

Abby Levene
Abby Levene is a Senior Editor at RUN. After running Division I at Princeton
University, Abby Levene migrated to Boulder, Colorado to study journalism and
run as a grad student at the University of Colorado before competing as a
professional triathlete. She won the USAT Draft Legal National Championship in
2016. When she’s not clacking on the keyboard or trying to avoid getting
sunburned (otherwise known as tracking down a scoop) at a race, you can find her
tripping over…

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