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Caitlin Clark had an effect on women’s sports in 2024, but investment at every level of the game will push it into the future.
The growth of women’s sports in the United States has continued its upward trajectory since the Title IX education amendment of 1972 prohibiting federally funded schools from discriminating based on sex. This year, the sports marketing surrounding Clark’s record-breaking run through NCAA March Madness and into the WNBA Draft and her record-setting Rookie of the Year season called attention to the growth in attendance, viewership, brand partnership, and broadcast interest.
Investment yields those opportunities. In November 2023, at the start of Clark’s senior year, the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) signed a $240 million, four-year media rights deal with Paramount’s CBS Sports, Amazon Prime Video, Disney’s ESPN and Scripps’ ION. At the time, it was the most lucrative broadcast contract in women’s sports history.
That deal was followed by league sponsorships from both Amazon and Google Pixel and caught the interest of team investors. The NWSL’s Portland Thorns sold in January for $63 million, or $10 million more than the $53 million expansion fee the league charged its newest club, Bay Area FC. Investors stepped in and bought the Seattle Reign for $58 million in March and the San Diego Wave for $113 million that same month.
However, the biggest leap came in July, when Willow Bay, Dean of USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, and Bob Iger, CEO of The Walt Disney Company, bought Los Angeles-based Angel City FC for $250 million—making it the most valuable women’s sports franchise in the world.
Brands and Broadcasters Are Committing to Women’s Sports
“You can look at like the Caitlin Clark effect as a spike, the way [the] ‘99 [Women’s World Cup] was a spike, or Billie Jean King’s Battle the Sexes was a spike, but you’re seeing more of them, and you’re seeing that bleed into more consistency,” said Kara Nortman, co-founder of Angel City FC and founder of The Monarch Collective venture capital firm. “You’re still seeing a lot of work to bring all teams up and all leagues up, [but] then I think about next year and probably the next three years as more nuanced around how you actually create consistency.”
In the WNBA, meanwhile, the league brought in the Golden State Valkyries, Toronto Tempo, and a Portland franchise for $50 million each in expansion fees. It also renewed its own media rights partnerships with Amazon Prime Video and ESPN parent company Disney, as well as a new deal with NBCUniversal. The 11-year deals broadcast 125 WNBA games a year, expand WNBA League Pass services internationally through Amazon and allow the league to pick up more media partners along the way.
Those deals are valued at $2.2 billion—or roughly six times the value of the W’s current deal with ESPN—and might reach as much as $3 billion with additional partners (like current WNBA broadcaster ION).
No Brand Experienced More Growth In 2024 Than the WNBA
That’s all changing how brands plan to support women’s sports going forward. According to Sports Innovation Lab’s 2025 Women’s Sports Media Benchmarking Survey, the average brand allocated 20% of its sports media budget to women’s sports, up from 9% in 2023. While 82% of brands plan to increase their women’s sports budget in 2025, 34% of those brands plan an increase of more than 10 [up from 10% of brands that made such a leap in 2023]. With only 7% of brands reallocating sports media money from men’s to women’s sports in 2025, women’s sports have become a spending priority all their own.
“When you can create programmatic inventory that allows [brands] to reach WNBA fans or NWSL fans, or women’s rugby fans coming off the back of the Olympics and breakout stars like Ilona Maher, these athletes continue to be culturally relevant and become stars in their own right,” said Gina Waldhorn, CMO of Sports Innovation Lab. “A lot of the brands that come to us have said we’re on board with this notion of the fluid fan, who’s consuming clips, who’s on TikTok, who has multiple OTT subscriptions, who is on their mobile phone, who wants bite-sized content, who wants social content.”
Going into 2025, a new report from Wasserman’s women-focused practice, The Collective, and RBC found that the shifts in women’s sports within the last year have changed not only the value of those sports and their franchises but the potential for investment.
According to the report, TV viewership is expected to grow 32% for the WNBA and 24% for the NWSL by 2027. During that time, which includes the start of the new WNBA media rights deal in 2026, team valuations for both leagues are expected to rise from $2.6 billion for 26 teams now to $4.3 billion for 32 teams—with increases in live attendance and TV viewership driving 63% of that second figure.
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“When you’re talking about men’s and women’s ecosystems comparatively, that’s a tough thing to line up against each other because women’s ecosystems have not had the same runway nor the same resources but seem to be held to the same standard as their male counterparts,” said Thayer Lavielle, managing director of The Collective. “For us in the women’s sports space to be able to move more nimbly, we have to be able to remove some of the gatekeepers, the approval processes that we might normally have to face with massive dollars on the line.”
The report suggests that the valuation of women’s sports franchises going forward should place for emphasis on access and engagement. Where women’s sports were less than 6% of all sports coverage across across broadcasts, streaming, social media, and digital publications in the U.S. in 2019, they’ll constitute 20% of sports coverage next year. Fans consuming that coverage, meanwhile, are 18% more likely to be younger than fans of men’s sports and 67% more likely to earn higher household incomes.
Brands Are Missing Out on the $4 Billion Women’s Sports Merch Market
WNBA fans are 13% more likely to purchase team merchandise than NBA fans, which provides one of several reasons to close the longstanding apparel availability gap between men’s and women’s sports. Meanwhile, fans of women’s sports are 54% more aware of brands that sponsor them and 45% more likely to consider purchasing from those brands—which is part of the reason why the cost for brands to buy jersey patches for top NWSL and WNBA teams already averages $1.1 million to $1.4 million per year.
“I like to be provocative and say I think the women’s sports market will be bigger than the men’s sports market in my lifetime because women spend more money, we have younger audiences, and the number of brands that you can convert over, not just from sports, but from fashion and beauty and all of these consumption brands that have not historically been partners to sports teams and leagues is just starting,” said Nortman, whose Angel City FC has roughly $5 million in jersey sponsors alone. “You’re going to see more examples like Skims, Off-White, Bumble, and Maybelline—not just Coca-Cola, Gatorade, Red Bull, and Heineken—as these new types of brands come over.”
It helps to give brands and investors options for buying into women’s sports.
Earlier this year, Sports Innovation Lab held its first newfront and used audience-driven technology to drive brands interested in sports media toward programmatic women’s sports offerings that fit their needs. As a result, 22% of Sports Innovation Lab customers who used that technology from February through October chose women’s sports products.
Since February, Sports Innovation Lab has seen a 53% growth rate in new advertisers buying women’s sports segments, while women’s sports audiences now account for 16% of Sports Innovation Lab’s audience impressions.
Women’s Sports-Focused NewFront Changes the Media Buying Game
“A lot of the traditional spending in women’s sports was anchored in sponsorship and jersey patches and things that were less measurable, that had a high barrier to entry,” Waldhorn said. “Agencies and brands who had champions inside who wanted to start spending on women’s sports couldn’t find enough inventory that allowed them to test, was addressable, or was performance-based, and this opened that door for them.”
Even if brands or individuals want to invest directly in teams and leagues themselves, the opportunities in women’s sports continue to grow. The last year has seen the launch of the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL), USL Super League soccer, League One Volleyball (LOVB), and the Women’s Lacrosse League (WLL). In 2025, Women’s Elite Rugby and Canada’s Northern Super League soccer each make their debut.
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Nortman, whose Monarch Collective-backed BOS Nation squad makes its NWSL debut in 2026, predicted that the sports world will see more behind-the-scenes talent shift from men’s sports to women’s sports within the next year or more because “they want to believe in themselves and understand their capacity to take something from zero to one.” Lavielle, meanwhile, sees continued expansion of women’s sports investment as a chance for far more players to buy in.
“Up and down the ecosystem, there’s opportunities,” Lavielle said, “for everyone from entry-level students to have a place to realize their passion around women’s sports and know that it’s a viable career to very wealthy investors who are feeling like this is an opportunity for me to take a bet into the sports ecosystem, whether they’re already invested in the men’s space or not, and rest very assuredly that it will pay off.”
Jason is an Adweek staff writer covering the business of marketing.
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