'It's all shifting:' Women's sports pays for those who are now investing

TOKYO — As the U.S. women crushed the Olympic medal count once again, remember that gold, silver and bronze aren’t the only colors that define their success.

In fact, there’s another color that is an even better measure.

Green.

For years, the popular narrative was that there was no interest in women’s sports. No one watched. No one went. No one paid attention. Sponsors, apparel companies, media entities – they could be forgiven for ignoring women athletes and the sports they played because it was clear there was no market for them.

But now there is research, and strong anecdotal evidence, showing that’s no longer true – if it ever was. There is a market for women’s sports, and it’s a growing fast.

Ratings for women's sports are rising while those for the men's sports that traditionally drive viewership are either stagnant or sinking. An LSU gymnast has more than 5 million social media followers, an all-important metric now that college athletes can profit off their name, image and likeness. Teams are drawing the interest of savvy investors and, in one case, an NFL owner.

“We’re not asking anymore for them to support us. We’re demanding it. And we’re showing the value in supporting us,” said Julie Uhrman, who before helping found Angel City FC, an NWSL expansion team that will begin play in 2022, was a longtime entrepreneur in gaming and digital media.

“We don’t want the scraps at the table anymore,” Uhrman said. “We want the whole steak.”

'A savvy business decision'

Next summer is the 50th anniversary of Title IX, the federal legislation that, while initially intended to create gender equity in education, wound up unlocking the doors to gymnasiums, pools and playing fields. To see the impact, look no further than Team USA.

For the third consecutive Summer Games, women made up the majority of the 621-person team for Tokyo. After winning the American medal count in both London and Rio, the women have owned it in Tokyo. They won 66 of Team USA's 113 medals, and 23 of the contingent's 39 gold medals.

MEDAL COUNT: Full list of every medal for Team USA at the Tokyo Olympics

The U.S. women have been so dominant, in fact, that only China and Russia's entire teams have won more medals.

The might of the U.S. women is not limited to summer sports, by the way. They led the U.S. medal count in Pyeongchang five years ago, too.

“I intuitively knew, as an athlete, there was a market,” said Angela Ruggiero, a four-time Olympic medalist in ice hockey who is now co-founder and CEO of The Sports Innovation Labs. “We believed there’s been resistance to people investing in women’s sports because we didn’t have the data” to show there was.

So Ruggiero and her company set out to find it.

They asked fans to share their histories on Facebook and Instagram, and received millions of data points, some of which dated back to 2007. They also analyzed TV viewership numbers, and then supplemented all of that with information on sponsorship and brand loyalty.

What they found was that there was a robust fan base for women's sports, but not the means to capitalize on it. With no ready or easy means to purchase merchandise or gear, fans instead turned to ecommerce sites. With few games on national or even local TV, they watched online.

By not catering to women's sports fans in these very simple, and traditional, ways, Ruggiero's company found that as much as five years' worth of revenue had been squandered.

When companies did invest in women’s sports, there was a measurable correlation in financial support of those brands by fans.

While this did not come as a surprise to Ruggiero, she knows it will be to sponsors and team owners. Their decisions have always been driven by the assumption that there was no payoff in women's sports, and Ruggiero hopes her company's study, dubbed The Fan Project, will show them they're leaving money on the table.

“We’ve all been saying this. This is the more objective lens on the business opportunity,” Ruggiero said. “It’s not just the right thing to do. We’ll keep repeating that. It’s a savvy business decision.”

Just look at the NWSL. After struggling mightily to attract – and keep – national sponsors in its initial years, the league now has eight. These aren't just companies that cater specifically to women, either. Budweiser, Nationwide and Ally are among the businesses that have thrown in with the NWSL.

"I don’t think we’re betting on women’s sports anymore, I think it’s an investment," NWSL commissioner Lisa Baird said. "And this year will prove it. You’re just going to see it continue to deliver."

'It's time for women'

The findings of Ruggiero's Fan Project are being born out in real time.

Ahead of the 2019 World Cup final, Nike announced that the U.S. women had shattered their record for single-season jersey sales. (And that people who came to buy it were sticking around and buying sports bras and other merchandise, as well.) When the USWNT won the title, Nike couldn’t keep up with demand for jerseys featuring the team’s new, fourth star to symbolize its fourth World Cup victory.

In the first three days after Christen Press and Tobin Heath signed with Manchester United last fall, their jerseys outsold any of the players on the men’s team. That’s right. More people were buying Press and Heath jerseys than Harry Maguire’s, Marcus Rashford’s or Paul Pogba’s.

Candace Parker is the first female player to be on the cover of the popular NBA2K game, appearing in some of the editions of NBA2K22. NFL owner Mark Davis is so convinced of the financial promise of women’s sports that he bought the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces earlier this year.

“I believe women today are going to be driving force throughout, not only sports, but the economy and everything else,” Davis told USA TODAY Sports in February. “I just think it’s time for women.”

And while TV ratings for the NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball dropped during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, they soared for the WNBA and NWSL. Not by a small margin, either.

The NWSL saw a nearly 500 percent increase in ratings last season, thanks in large part to all of its games being available on either CBS or its streaming channel, now called Paramount. Ratings for the WNBA, which got prime real estate on both ESPN and the CBS Sports Network, grew 68 percent.

Halfway through this season, viewership on ESPN alone was up 44 percent.

The increases aren’t limited to the professional leagues. This year alone:

► The women’s basketball Final Four was the most-watched since 2012.

► The College Softball World Series was the most-viewed ever.

► The College Cup, soccer’s national championships, drew its highest ratings ever for the title game.

► The NCAA volleyball championship match was up 28 percent.

“There used to be a lot of hesitation around women’s sports, a lot of hesitation around portraying women as athletes first. But that has dramatically shifted,” said Haley Rosen, the CEO and founder of Just Women’s Sports, a media company dedicated to, you guessed it, women’s sports.

“Part of that is women’s sports are proving themselves, and the receipts are there,” Rosen said. “It’s all shifting, and it’s all happening faster than I even thought. That’s exciting.”

When Rosen began Just Women’s Sports in 2020, her conversations with potential investors were much different. Some suggested she make it a “lifestyle brand.” Others questioned how Rosen could be sure there was a market for such a company.

(She knew because she was the market. A former soccer player at Stanford, Rosen started Just Women’s Sports out of frustration at not being able to follow women’s games like she could men’s, where there were dozens of websites filled with highlights and stats and standings, to say nothing of viewing options.)

Now the questions are no longer about if there is potential, but how Rosen intends to maximize it.

“From an investment standpoint, (we start with) things Kevin and the organization are passionate about, and then you look for great opportunities,” said Rich Kleiman, Kevin Durant’s business partner in Thirty Five Ventures, which invested in Just Women’s Sports earlier this year.

“Yes, (Durant) wants to, and the organization wants to invest more heavily in women’s sports,” Kleiman added. “But Just Women’s Sports also matched up against anything as a great investment.”

Developing followings

One of the reasons it has been easy for those so inclined to dismiss or diminish women’s sports is because they don’t operate in the same way men’s sports do. Unlike the NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball, which have been around for generations and function much like multi-million corporations, the WNBA and NWSL are still in their infancy.

They don’t necessarily have their own arenas and stadiums. (For what it's worth, neither did men’s pro teams back in the day.) Some are still tethered to men’s teams. They don’t have the billion-dollar media rights deals – though they’re not saddled with the lengthy contracts that go with those, either.

As a result, their fans, as Ruggiero’s group found, are more fluid, willing – and able – to navigate beyond traditional sources to connect with and engage with their favorite players and teams.

That explains why, when Axios released a list during the NCAA tournaments of the players with the largest combined followers on Twitter and Instagram, eight of the top 10 were women. The Elite Eight game between UConn and Baylor had roughly double the social media engagement of men’s games the same night, according to Zoomph, a firm that does audience analytics.

With a combined 5.3 million followers on TikTok and Instagram, LSU gymnast Olivia Dunne has the largest social media presence of any college athlete. She was on a billboard in Times Square the day name, image and likeness rules took effect, and soon after signed with WME, the same marketing agency that represents Tom Brady.

“These athletes have developed their own brand, which includes a social impact platform. They’ve grown their own social following to where it changes the dynamic of how fans engage with the sports,” Uhrman, the co-founder of Angel City FC, said.

“Fans follow players first, teams second and leagues third,” Uhrman added. “If I have the ability to amplify what players are doing … it’s actually going to come back to the team in a really positive way. I think that’s something really different than men’s sports.”

One of Angel City’s other original co-founders, Kara Nortman, is a partner at Upfront Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm. So it is no surprise they have used some of the same outside-the-box principles of the VC world to build the club, which has become an established brand before it’s played its first game.

(Having Serena Williams and her husband, Alexis Ohanian, rep Angel City merchandise on a regular basis doesn’t hurt. The couple, along with their daughter, Olympia, are investors in the club.)

Though support for women’s sports is not a charity project, Nortman said they’ve found that fans of women’s sports do want to believe they’re supporting a mission or values, as well as a team. It’s why the team has pledged to give 10 percent of its sponsorship deals to community groups, and partnered with Nike to donate one sports bra to an underprivileged girl for every seat deposit Angel City sold.

But make no mistake, this is a business.

“Our goal is to build the first multi-billion-dollar valued women’s sports team,” Nortman said. “The goal is to have 10 of them (in the league) in 10 years. That only comes from believing it’s a capitalist endeavor.”

For those who scoff at that idea, consider this: Angel City is poised to sell out its stadium in Los Angeles. When the team unveiled its crest and colors at the end of June, it “blew north of” six figures in merchandise sales in two days, Uhrman said. Its eight-figure deal with jersey sponsor DoorDash is the largest in the NWSL and, Uhrman believes, the largest in women’s sports.

And Angel City doesn’t have a coach or single player to promote yet, and won’t play its first game until next spring.

Still think there’s not money to be made in women’s sports?

“As an early-stage venture capitalist, I’m trying to fund things that 90 percent of people think are crazy and never going to work. Six to 12 months later, those people are offering to give you money,” Nortman said. “We’re fortunate because that’s what happened with Angel City.”

Added Uhrman, “It’s very hard to start a business and feel like you’ve hit the wave at the exact right time. I feel like that’s what’s happening with women’s sports.”

Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on Twitter @nrarmour.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Tokyo Olympics underscores how interest in women's sports is building