Up until very recently, the history of women’s sports was not being told.
The history goes back, officially, to 1972 and Title IX, but of course has roots much deeper than that. The vast majority of these tales are lost to time. No reporters or commentators were around to tell them.
More recently, audience metrics have turned upward and money has followed. Across television and digital and social media, companies are competing hard to align with women’s sports brands. Finally, Superstars like Caitlin Clark or Trinity Rodman and the leagues they play are reported on in real time. Women’s sports fans get a first draft of history in a way they never could before.
Helping to lead that charge is Sarah Spain, the longtime ESPN host who in 2024 launched the Good Game with Sarah Spain podcast as the anchor show for the iHeart Women’s Sports Network. It was the first-ever daily women’s sports podcast from a corporate media company. Spain has since been promoted to content director for the network, guiding its voice and perspective as it has added new shows from UConn women’s hoops star Azzi Fudd, sports columnist Jemele Hill, and more.
In the year-plus since, iHeart says coverage of women’s sports increased from less than 1 percent of all sports talk to more than 34 percent in 2025. Spain also serves as a women’s sports update anchor for the company’s vast network of local radio stations. And downloads for the network are in the top 10 percent of all iHeart podcast downloads. The company produces hundreds of shows through partnerships with top entertainers like Charlamagne tha God and Will Ferrell and brands like the NFL.
Just as Good Game and the IHWSN are building a foundation for fans, they are also building a foundation for the industry. When Spain worked at ESPN and pushed ideas for women’s sports coverage, she regularly came up against a lack of familiarity with even the most basic storylines.
“One thing that stood out to me, particularly about men’s vs. women’s, was what a great job we’ve done over the decades and decades of pro men’s sports to establish institutional knowledge so people hear names and games and teams, and use that information to drive their interest in watching, attending, buying, et cetera,” Spain said in a recent interview with Awful Announcing.
“And how poorly we do that for women’s.”
The iHeart Women’s Sports Network was founded in partnership with Deep Blue Sports + Entertainment, an advertising and marketing firm focused on women’s sports. Deep Blue founder Laura Correnti hosts an interview show for the network. Corporate partners include Capitol One and Novartis.
With corporate backing on the production and sponsorship side, Spain and Co. have the freedom to build the network as they see fit.
One big focus early on has been on making it less lonely to be a fan of women’s sports. Audiences remain relatively small, so women’s sports fans do not have the same water cooler chatter and group chat jokes to look forward to as the average NFL or NBA fan. Spain has turned her producers and recurring guests into characters on Good Game. And the IHWSN is making a big push into live events, including tentpoles at the NCAA women’s basketball Final Four and the WNBA All-Star game.
“We want to create a place where we’re going to introduce our listeners to each other, create events for them to show up at, and really change the isolation that some people feel when they’re into these leagues that haven’t gotten the media attention,” IHWSN head Jessie Katz told AA.
Many trace this explosive growth period for women’s sports leagues back to the 2019 FIFA women’s World Cup. The American team’s championship, coupled with its momentous victory over the U.S. Soccer Federation for equal pay, made stars out of athletes like Megan Rapinoe and generated real progress for athletes who are routinely underpaid.
Since then, many sports have taken off, led by the WNBA. A year after the Team USA equal pay agreement, Caitlin Clark made her first national championship game. Clark’s record-breaking college career and meteoric start in the WNBA have taken the chatter and money around the league to a new level.
Spain is serious about Good Game’s role as the most high-profile daily entrant into the women’s sports coverage space. She doesn’t shy away from the sociocultural issues woven into covering many Black, queer and underrepresented athletes. And she relishes the chance to create content that promotes success for women outside of simply being attractive or famous.
“Especially as we’re being forced to embrace a world of influencers and beauty people, there’s a real, genuine authenticity to female athletes and an interest in their lives and who they are,” Spain said, “that is such an important part of I think why so many women are drawn to sports, even if they aren’t diehard sports fans.”
Many of the other hosts on the IHWSN are current and former athletes, including Fudd, Sheryl Swoopes, Renae Stubbs and Ashlyn Harris, who played for the 2019 World Cup team.
Katz believes the breadth of the network can capture audiences who come to women’s sports for any reason. They will get personal stories, sports talk, and laughs.
As women’s sports have grown more popular, particularly in the years since Clark’s breakout, mainstream platforms have covered leagues like the WNBA more. Like so many other big sports stories, the explosion of women’s sports has been eaten up by retread debates and easy focal points. Not only do big networks and platforms incessantly discuss Clark, they also discuss the coverage of Clark, and the coverage of the coverage of Clark, and so on until everyone is angry.
Still, Clark is the biggest story in women’s sports and arguably one of the biggest stories of her generation. Hosting a daily women’s sports show like Spain does now means constantly taking a side in this strange, culture war-amplified debate.
Spain called Clark “amazing and interesting,” but said fishing in the same lake every day is not her M.O. as a host. Instead of playing the hits, Spain almost always leans in the direction of introducing her audience to fresh stories.
“When you have a daily show, you are very aware of all the stories that can be told,” she explained. “And then you have to figure out which ones rise enough that you can tell people, ‘I know you might not think you’re interested in this, but give it a shot and you will be,’ versus trying to beat a dead horse of taking the same five things that you think are quote-unquote big enough and interesting enough and just running them back over and over.”
The balance is more instinct than calculation.
“I would like to say it’s strategy using metrics, but it’s really gut feel,” Spain added. “And for me, that’s kind of always how I’ve done it. Which is, as a fan, what do I want and what serves me? And I think forcing a topic where there isn’t much to say will turn more people away than not having enough about some zeitgeisty [conversation].”
Spain came up through the early internet and hosted radio most of her career. When women’s sports did get coverage in previous generations, it was typically on shows like Outside the Lines. Women’s sports stories were treated as very serious, almost inherently political, always tied back to female empowerment. Spain hopes to cover these angles, but also to make space for the IHWSN to be fun in the same way all of the most popular men’s sports coverage is.
Figures in the industry have responded to Spain’s mix of lighthearted banter and serious reporting. Spain has hosted impactful interviews with American ski jumper Paige Jones and NWSL player Meghan Klingenberg about trouble they faced during their careers. She also held a colleague’s feet to the fire in 2024 when the moment called for it, questioning USA Today columnist Christine Brennan over her needling reporting on Clark during her rookie season.
With these stories, Spain is careful to provide full context, team names and pronunciations so new audiences can follow and so that sources getting accustomed to tough coverage are comfortable. Spain believes she and the show are developing a reputation for fair and thorough work — even with a small team.
“We hold ourselves to a SportsCenter standard with three people doing a daily show,” she said.
The other shows on the network aim to be just as varied and thoughtful. Athlete hosts often tend to use podcasts to share more about their personal lives and interests. Fudd likes to talk about the books she reads and play trivia with guests. Swoopes discusses health, politics and work.
These shows are more catered to personalities versus Good Game’s news coverage and commentary, but the idea is to cover a wide swath of territory in women’s sports. Katz said athletes have been drawn to the network because of the corporate backing of iHeart and its investment.
iHeart is committed to the IHWSN just like all of its recently launched partner networks. The women’s sports network is also collaborating with others. Fudd’s show, Fudd Around and Find Out, is a co-production with Steph Curry’s Unanimous Media, which has its own partnership with iHeart.
Katz believes the IHSWN could eventually get looped into high-level deals iHeart strikes, including partnerships with TikTok and Netflix.
“We’re definitely not siloed,” she said. “We’re on the table along with every other major priority at iHeart right now.”
Spain and the Good Game group will be in Italy for the Winter Olympics this month. In April, they will be in Phoenix for the women’s Final Four. Spain’s hometown, Chicago, is hosting WNBA All-Star. It will be a busy year, a signifier of continued growth and investment in the network.
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.