Growth in women’s sports, particularly in women’s basketball, has been one of the major sports media stories of 2024.
The WNBA experienced a flood of viewership records this past season, women’s college basketball continued to boast incredible ratings — even outdrawing the men’s championship game this year — sports like college softball and volleyball continue to set records, and professional leagues like NWSL are gaining traction and new media partners.
People are wondering: why now? Why is it that women’s sports has seen such a sudden boom in recent years, as compared to the decades prior where they seemed to be treading water? One could point to the Caitlin Clark effect, but that’s limited to one sport. And growth in women’s sports has been trending up since before Clark’s entrance onto the national stage.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver was posed this question at Fortune Magazine‘s Global Forum on Monday, and he had an interesting answer.
“I think a lot of it has to do with the internet,” Silver answered. “That we’ve disintermediated traditional gatekeepers. It’s not, you know I said this recently. I was at an event with Serena Williams and she was asked, ‘Well what’s happening where all of a sudden these women are emerging as great athletes?’ And she said, ‘Well women didn’t just become great athletes.’ It’s like, you know, of course not. It’s that what’s happened is the traditional gatekeepers who were in the position to say, ‘This is what’s going to be carried on our airwaves,’ or, ‘this is what’s going to be in our precious editorial pages,’ now it’s more expansive and consumers get to decide.”
Silver makes an interesting point. Much of what handcuffed women’s sports originally was the unwillingness of television programmers to put them on air and in favorable time slots. Now, the NCAA women’s basketball championship is televised on a Sunday afternoon on ABC. Women’s sports broadly speaking are popping up on the big-four broadcast channels more and more. This type of exposure draws more eyeballs, and converts more people into fans.
But to Silver’s point, with how women’s sports began to be covered outside of traditional media, primarily on digital outlets, the old-guard was forced to come around and give women’s sports its due. The popularity became impossible to ignore.
Now, the only question is how far can these leagues go with the backing of the country’s largest media companies? If 2024 has been any indication, the sky is the limit.
