Other Women's Sports

9/30/2024 |  Athlos NYC shows early signs of success in inaugural meet (Gist Sports, The) Last Thursday, women’s track meet Athlos NYC took off at Icahn Stadium in Manhattan, and seemed to be everything founder Alexis Ohanian billed it to be. As we wait for official viewership and attendance numbers, immediate IRL impressions suggest Athlos could be the next major event on the Big Apple’s sports calendar between the US Open and the NYC Marathon.

9/26/2024 |  Olympic Gold Medalist Masai Russell: ‘Sad’ It Took Until Now to Promote Women’s Track (Front Office Sports) Alexis Ohanian’s women’s track brainchild Athlos finally comes to fruition Thursday with an event in New York City. 
The meet, which is independent of USA Track & Field, is notable for its big prize pool ($663,000 total, including $60,000 per winner, far more than what athletes get on the Diamond League circuit) and broadcast distribution deals (ESPN+, YouTube, DAZN, and X/Twitter will all show the meet).

9/26/2024 |  Alexis Ohanian’s Big-Money Women’s Track Experiment Is Here (Front Office Sports) Before they set out to secure commitments from some of the world’s fastest runners earlier this year, organizers of a new track meet understood they had some convincing to do. 
The meet, Athlos NYC, would be held in New York City six weeks after the end of the Paris Olympics, the peak of many athletes’ seasons, and two weeks after the finale of the Diamond League, track and field’s biggest global circuit. 

5/1/2024 |  Cricket Australia reveals 10-year plan to bolster women’s cricket in Australia (Gist Sports, The)

The GIST: After investing millions in women’s soccer and restructuring the WNBL, Australia is turning its attention to women’s cricket. Governing body Cricket Australia (CA) unveiled a 10-year plan yesterday formulated with input from top playerson how to grow the game, which includes a goal to boost revenue by $65.3M to reach $79.1M by 2034. Getting her the (baggy) green.

The details: By 2034, the governing body wants $327M invested in women-specific cricket infrastructure and all domestic players to become full-time professionals. CA also wants at least 40% female representation in key off-field positions, 600K fans annually at women’s cricket matches, and for 100K girls aged 5 to 12 to pick up the axe.

The global landscape: Cricket is most popular in South Asia and India is its biggest market, where the men’s Indian Premier League was valued at $5.3B in 2017 and its cricket board is worth $2.25B— 28x more than CA’s $79M value. And while the International Cricket Council mandates equal payat its events, women cricketers receive a fractionof the media exposure and investment.

• Despite this, India is investing in women’s cricket growth in historic ways — the Women’s Premier League sold its five initial franchises for $114.4M per franchise, is now valued at $150Ma year into operations, and recently inked one of the largest rights deals in women’s sports.

The context: Australia has historically been the top contender in women’s cricket, and a 2020 survey showed the national women's cricket team had the strongest emotional connection with Aussie fans, just ahead of soccer’s Matildas. However, in order for CA to reach its goal to make cricket Australia's leading sport for women and girls, it’ll have to catch up to soccer first.

Zooming out: The CA’s plan plays into an Australian trend of revamping women’s sports infrastructure and a global movement of women’s cricket investment, which is already paying off in India. The women’s game is only currently generating 5% of Australia’s cricket revenue despite its prestige, but Australia is hoping to change that by filling stands and TV screens. Winners all-round.

 

4/3/2024 |  Google Trends releases data for searches related to women’s sports in March (Gist Sports, The)

The GIST: March was a wild month for women’s sports, complete with a March Madness tournament that’s transforming women’s college basketball and an NWSL season kickoff garnering more media coverage than ever. To celebrate a Women’s History Month full of sporting wins, here are the latest Google trends in women’s sports.

🎟️ Indiana Fever tickets were the top trending topic related to the WNBA Draft, while Caitlin Clark’s official Draft declaration in February made "who has the first pick in WNBA Draft" a breakout search in the U.S.

🔎 The Iowa Hawkeyes women’s basketball team was the top-searched March Madness squad in the U.S. and the most-searched team in several states beyond Iowa, including Alaska, Hawaii, Wyoming, Maine, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Clark also topped the list of players searched with the term “March Madness,” followed by Angel Reese and JuJu Watkins.

🏀 Iowa had three of the top five most-searched women’s March Madness matchups, but the top game was LSU—UCLA. The highly-anticipated matchup drew 3.8M viewers and was at the center of a Los Angeles Times divisive (and widely deemed sexist) op-ed. Milk and cookies…really?

📺 U.S. searches asking “where to watch NWSL” reached an all-time high, likely thanks to the league’s new media rights deal. The top NWSL clubs searched in relation were the KC Current, Seattle Reign FC, the Washington Spirit, Bay FC, and Angel City FC.

✨ Expansion teams Bay FC and Utah Royals FC saw high search interest surrounding their NWSL debuts. Both squads saw an increase in interest through multiple breakout searches, including “Bay FC logo,” “NWSL expansion teams,” and “Utah Royals home opener.”

🏟️ There’s profound, widespread interest in the KC Current, which opened the doors to its innovative CPKC Stadium this season. Indexed search interest in the team maxed out on Google Trends, and while searches for other NWSL clubs primarily remained regional, the Current saw search interest in nearly every U.S. state. Making waves.