PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Interest in women’s sports has seen tremendous growth over the last few years, springing from celebrations for 50 years of Title IX to pay equality in women’s soccer.
This summer, FIFA announced that for the first time ever, nearly $49 million of the $110 million of the Women’s World Cup prize will go directly to participants.
Investing in the players themselves seems to be paying off. Last week’s World Cup win by Spain was the most-watched match in the United States that didn’t include a U.S. team.
A Sports Business Journal survey published last year found 79% of U.S. sports fans do not actively follow women’s sports, but 30% of those fans are watching more women’s sports today than in years prior.
People are talking about women’s sports in a way they never have before, said Dr. Julie Lanzillo, program director and associate professor of sports management and sports business at Neumann University.
“The combination of the pandemic, the craving for content, the explosion, of course, of social media in the last decade, the NIL [name, image, likeness] era we find ourselves in,” she said. “We have sort of this perfect storm that no one really could have anticipated even five years ago.”
The survey also found that Gen Zers are watching women’s sports at the highest rate, at 39%, which Lanzillo said is crucial to the industry’s growth.
“We have a new generation of sports fans, and I think you also have a stronger investment from the media side of producing a better quality production that together makes it interesting,” she added.
While there isn’t one leading reason women’s sports are acquiring more interest, Lanzillo expects to see even more growth in the industry.
“It really is this interesting, timely convergence of a lot of different factors that have made women’s sports, in the last 18 months, remarkably more popular than the previous several years,” she said.
Lanzillo talks more about what’s driving this shift and what it could mean for the future of the industry on the latest episode of KYW Newsradio In Depth.
Listen to the full conversation in the player below, on the Audacy app or wherever you get your podcasts.