The 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup is in full swing. As a woman-owned company passionate about equity, we took his moment to celebrate our favorite women in sports. Iconic athletes like Serena Williams, Marta Vieira da Silva, Sue Bird, and Katherine Switzer, who didn’t just win trophies, but also used (and continue to leverage) their platforms to call for increased pay, investment, media attention, infrastructure, and safety measures for female athletes.
And for good reason. Google “equity in women’s sports,” and the news is mostly bad: Only an estimated 7% of the global sports sponsorship market goes to women. Just 3.2% of sports media coverage in the U.S. is devoted to women’s sports. And you could spend the next hundred years reading #MeToo horror stories.
But there’s cause for hope, and it’s more than just the US Women’s National Soccer Team successfully suing for equal pay. Women’s sports saw historic popularity growth in 2022. Here in the U.S., the Women’s March Madness tournament alone saw an 81% jump in viewership, and sports broadcast rights grew in value by 30%. Forbes just declared that the fastest-growing audiences on TV are for women’s sports.
Which leads us to what’s really interesting: The women’s sports audience is the same audience companies most want to reach—young, diverse, multicultural, and often multilingual. If your marketing and outreach activities don’t include women’s sports as part of your strategy, come talk to us. We have some ideas for you!