Tag: NWSL

The Best Investment in Women’s Sports – Science

Last week served up a rollercoaster of emotions for the National Women’s Soccer League. Paraphrasing Billy Joel, it was both sadness and euphoria.

Euphoria

On November 9, 2023 Jessica Berman, Commissioner of the NWSL, announced a new high water mark for women’s sports media rights when she inked a deal with CBS, ESPN, Amazon’s Prime Video and Scripps for $240M over four years. High fives across the land.

Nov 11, 2023; San Diego, California, USA; New Jersey/New York Gotham FC defender Ali Krieger (11) celebrates with the championship trophy at Snapdragon Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Amber Searls-USA TODAY Sports

                                                          

Saturday was appointment viewing for fans of women’s sports, women’s soccer, and “football in general” on national television in prime time. The National Women’s Soccer League Championship featured a Hollywood scripted matchup between two titans on either side of the pitch – Megan Rapinoe and Ali Krieger playing their last professional matches.

Sadness

OL Reign’s Megan Rapinoe suffered a non-contact injury just minutes into the NWSL championship game against Gotham FC at Snapdragon Stadium in San Diego on Nov. 11, 2023. (Photo by Robyn Beck / AFP) (ROBYN BECK via Getty Images)

Crushingly, at minute three, Pinoe went down with a non-contact injury she suspected was her Achilles. A heartbreaking end to her career – as she rooted for her team from the sidelines.

While investment and interest in women’s sports is on the rise, investment in women’s sports medicine is still woefully immature. As the financial stakes rise for professional franchises, collegiate programs, and at the incubators of middle and high school sports, protecting female athletes from injuries becomes not only a medical imperative but an economic one as well.

Pesky Hormones

Historically, females whether they were humans, rats or pigs were considered bad research subjects because their physiology included all those pesky hormones which were thought to screw up tidy studies. It was not until 1994, that the NIH mandated a policy that all funded research must include women and minorities in the grant application.

Since then it has been a slog. As athletes have become more talented the injuries, have become more acute. ACL injuries in particular have beset players at all levels; sidelining a stunning 25 footballers from last summer’s World Cup, to robbing top collegiate basketball players like UCONN’s Paige Bueckers of two seasons with two successive ACL tears, to UCLA Health declaring back in 2019 that ACL tears in young female athletes at epidemic levels.

HI Barbie

HOPE

Barbie, there is hope. Female forces are aligning to study female athletes from Gen Alpha to Boomers across the spectrum of female variables and performance. Champion rower, Dr. Kathryn Ackerman, MD, MPH, a sports medicine physician, endocrinologist, and the medical director of the Boston Children’s Hospital Female Athlete Program is also the founder of a biennial conference on Female Sports Medicine. In a recent TEDx talk, Kate outlined seven areas of study she and her colleagues are focused on: Sex and Menstrual Cycle Effects on Performance, Injury Prevention and Recovery, RED-S (relative energy deficiency in sport), Pregnancy and Post-partum, Effects of Menopause, Intersection of Race, Gender, Sexual Orientation, Class, and Ability, and Psychological Resilience. Researchers at institutions like Stamford, John Hopkins, UCLA, and the University of Oregon are in the game as well.

A new book by journalist and athlete Christine Yu, Up To Speed, examines the institutions of sport and science and how the research gap is closing to benefit female athletes at every stage of their athletic journey.

2023 The Year of Women’s Sports

Nebraska’s Harper Murray serves against the Omaha Mavericks in front of a record crowd of 92,003 at Nebraska’s Memorial Stadium.
Steven Branscombe / Getty Images

Yes, Barbie, many have noted 2023 has been the year of women’s sports. Attendance records at women’s sports events across the globe have been smashed. 357,542 fans attended the NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Championships. Nearly 2M people attended the 64 matches played Down Under at the FIFA Women’s World Cup. The University of Nebraska’s volleyball game against Omaha broke records with a crowd of over 92,000.

Tickets on the secondary market behind home plate for the Women’s College World Series fetched $623.

Livvy Dunne, LSU Gymnast, had the third highest collegiate NIL valuation ($3.2M) behind two dudes with dad’s known by a single appellation #1 Bronny James $6.1M and #2 Shedeur Sanders $4.1M.

The NWSL’s new Bay Area expansion team was purchased for $53M, vs the $2M and $5M the most recent ownership groups paid.  

Coco Gauff’s US Open win delivered 3.4 M viewers on ESPN, up +92% vs the previous year. According to FIFA, the global TV audience for the Women’s World Cup Final was close to 1.5B.

Investing in Female’s Sport Science

Photo by sanjeri/Getty Images

2024 The Year of Record Investment in Female Physiology

According to a 2022 article by Chloe Bird for The Rand Foundation, doubling NIH Funding for women’s health would yield a substantial ROI. As investors flock to the gold rush on the women’s sports frontier, lest they not forget the riches that lie in investing in research to keep their sisters, daughters, mothers, and grandmothers in the game. Pinoe, you are the truest of champions.  Godspeed for a full recovery.

To learn about a female sport science investment, contact me at mhanson@bardolf.org.

 Can Women’s Sports Become as Powerful as the NRA?

On June 23rd women celebrated 50 years of access to playing fields of all vestiges, thanks to the passage of Title IX in 1972.  A day later, their access to reproductive healthcare was dialed back 50 years, when SCOTUS overturned Roe v. Wade. A shocking and cruel setback for women. In this dystopian post-Roe world, where our collective sisters’ uteri are in the clammy hands of state legislators, could gains on the playing field be leveraged to take back our bodies? Can women’s sports become as powerful and influential as the NRA?

50M+ Female Athletes in the US

Since the passage of Title IX over 2.6 million female athletes graduate from colleges and universities each year with girls’ sports feeding that pipeline. NCAA women’s sports have become big business and since 1972, pro leagues like the WTA, the WNBA, the National Women’s Soccer League, and the Premier Hockey Federation, have joined the venerable LPGA in growing their fan base, viewership, sponsors, and investors. Investment in women’s sports has been notable this year with $75M being plowed into the WNBA, and USA Soccer agreeing to equal pay for its men’s and women’s national teams. The momentum of women’s sports continues to be heralded, as women continue to participate in sports well into their Medicare years.

Consider this study released on July 8th from The Sports Consultancy claims women’s sports could be a better long term investment than men’s. And the US women’s athletic apparel market is estimated to rack in over $50B in revenue in this year alone, thanks to the fact this is a 50M+ person market. With that kind of reach, imagine the pressure female athletes, if organized, could exert on state capitols.

20 Current Safe States

The 20 current safe states are Alaska, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Minnesota, Illinois, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, California, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire. The other 30, as of this writing, either ban abortion, will see a full ban in a month, are expected to ban abortion, or are unknown.

Taking Sides

Sports has taken sides in the recent past. When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24th, the sports world kicked into high gear to exclude Russia from the international athletic stage. After the Trump-backed rioters stormed the Capitol to protest the results of the 2020 election, the PGA moved the 2022 PGA Championship from Trump’s Bedminster to Southern Hills in Tulsa. And in 2021, MLB moved the All-Star Game from Atlanta to Denver in response to new election rules that made it harder to vote in urban areas.

Voting with Their Feet

Will women’s sports vote with their cleats, skates, and sneakers? According to Louise Radnofsky in her recent WSJ article For Leagues and Athletes, Boycotts Fall out of Favor, the answer is no.

Radnofsky notes the NCAA has a Board of Governors policy that requires championship host sites to demonstrate how they will provide an environment that is safe, healthy, and free of discrimination, in addition to guaranteeing there are safeguards in the place to ensure the dignity of everyone involved. According to Radnofsky, “the NCAA declined to comment on how that might be interpreted in states with strict abortion restrictions.”

Relocating?

The 2023 Women’s Final Four will be hosted in Dallas and the 2023 Women’s College World Series is slated for Florida, both huge events that deliver revenue to local and state coffers. The most profitable women’s league, the WTA, hosts 500 level events in 2023 in Miami (with the ATP), Charleston, SC in addition to events for lower ranked players. The LPGA kicks off its season with three back-to-back events in Florida and arrives at courses later in the season not on the current safe “20”. The WNBA has teams in Atlanta, Dallas, Indiana, and Phoenix.

While relocating an event is obviously less onerous and litigious than moving a team, would investor/owner Larry Gottesdiener and Renee Montgomery, the first WNBA player to co-own her team, consider moving the Atlanta Dream to a city in the safe 20? They set the tone by buying out former anti BLM owner, GOP Senator Kelli Loeffler.

Liar

In September 2021, over 500 athletes including 26 Olympians, 73 professional athletes, 275 intercollegiate athletes, and various athlete organizations submitted an amicus brief in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health asserting that the reproductive rights protected by Roe allowed women to capitalize on opportunities afforded by Title IX.

Immediate Reactions

After the ruling came down, the rapid-fire response from women’s sports came from all corners. Billie Jean King tweeted, “This decision will not end abortion. What it will end is safe and legal access to this vital medical procedure. It is a sad day in the United States.” The four-time champion Seattle Storm tweeted “Now we have come to this: people have won the freedom to buy guns with impunity while women have lost the freedom to decide their own future. Furious and ready to fight.” A statement from the WNBPA called the ruling “out of touch with the country and any sense of human dignity,” adding, “we must vote like our lives depend on it. Because they do.” TOGETHXR, founded by Alex Morgan, Chloe Kim, Simone Manuel, and Sue Bird, tweeted “Disgusted, disappointed, disturbed. But we are not done. We’ll never stop fighting.” And this tepid response from the LPGA.

Flex Your Muscle

On the eve of the third week since Roe was overturned, it is now oddly quiet on the women’s sports front. During last weekend’s WNBA All-Star weekend, Seattle storm forward Breanna Stewart told New York Times reporter Remy Tumin, she expected there to be discussions soon about how to handle events in states where abortion is banned.  “Discussions, soon?” 

In a post Roe world, what is clear is nothing is clear. Girl’s and women’s sports are on the rise while female reproductive freedom has fallen into the murky abyss of legislative horse trading. Intelligent, strategic, and unified organizing, by all bodies representing girl’s and women’s sports is urgent and necessary to flex the muscle bestowed by Title IX. Aim high, shoot straight, and raise cash.