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.
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
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
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
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.