Power Players: Women’s Sports

12.02.2024

“Everyone watches women’s sports.”

In 2022, Sports Business Journal debuted the first women’s sports edition of Power Players . In the two years since, women’s sports exploded more rapidly than most predicted.

Women’s sports will bring in more than $1 billion in revenue in 2024, and leagues, teams and individual athletes have seen ROI skyrocket. Mark Davis purchased the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces in 2021 for $2 million. The two-time championship team is now worth $140 million.

More than 92,000 fans piled into Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Neb., to watch the five-time NCAA champion Nebraska volleyball team defeat Omaha 3-0 in 2023, setting a record for the largest crowd to ever witness a women’s sports event.

The WNBA averaged 657,000 viewers for the historic 2024 regular season, its best mark in 24 years — fueled by huge numbers for Caitlin Clark’s rookie season with the Indiana Fever — and saw the highest total attendance in 22 years. The NWSL landed a four-year media rights deal with CBS, ESPN, Prime Video and Scripps, expanding its broadcast partners from one to four.

Brands are in the game, with companies such as Aflac and State Farm heavily investing. Women’s sports and stories are on ION, Amazon and Netflix.

We fully believe in the list we previously published . Those folks are still doing the work, if not even more so. Just take Michele Kang’s recent $30 million investment in women’s soccer, Sports Innovation Lab hosting the first women’s sports dedicated NewFront, and the Liberty delivering New York its first basketball championship since the 1970s to record crowds and viewership.

The 2024 list is made up of all new names and honors people who have taken up the mantle in women’s sports and those who have been doing the work behind the scenes for years. The future is bright, and as anyone on this year’s Power Players will tell you, women’s sports is just good business.