For a few years, media protection of feminine athletes was restricted. That’s starting to alter, and in November, the Women’s Sports Network launched the first-ever 24-hour streaming community devoted to ladies’s sports activities. (Photo by Phil Cole/Getty Images)

PHOENIX – Stacy Bauman grew up within the Eighties and ’90s. The solely time the previous sports activities journalist noticed feminine athletes on tv was throughout the Olympics. Now, Bauman manages the Women’s Intersport Network for Kansas City (WIN for KC), a corporation devoted to empowering women and girls by way of sports activities and health.

Times are altering and girls’s sports activities are surging.

“Almost every Friday night, we can turn on the TV and we can watch women’s basketball,” Bauman stated of the evolving panorama. “We can watch any gymnastics event. We can watch women’s soccer.”

The 2023 Women’s World Cup ultimate earlier this month noticed report numbers of tv viewers watch as Spain defeated England, 1-0, capping off a match that drew report numbers of followers on the stadiums in Australia and New Zealand.

It’s a worldwide development that’s additionally felt nationally. This yr’s NCAA ladies’s championship turned the most-watched ladies’s school basketball recreation in tv historical past, with 9.9 million viewers. Two weeks later, the NCAA ladies’s gymnastics championship introduced in simply over 1,000,000 viewers, breaking a 16-year viewership report for the game.

With a lot to observe and much more feminine athletes to comply with, a brand new community emerged lower than a yr in the past to cowl all of it. In November 2022, the Women’s Sports Network (WSN) launched because the first-ever 24-hour streaming community devoted to ladies’s sports activities. Partnering with 12 skilled ladies’s sports activities leagues, together with the WNBA and the LPGA, the community broadcasts video games and produces unique programming, together with a every day studio present referred to as “Game On.”

“It’s amazing. It’s needed,” stated Keyser Santana, who participates in a leisure sports activities league in Phoenix referred to as OutLoud Sports. “It’s about damn time.”

Many broadcast makes an attempt dedicated to ladies’s sports activities have failed. However, as a consequence of societal modifications, a rise within the reputation of ladies’s sports activities and developments in expertise, trade leaders agree the time is correct for the Women’s Sports Network.

Bauman’s childhood adopted the delivery of Title IX in 1972. The landmark laws prohibits sex-based discrimination in any faculty or some other training program that receives federal funding. Fifty years later, it has considerably helped improve gender equality in sports activities and develop ladies’s sports activities.

The legacy of Title IX will be seen by way of the work of Carol Stiff. A former school basketball and subject hockey participant and coach, Stiff joined ESPN in 1990 and pioneered bringing ladies’s school basketball and the WNBA to the community. She retired as ESPN’s vp of Women’s Sports Programming in 2021 and now chairs the Women’s Sports Network advisory board.

In 1995, Stiff reached out to Pat Summitt and Geno Auriemma, the ladies’s basketball coaches on the University of Tennessee and University of Connecticut, to prepare a non-conference recreation between the ranked groups to be nationally televised on the Martin Luther King Jr. vacation.

“I said to the women’s side of the ledger, you’ve got to play out of conference,” Stiff stated. “Because on a Sunday afternoon, you’re up against the NFL and it’s not working. Playing Sunday up against the NBA isn’t working. We are not being seen. So if you guys could step away from your conference, and play in these better windows, I think it will grab the eye of the fan.”

The Huskies defeated the Vols in a ground-breaking matchup that helped catapult ladies’s basketball to nationwide prominence.

The following yr, Stiff was instrumental in showcasing the USA Basketball Women’s National Team video games on ESPN. The workforce went on to win gold on the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, successful that gave delivery to the WNBA that very same yr. A short while later, Stiff requested to have WNBA video games proven on ESPN and its mum or dad subsidiary, ABC.

“We put four WNBA games on ABC,” Stiff stated. “Now fast-forward to where we are today with all the ABC windows. That’s because I raised my hand in a room.”

Heading into its twenty seventh season, the WNBA introduced 25 video games can be nationally broadcast throughout the common season throughout ABC, ESPN and ESPN2. And for the primary time, the WNBA All-Star Game aired in primetime on ABC.

A latest research carried out by The National Research Group and Ampere Analysis found that three out of 10 U.S. sports activities followers stated they’re watching extra ladies’s sports activities now in comparison with 5 years in the past. (File photograph by James Franks/Cronkite News)

Viewership development

More video games imply extra viewers. Research has proven that extra persons are watching ladies’s sports activities than ever earlier than.

A latest study carried out by The National Research Group (NRG) and Ampere Analysis found that three out of 10 U.S. sports activities followers stated they’re watching extra ladies’s sports activities now in comparison with 5 years in the past, and practically 40% of Gen Z sports activities followers are consuming extra ladies’s sports activities.

Mary Moczula, the worldwide advertising and marketing and communications director for NRG, and her colleague Jay Kaufman, head of sports activities for NRG, are among the many group of authors of a research referred to as Leveling the Playing Field: The Future of Women’s Sports.

Their analysis discovered that the largest purpose persons are watching extra ladies’s sports activities is that extra ladies’s competitions are broadcast, which is noteworthy given U.S. media firms spend 0.2% of their broadcast rights budgets on ladies’s sports activities.

According to Samba TV, an viewers analytics firm, the WNBA, National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) and the ladies’s NCAA basketball match all noticed leaps in viewership in 2022, considerably outpacing the year-over-year development of their male counterparts.

Even extra compelling analysis has come out of Sports Innovation Lab, a technology-powered market analysis agency co-founded and headed by Angela Ruggerio, a four-time Olympian and ice hockey gold medalist. In 2022, it printed the most important observational research ever carried out on the spending habits of followers of ladies’s sports activities referred to as The Growth of the Women’s Sports Community Report.

Per the report, followers of ladies’s sports activities, or “FoWS,” are likely to tune in and assist as a group and that group is steadily rising whereas the overall sports activities fan group is steadily reducing.

The report additionally explored what distinguishes followers of ladies’s sports activities from common sports activities followers.

“FoWS are action-oriented with their values and have rallied for causes beyond equal pay, equity of participation, and other critical gender issues,” the report said. “Messages anchored in social justice, sustainability and human rights resonate and drive interest in athlete stories that keep fans engaged before, during and after the season ends.”

Altogether, Sports Innovation Lab’s findings contend the group’s sturdy acquisition and retention of followers make investing in ladies’s sports activities “a smart bet.”

Christine Brennan has damaged by way of many gender limitations in sports activities journalism all through her 40-year profession. The award-winning nationwide sports activities columnist for USA Today stated the marketplace for ladies’s sports activities had at all times been there. It’s the attitudes that at the moment are progressing.

“Frankly, it was just blatant misogyny and sexism that has been the hallmark of decision-making at most networks and in most broadcast meetings for generations,” Brennan stated. “Things are changing dramatically and the power brokers are realizing it.”

Brennan in contrast the historical past of televising and advertising and marketing ladies’s sports activities to a race. While males’s sports activities have had a decades-long head begin, ladies’s sports activities are simply getting out of the blocks with an amazing quantity of development potential.

The NCAA males’s Final Four started in 1939, however the first ladies’s Final Four didn’t come alongside till 1981, for example. There’s a 50-year hole between the founding of the NBA in 1946 and the WNBA in 1996. And whereas the lads’s FIFA World Cup debuted in 1930, it took 60 years earlier than the primary ladies’s cup was held in 1991.

“If you’re investing, why aren’t you investing in women’s sports?” Brennan stated. “Why aren’t you investing in women’s sports networks? Because it’s such an untapped market.”

Moczula stated that based mostly on the analysis her workforce has performed, it’s a market that may be constructed into one thing worthwhile.

“This is not a charity case. This is a real business opportunity,” Moczula stated.

The arrival of the Women’s Sports Network

It’s a chance Stuart McLean, the CEO of FAST Studios, jumped on. Stiff stated after McLean learn the Sports Innovation Lab’s report, he was impressed to create the Women’s Sports Network.

FAST Studios operates an array of “FAST channels,” which stands for “free, ad-supported television.”

“FAST is a live, linear and growing area of the streaming universe that has emerged as a complement to on-demand offerings,” Dade Hayes of Deadline wrote.

As Stiff stated, “All those channels that are available for cord-cutters are available now for free.”

As a FAST channel, WSN is accessible on a number of streaming companies together with Amazon, FreeVee, Roku and TubiTV.

“Fubo is proud to be one of the first streaming platforms to bring Women’s Sports Network to consumers,” Jennifer Press, communications head for FuboTV, stated in an emailed assertion. “WSN’s programming is a perfect fit for Fubo, which delivers over 55,000 live sporting events each year to our U.S. consumers alongside leading entertainment and news content.”

Stiff stated no formal viewership scores info is on the market but as WSN will not be rated on Nielsen, however the community is in 85% of all U.S. houses by way of free streaming channels.

WSN is touted as a storytelling-focused, digital platform. In addition to the flagship present, “Game On,” the community is partnering with champion athletes for its “The World According To” sequence – the primary of which is hosted by world champion surfer Sage Erickson. WSN additionally produces documentaries and supplies digital content material throughout social media.

“I look at the network right now as the surround sound of what ESPN and all these major networks have the [broadcast] rights to,” Stiff stated. “And there’s no problem with us saying, ‘Hey, we just did this pregame for the New York Liberty, now go over to ESPN and watch the game.’ We have no problem cross-promoting because a rising tide lifts all boats.”

Along with the WNBA and LPGA, the community additionally has partnerships with Athletes Unlimited, Premier Hockey Federation, Street League Skateboarding, U.S. Ski & Snowboard, Women’s Football Alliance and World Surf League.

McClean has surrounded himself with a formidable workforce of advisors. In addition to Stiff, WSN’s advisory board consists of Ruggiero, 11-time Olympic medalist Allyson Felix, ESPN WNBA analyst LaChina Robinson, Kathleen Francis, nationwide board chair of Women in Sports and Events (WISE), Sophie Goldschmidt, CEO of U.S. Ski & Snowboard, and Julie Uhrman, founder and president of Angel City Football Club.

(Graphic by Peyton Gallaher/Cronkite News)

Others have tried and failed

Women’s sports activities have been on the rise within the Nineteen Nineties. The U.S. Women’s soccer workforce received the World Cup in 1991 and once more in 1999, the latter setting the report because the most-watched soccer recreation in U.S. historical past. In 1996, the U.S. ladies’s gymnastics workforce received gold on the Summer Olympics and the ladies’s hockey workforce took residence gold on the 1998 Winter Olympics.

In addition to ESPN and the “Big Three” networks (ABC, CBS and NBC), others took on ladies’s sports activities however their efforts have been short-lived.

Lifetime, a fundamental cable channel that payments itself as “television for women,” started airing a share of WNBA video games in 1997, in addition to different skilled ladies’s sports activities.

“We are letting women know that there is professional women’s sports on TV,” Doug McCormick, then head of Lifetime, advised The Washington Post that yr.

But three years later, Lifetime, a product of Hearst/ABC-Viacom Entertainment Services, restructured its cope with the WNBA, shifting its recreation protection to ESPN2 to give attention to “story-oriented sports programming.”

In 2000, Lifetime discontinued protection of a number of different ladies’s video games and tournaments, together with a ladies’s school basketball match and an LPGA Tour occasion. Also in 2000, the Oxygen Channel surfaced as a brand new cable channel geared towards ladies viewers. The Sports Business Journal heralded it as a “leader in women’s sports coverage.”

Oxygen began airing WNBA video games in 2002. Two years later, the community determined to not renew its settlement with the league. NBCUniversal acquired the community in 2005.

“Oxygen struggled early to survive as it searched for a signature style of programming,” Derek Baine, a media analyst for SNL Kagan advised The New York Times in 2007. “They burned through $300 million in financing in the first five years and only started to break even in 2005.”

Efforts have been additionally made throughout the border in Canada. In 2001, the Women’s Television Sports Network (WTSN) launched because the world’s first 24-hour tv community solely devoted to broadcasting ladies’s sports activities. The enterprise was temporary as nicely, shut down by its mum or dad firm CTV Speciality Television in 2003.

WTSN’s marketing strategy projected 714,000 subscribers in its first yr of operation. But in 2003, solely 438,000 had signed up, in line with William Houston of The Globe and Mail.

“Its audiences ranked lowest among the sports diginets and so did its advertising,” Houston wrote.

Sports networks have confirmed to be laborious to maintain no matter their gender focus. In 2014, Sinclair Broadcast Group launched the American Sports Network (ASN) as an outlet broadcasting each males’s and girls’s collegiate sports activities.

Along with securing broadcast rights with a number of school athletic conferences, the community additionally had agreements with Minor League Baseball, Major League Soccer and the International Motor Sports Association.

After three years, ASN was closed and its broadcast rights have been folded into Sinclair’s latest outlet, Stadium.

“It’s a sudden end for a network that in theory should have worked, but the execution and production didn’t quite catch on,” Ken Fang wrote for Awful Announcing in 2017.

Kathy Kudravi, govt director of campus communications and publications on the University of Arizona Health Science and an award-winning sports activities journalist, was the editorial lead for ASN’s digital platforms and created the community’s weekly digital magazine-style present.

Kudravi stated American Sports Network’s time was temporary, partially, as a result of it didn’t have a shared imaginative and prescient of amplifying storytelling throughout the live-game broadcasts.

“We’d be like, ‘Well, we’ve got this great story that we did, you can use it out here (during the game broadcast),’” Kudravi stated. “Because some of the outside crews we hired were not employees, they were just like, ‘Yea, we’re just here to put the game up.’”

Kudravi additionally stated acquiring broadcast rights was a wrestle as a result of ESPN would “lock up most of the sports” with their offers with the NCAA and particular person athletic conferences.

Lydia Craver is a sports activities media veteran with greater than 20 years of management expertise, together with practically 15 as an editor with ESPN. Now a sports activities editor for the Charlotte Observer, Craver stated funding, or lack thereof, will make or break a community’s objectives.

“Use ESPN as an example,” Craver stated. “They launched the Longhorn Network. They launched the SEC Network and the ACC Network. There’s a tremendous amount of advertising and a parent company of Disney behind that. So when you have that kind of backing, you can push something forward a lot easier.”

Stiff agreed that securing promoting {dollars} was a vital piece of the puzzle throughout her time at ESPN.

“That’s the great trifecta,” Stiff stated. “You have the league, you have the media outlet, and now you have sales. Sales were what was missing.”

Keys to success

Industry specialists shared their recommendation for WSN to succeed long-term. A typical theme was to give attention to storytelling.

“Tell me something beyond somebody being good,” Kudravi stated. “Storytelling underlines everything we do. There has to be an underlying story idea that tells you why you should care. And for the network, that’s a way to stand out.”

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Moczula famous the mega-hit Netflix docuseries “Cheer” for example of how deep dives on specific sports activities may strike gold. When the sequence’ second season was launched in 2022, it turned the No. 1 present on Netflix inside hours, in line with PureWow. Most importantly, it drew viewers to the game of cheerleading.

“There’s that opportunity to build the narratives before the game comes on,” Moczula added. “And building up those young, up-and-coming stars and their stories from the beginning, so that you can grow up with that athlete and get just as invested as you did with the LeBrons and Kevin Durants of the world.”

Bauman stated younger women seeing tales centered on feminine athletes can have an enduring impression.

“It’s just immeasurable what it could do to change a girl’s life if she reads or sees a very crucial interview and is moved by it and motivated by it,” Bauman stated. “You just never know. And that’s why I love sports journalism. You never know what impact your words, your story, and your products, can have on someone else.”

Having the best folks inform these tales is equally vital.

“I would find some personalities, like a core personality group that you want to utilize as sort of the face of what you’re doing,” Kudravi stated. “Having somebody that people can connect to.”

To that finish, “Game On” is hosted by former Harlem Globetrotter and social influencer Crissa Jackson, sports activities reporter Taylor Felix, sports activities influencer and former school basketball participant Jenna Bandy and sports activities reporter and producer Jess Lucero. The present additionally features a “fourth chair,” the place athletes and girls’s sports activities influencers are interviewed.

Industry leaders confused the significance of taking an revolutionary strategy to advertising and marketing, promoting and sponsorship offers.

“You can make the mistake of only marketing to women when it should be marketed to sports fans,” stated Janae Adams, who represents media expertise for CSE Talent Agency. “I would hope this network doesn’t only create a space for female viewers because men watch women’s sports as well.”

Kaufman, who oversaw technique for the NBA for 22 years previous to becoming a member of NRG, stated it’s useful to establish partnerships that encourage followers to get invested within the athletes, groups and storyline.

“There’s creative ways to do that that’s not necessarily massive amounts of money changing hands, but ways to use content and access to generate interest,” Kaufman stated.

Few folks interviewed had heard about WSN. However, the community’s social presence has grown, from 6,600 followers on Instagram in late February to over 9,400 followers in late April. Stiff stated the advertising and marketing plan for WSN remains to be in its early levels, however the community lately introduced its first main partnership cope with Michelob ULTRA.

Veterans within the subject have been trustworthy in regards to the hurdles WSN would encounter as a streaming community, however all agreed the potential is boundless.

“At the end of the day, there’s an X number of people who are on these platforms,” stated Ruth Feldblum, director of WIN for KC. “And they’re getting pulled into all these different directions. We’re all so distracted. I feel like that’s probably one of the biggest challenges is just you’re in competition with so much other content.”

Demetri Ravanos, content material director for Barrett Sports Media, stated streaming content material requires an invested curiosity from the patron.

“You are automatically talking to a smaller audience than something on television where you can just stumble upon stuff,” Ravanos stated. “I think anybody that talks to a very niche audience would be well served to consider farming out some content.”

Ravanos advisable the community share its content material with bigger platforms like Netflix for larger attain.

“I think that it would be a shame to put that on their own emerging platform because it would limit the impact that they are trying to have and it could have a huge impact,” Ravanos stated.

However, Kaufman stated there are alternatives from a streaming perspective that don’t exist on conventional tv through the use of artistic digicam angles, commentary, stats, packages and graphics.

“If you can take advantage of those you can create a unique fan experience,” Kaufman stated.

Streaming is the long run, Kraver stated. “If you’re looking for younger demographics, that’s where it is.”

And it’s a future that ought to bode nicely for WSN. According to The Fan Project Report, followers of ladies’s sports activities are “some of the most technologically savvy consumers in sports. They’ve been on digital platforms more frequently and for a longer period of time than other communities of sports fans.”

Kudravi, who is aware of the ups and downs of beginning a brand new community all too nicely, stated her largest piece of recommendation is for the community to find its identification.

“I wish them luck,” Kudravi stated. “I hope that they’re able to survive and find that audience and grow. You can’t compare yourself to ESPN or CBS. You’ve got to be you.”

For Bauman, WSN supplies a chance for her 9-year-old daughter to expertise what was as soon as only a dream 40 years in the past.

“I can show her these are other women in sports,” she stated. “These are people who can be your role models. These are things that we can talk about because we see them now. It opens up a whole new world for a whole new generation of girls.”