A researcher says that investment dollars are flowing into women’s sports leagues across the world at an unprecedented pace alongside increased interest and attendance.
Nicole Serino, director of Credit Research & Insights at S&P Global Ratings, told BNN Bloomberg in a Tuesday interview that women’s sports have increasingly been generating “big moments,” that have grabbed the attention of fans, advertisers and investors alike.
“With these big moments, there’s this tremendous growth that we’re seeing in terms of viewership and attendance levels,” she said.
Serino highlighted this year’s NCAA women’s basketball tournament as one event that has driven record levels of interest in women’s sports. The tournament featured Caitlin Clark, who in her senior year became the all-time leading scorer in men’s and women’s U.S. college basketball history.
“From the last women’s basketball NCAA tournament … that championship game had 18.9 million viewers and it beat out the equivalent men’s championship game for the first time ever,” she said.
Serino added that a big reason for the increased interest in women’s sports recently is increased investment in the form of media deals and advertising.
“The reason why it’s happening now comes from an investment perspective. We’re finally seeing this investment in women’s sports right now; investors are realizing that these big moments, the viewership and the attendance we’re seeing is really quite startling,” she said.
“From that, we’re seeing these big media deals come through and investors from all over are really deciding to invest in women’s sports, so I think it’s all these big moments kind of piling up into this momentum that we’re feeling right now.”
Serino said that media rights deals for women’s sports leagues such as the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) and Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) are now worth hundreds of millions of dollars per season.
“I think in turn, more media coverage for women’s sports events leads to this greater visibility for sponsors and advertisers which really just presents an attractive value proposition,” she added.