minneapolis — Women's sports are in great shape right now thanks to record-breaking college athletes.University of Iowa caitlin clarke Return to Minneapolis this week for the Big Ten Basketball Tournament.
How popular are women's sports? And what will help you continue to grow? Good question.
Fanfare to celebrate grand openingyour own bar,“The sports bar in Minneapolis that showcases only women's sports is a clear example of the changes happening across the larger sports world.
“I think this speaks to how much women's sports and women's basketball have grown over the last few years,” one customer said.
Digging into the data to prove what our eyes see is the mission of The Collective at sports marketing agency Wasserman.
“Our dedicated women's movement aims to uplift and empower women in all aspects,” said Thayer LaVielle, executive vice president of The Collective.
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As women's sports grow in popularity, how are people accessing sports? It's no different than how they consume other forms of entertainment.
Old data has become obsolete. It found that only about 4% of all sports coverage broadcast on television was about women's sports. The collective wanted to dig deeper into their research.
“We looked at 1.2 billion rows of data and came up with a new statistic that was actually updated and just presented at Sloan (MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference) this weekend: 16%,” LaVielle said. he said.
This increase to 16% is driven by consumption across all media, including TV, digital, social media, and most importantly, streaming services.
“Streaming has meant the most to women's sports by far. Today, many women's sports in the United States are available on streaming,” she said.
The current face of that breakthrough is Caitlin Clark of the University of Iowa, who just broke the NCAA career scoring record. Fox Sports reported that more than 4 million viewers tuned in to watch Clark break the record and become NCAA Division I career scoring leader. This was the most-watched game in a regular season for women's basketball since 1999. The attention to our accomplishments went far beyond broadcasting.
“It's not just what ESPN is saying about that shot, or what WCCO is saying about that shot, for example, but what you're saying about that shot at the time, or if that record was broken. It's also important to know what other players are saying about it. It's all about the ripple effect of what happened,” LaVielle said.
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How important is the increase in professional leagues to the growth of women's sports? LaVielle said this is monumental.
“If we're thinking about how to give Division I athletes a place to continue playing professionally, we need to be able to give them an outlet to do that,” she said.
A professional women's hockey league featuring Minnesota teams is one of the latest opportunities for women to go professional and grow their audience beyond the world of college athletics.
Adding new leagues, expanding existing leagues, and filling seats to watch games can all increase momentum for women's sports.
Nielsen also looked at data on women's sports last year. It turned out that her interest was “rapidly growing”. For example, her 2023 NCAA Tournament saw her championship game between LSU and Iowa draw nearly 10 million viewers, a 103% increase from the previous year.
jeff wagner
