Femininomenon!
Women have achieved equal participation for the first time at this year's Games and are racking up the golds. Yet, there's still a lot of room to grow on and off the field
Women are having a moment in sports, which some have attributed to today’s greats like Olympians Simone Biles and Katie Ledecky. However, this moment wasn’t built overnight; it’s been over a century in the making. The recognition and fandom surrounding female athletes present unique market opportunities on and off the field; there’s plenty of room to grow.
PARIS—Just over 4,000 miles away in Chicago last week, 2024’s biggest breakout music star, Chappel Roan, proclaimed, “It’s a femininomenon!” to nearly 100,000 screaming fans at Lollapalooza in Grant Park. And this year, and at these Olympic Games, she could not be more spot on. America’s female athletes are “H-O-T-T-O-G-O (hot to go)” and shooting for the stars.
Seven-time medalist Simone Biles, arguably the greatest female gymnast of all time, returned to Paris for her third Olympiad, wowing crowds and capturing two more golds; she’s now the winningest female gymnast ever. Swimmer Katie Ledecky, who already has seven gold medals to her name, competed in her fourth and won yet another gold—her 14th medal overall—making her the most decorated woman in U.S. Olympic history and the fifth most decorated among male and female athletes of all time.
It may be hard to believe today, but just over a century ago, neither of these women would have been allowed to participate in the first Olympic Games of the modern era, held in Athens, Greece, the birthplace of the Olympics, in 1896. It would take another four years until the first women were allowed to participate in the 1900 Games in Paris, and even there, their participation was limited to just a handful of sports — tennis, sailing, croquet, equestrianism, and golf. This year, at these Games, women achieved equality for the first time — a monumental moment and a key goal of the International Olympic Committee — meaning that an equal number of men and women have competed in an equal number of events.
A Long Road Coming
Women are having a moment in sports outside of the Olympics, too, and this is quickly becoming a movement. Getting here has taken an incredible amount of energy and investment (and even some legislative and legal action), but those commitments are finally paying off.
Today’s success of women playing on their own courts and their own terms speaks to the magic of strategic forms of new rules that have worked over time, from the first female intercollegiate basketball game between The University of California, Berkley and Stanford University in 1896, to the creation of the first professional sports league, the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, in 1943, and the passage of Title IX in 1972, which prohibits sex discrimination in education programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance, including sports. These efforts continue today with the creation of professional sports leagues, like the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA).
Success stories, like those coming out of these Olympic Games and professional sports in recent years, would not have been possible without the rule-breakers. “People would say, ‘Girls don’t play hockey. Girls don’t skate.’ I would say, ‘Watch this,” the famed Canadian ice hockey player, female sports pioneer and Olympic gold medalist Hayley Wickenheiser said.
There are gaps to be closed, for sure, but there’s so much more yet to come both on and off the field of play. There are so many more new rules to be made.
Here’s what you need to know
Deloitte predicts that women’s elite sports will generate global revenues of $1.28 billion in 2024, the first time annual global revenues for women’s sports will surpass $1 billion. This total is at least 300% higher than Deloitte’s previous valuation three years ago.
The Collective®, Wasserman's women-focused practice, reports that media coverage of women’s sports has nearly tripled since 2021, with increased content driven by the growth of streaming and social media.
The number of sponsorship deals in women’s professional sports has increased more than 22% year-over-year (YoY), according to SponsorUnited’s latest Women in Sports Marketing Partnerships report.
Hurdles Persist
Despite all of this positive news regarding the state of women’s sports, there are still significant gaps on and off the field between female athletes and their male counterparts; most of these revolve around money, but funding and exposure are also issues.
According to Statista, Polish tennis player Iga Świątek topped the list of the highest-paid female athletes last year, with nearly $24 million in estimated total income earned on and off the court. Chinese-American skier Eileen Gu and tennis player Coco Gauff followed behind, with earnings topping $20 million in 2023. Impressive, for sure, but they lag significantly behind their male counterparts. For example, according to Forbes' annual tennis earnings list, Novak Djokovic’s earnings ($38.4 million) were more than a quarter more than those of Świątek.
In fact, across all major sports, significant salary gaps outpace the national one, where, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, women working full-time, year-round, are paid 84% of what men are paid. The gender salary disparities in professional sports are downright shocking.
According to a New Rules Media analysis of all major sports in the U.S. in 2023 based on salary reporting from the leagues, there was an average gap of $10,663,000 for professional basketball players, $696,557 for golfers, $417,279 for soccer, and $549,883 for the top 100 tennis players. These are all before endorsement deals, of which men take the lion’s share. The NBA’s Lebron James, for example, raked in around $80 million last year, while the WNBA’s Candace Owens, in comparison, made a paltry $8 million.
There are funding issues, too. In 2022, a USA Today analysis on the 50th anniversary of Title IX found that Division I basketball teams spent 60% more on men's than women's equipment, travel, and recruiting. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) spends more per student-athlete for men's championships in single-gender sports like beach volleyball and wrestling.
There are also big gaps in reporting representation, both in terms of the gender of journalists and coverage. According to the Pew Research Center in 2023, “Men account for 83% of the surveyed journalists who indicated that they cover sports, far higher than the 15% who are women.” Wasserman reports that women’s sports comprise, on average, 15% of total sports media coverage.
“The world still has a way to go,” wrote the World Economic Forum earlier this year, highlighting the larger challenge women face worldwide in achieving overall equality. “While the current gap is 68.6% closed, it's estimated to take another 131 years to reach full parity.”
Change to Come
With women’s sports increasing in popularity, both in terms of attendance and viewership, now reaching across gendered lines, the future looks bright for female athletes and their professional sports teams. However, there’s still work to be done to achieve gender parity between men and women, both on and off the field.
“Sport has the power to change lives,” according to UN Women, a United Nations organization that aims to promote gender equality and women's empowerment worldwide. “The ability to drive gender equality by teaching women and girls teamwork, self-reliance, resilience and confidence. Women in sport defy gender stereotypes and social norms, make inspiring role models, and show men and women as equals.”
During these Olympic Games, NBC Sports enlisted the help of male-dominated Barstool Sports alumnus and Call Her Daddy’ podcast host Alex Cooper to expand their reach with women and men for a regular Watch with Alex Cooper segment airing on its streaming service, Peacock. “When you think about the [Olympics] show, the idea is to bring guests on so that a young woman and her dad could sit down and watch my show together,” Cooper explained.
But there are already men cheering on the rise of female athletes, including S&P Global Market Intelligence Kagan principal analyst Justin Nielson, who noted in a recent "MediaTalk" podcast that women's basketball, for example, "already has arrived … [based on] having a big name like Caitlin Clark and then also just the rise in women's sports viewership, among the WNBA and other leagues. [I] t's a very star-driven league. You're looking at big personalities in the game now, and … it's really resonated."
According to The Ringer, a sports and pop culture website and podcast network, the latest NBA and WNBA media rights deal reportedly values the leagues at $7 billion and $200 million, respectively, per year. However, this doesn’t align with viewership statistics, which are near parity this year. This inequity could push female athletes to demand more deserved compensation.
“If I know that I am part of a company that is just as successful and just as lucrative as an employee of some other company who’s making 35 times more than me, why in the world would I stick with that company?” asked The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson in a recent episode of The Bill Simmon’s Podcast
“It’s going to lead to a labor strike,” said Bill Simmons, highlighting that the fight for gender equality in and out of sports continues today.