Good Question: How popular have women's sports become?
MINNEAPOLIS — It's safe to say women's sports are having a moment right now thanks to a record-breaking college athlete. Iowa University's Caitlin Clark returns to Minneapolis for the Big Ten Basketball tournament this week.
How popular has women's sports become? And what will help it keep growing? Good Question.
The fanfare surrounding the grand opening of "A Bar of Their Own," a sports bar showing exclusively women's sports in Minneapolis, is an in-your-face example of a shift happening across the greater sports world.
"I think it just speaks to how women's sports and women's basketball has grown so much in the last several years," said one customer.
Digging into the data to prove what our eyes are seeing is the mission for The Collective at sports marketing agency Wasserman.
"It's our dedicated women's practice that seeks to elevate women in every way and advance their power," said Thayer Lavielle, the executive vice president of The Collective.
GOOD QUESTION: Why do we cough when we get food stuck in our lungs?
How are people accessing women's sports as its popularity grows? No differently than how they consume other forms of entertainment.
Older data was getting outdated. It found that of all sports coverage on television, only about 4% involved women's sports. The Collective wanted to dig deeper in its study.
"We looked at 1.2 billion lines of data and came up with a new stat that actually was just updated and announced at Sloan (MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference) this weekend to be 16%," said Lavielle.
That rise to 16% is due to consumption across all mediums including TV, digital, social media and, most importantly, streaming services.
"Streaming by far has the biggest implication for women's sports, that's where a lot of women's sports in the U.S... Are found today," she said.
The current face of that rise is the University of Iowa's Caitlin Clark, who just broke the NCAA record for career points scored. Fox Sports reported more than 4 million viewers tuned in to see Clark break the record to become the NCAA Division I career scoring leader. It was the most-watched women's regular season basketball game since 1999. The attention for our accomplishment went well beyond the broadcast.
"It's not just about what ESPN is saying, for example, or what WCCO is saying about that shot, it's also about what you're then saying about that shot, or what other players are saying about that record being broken. That's all the ripple effect of that event," said Lavielle.
GOOD QUESTION: Why do police ask, "Do you know why I pulled you over?"
How critical are more professional leagues to the growth of women's sports? Lavielle said it's monumental.
"If we're looking at how to give these Division I athletes a place to continue to go play professionally, we need to be able to give them the outlet to do that," she said.
The Professional Women's Hockey League, which features a Minnesota team, is one of the newest opportunities for women to go pro and grow an audience beyond college athletics.
Adding new leagues, expanding those that exist, and filling seats to watch the action can all add to the momentum behind women's sports.
Neilsen also dug into the data on women's sports last year. It found that interest is "growing at a meteoric pace." For example, it found the 2023 NCAA Tournament drew nearly 10 million viewers for the championship game between LSU and Iowa, a 103% increase from the previous year.
