Transcription
For a whole generation of female athletes, the year 1999 will always be special. This is the year the U.S. Women's National Team won the World Cup in a sold-out Rose Bowl, defeating China in penalty kicks.
Even if you don't know or remember the game I'm talking about, I guarantee you know this photo. This photo of Brandi Chastain is considered one of the most iconic photos in sports history, and it's an image that came to represent what many considered to be a turning point in women's sports. Here was all the proof you needed that women could be strong, dominant athletes competing on the biggest stages. And as Brandi and Mia Hamm became household names, it really did feel like we had entered a new era in women's sports.
But it's been 23 years since that World Cup, and I find myself asking, how much progress has actually been made? In some ways, a lot. The NWSL is in its 10th season, and viewership of last year's championship was up over 200 percent. WNBA viewership was also up over 50 percent last season, and over a billion people watched the last World Cup. Things are trending in the right direction.
But in some really important ways, not much has changed. Coverage is stuck at four percent. Female athletes still make a fraction of what their male counterparts do, and despite the new viewers, women's sports are still not mainstream. They still fundamentally sit on the fringe. It feels like women's sports are on the cusp of breaking through, but it felt like that in 1999, and now it's 2022.
So, what will it take for the future of women's sports to finally arrive? In my opinion, three things need to happen. Two of them are obvious, and one of them is not.
The first, we need more investment. Most of you already know this. We not only need more capital, but we need investors that see the big picture and are willing to play the long game. For instance, it took the MLS over 20 years for just some of its clubs to turn a profit, and yet it's never struggled finding new team owners. Meanwhile, in women's sports, we've had two women's leagues start and fold in the U.S. after just three seasons. On the men's side, we regularly inject hundreds of millions of dollars, give them decades to grow and show profitability, and then revive them if they fail. On the women's side, we give them a fraction of the money, a fraction of the time, and then lament the fact that they aren't profitable just a few seasons in.
We also need more media coverage, which again, most of you already know. When the Big Three basketball league started, Fox Sports 1 agreed to broadcast all the games. They didn't have to do anything to prove they had an audience. Meanwhile, it took the NWSL four seasons to secure a regular broadcast slot with A&E, and even then, most of the games were not on TV. And putting women's sports on TV, that's just the bare minimum. We need the same consistent and comprehensive coverage that you see on the men's side for the women's. And that's what we're trying to do at the company that I started called Just Women's Sports. Thank you guys. Thank you guys.
But as you guys seem to know, we're a media company dedicated to covering just women's sports. And what I can tell you, as someone that has spent time inside of the space, those two things are obvious and well-discussed. We need more investment, and we need more media coverage.
But in my opinion, the biggest issue in women's sports is one we rarely talk about: marketing. We have a major marketing problem. The issue is this: we do not treat women's sports like sports. We treat them like a charity. This mindset is so pervasive that it can be hard to even notice. But how many of you have heard someone say that we need to support women's sports? Have you ever heard someone say that we need to support the NBA or NFL? Of course not. It sounds absurd.
Or how many times have you seen a commercial that talks about how important female athletes are because they inspire the next generation? On the men's side, it's a given that kids are going to be inspired when Steph Curry hits an impossible three-pointer. No one stops and goes, "Wow, that was so good for all the young boys out there." But on the women's side, we do that. We act like female athletes only play their sports to inspire little girls.
And how come we hear so much about female athletes' achievements off the court and so little about their achievements on it? Obviously, I think it's great that these athletes do so much outside of their sport. But if we only talk about them as mothers and never as competitors, how can we expect anyone to care about their stat line rather than celebrating the goals they score? We talk about the kids they inspire rather than debating their performances on the court. We talk about everything they're doing off of it. Over and over again, we tell people to watch women's sports, but then we do everything we can to point their attention somewhere else. The implicit assumption is that the product itself is not good enough to want to watch on its own.
And look, we know that female athletes are role models, and we know that there's a ton of social benefits to having more girls play sports. It improves their confidence and self-esteem, teaches teamwork and leadership. And I've been really lucky to feel a lot of that firsthand. Before starting Just Women's Sports, I played soccer. Played soccer at Stanford and professionally in the U.S. and abroad. And I can say with confidence that my experience, experience as an athlete, did more for me as a CEO than anything else in my life. And I would not be standing on this stage without my years and years of kicking a ball around.
But I also know that I didn't start playing soccer because someone told me it might be good for my career one day. And I certainly did not pour my heart and soul into it because it was good for my self-esteem. I started playing sports because I thought it was fun. Because I wanted to be like Brandi Chastain and Mia Hamm. I wanted to be in that Rose Bowl, competing to win a World Cup. And I kept playing because I fell in love with it.
When we talk about women's sports like a charity, we should not be surprised when it gets treated like one. When we tell people to support women's sports, of course, when a dad with a daughter knows who Megan Rapinoe is, they expect a pat on the back. And when we focus so much on off-field achievements, it's no wonder that female athletes are more likely to get time on Good Morning America than on SportsCenter.
We have to solve this marketing problem. Addressing this is the most important thing we can do if we want more investment, more media coverage, if we want women's sports to grow and to actually go mainstream. For 20 years and more, we have been trying to guilt people into watching women's sports. But everyone in the space has to understand that sports run on hype, not guilt. Hype, not guilt.
To get where we want to go, we got to talk about women's sports like the $200 billion industry it is projected to become in the next decade. We have to remember that sports are entertainment and lean into everything we love about them: the rivalries and clutch performances, the life-changing wins and heartbreaking losses. Women's sports should feel exciting, dramatic, fun. And when we do this, when we focus on the sports, it works.
FC Barcelona just set the record for the most attended women's soccer match of all time with over 90,000 attendees, and then turned around and broke that record a few weeks later. Angel City sold out their home opener. The U.S. Open women's final outdrew the men. There are examples of this working. We just have to do it consistently.
When I see this photo of Brandi, I certainly do not see someone that needs my support. I see an athlete who has just stepped up on the biggest stage. I see pure and unadulterated joy and a pretty iconic six-pack. I see a badass that just won the World Cup. The good news is, the on-field product of women's sports is great. It was great in 1999, and it's still great today. We just have to get better at selling it.
To get where we want to go, the path forward is so incredibly simple. We just have to treat women's sports like sports. Thank you. [Applause]