Media rights offers point out the rising worth of women’s sports, however they’ve additionally illustrated the necessity for salaries, facilities, and advantages in step with that premium worth.

The affect of the continued inflow of media funding was evident within the lineup on the Deep Blue Enterprise of Girls’s Sports activities Summit on Tuesday in Manhattan, which included the presence of recent, developmental leagues like League One Volleyball (LOVB) and the United Soccer League (USL) Tremendous League in addition to the WNBA’s Golden State Valkyries growth franchise. 

Among the many latest highlights, in 2023, the Nationwide Girls’s Soccer League entered a four-year, $240 million broadcast take care of CBS, Disney, Amazon, and Scripps that was the most important of its type on the time. It was additionally greater than 53 occasions the $4.5 million deal the NWSL acquired from CBS Sports activities and streaming platform Twitch in 2020.

Moreover, final yr, the WNBA signed an 11-year media rights take care of Disney, Amazon, and NBCUniversal that was not solely price $2.2 billion, however allowed it to maintain negotiating with current broadcast companions like Scripps—which is in search of a long-term settlement after averaging greater than 1 million viewers per recreation final season. The WNBA’s new pact will carry the league greater than $200 million per season, or roughly 4 occasions the $50 million it receives yearly from its present broadcast rights.

“It’s creating extra visibility for our athletes and serving to us develop our fan base and appeal to a broader viewers,” Shana Stephenson, chief model officer for the reigning WNBA champion New York Liberty, advised ADWEEK on the Deep Blue summit. “For those who actually have a look at engagement and the dedication of our followers and the loyalty of our followers, that’s the place the funding actually exhibits up, and that’s the place it actually makes numerous sense.”


Deep Blue is building a women

Outdoors the U.S., soccer’s U.Ok.-based Girls’s Tremendous League (WSL) struck a five-year, $86.7 million take care of Sky Sports activities and the BBC final yr that, at greater than $17 million per yr, exceeds the $9 million to $10.6 million annual worth of the league’s final media cycle. 

So why weren’t broadcasters so beneficiant beforehand?

“It’s known as sexism, simply say it,” mentioned Sue Hen, a Deep Blue companion and chief technique officer who’ll be enshrined within the Naismith Basketball Corridor of Fame later this yr.

A multi-time Olympic gold medalist with Crew USA and WNBA champion with the Seattle Storm, Hen is now a part of the possession teams of each the Storm and the NWSL’s Gotham FC. As the worth of ladies’s sports activities media offers rises and circumstances throughout the leagues themselves change, Hen observes it within the context of the larger sports activities panorama.