University of South Carolina

• The women’s Final Four garnered higher television ratings than the men’s Final Four.
• And more than 90,000 fans attended the 1999 FIFA Women’s World Cup final in Pasadena, California.
• Many fans, journalists and scholars are wondering if this is the dawn of a new era of women’s sports, with more coverage, increased viewership, heightened interest and bigger investments continuing in the future.

The long eclipse of women’s sports

• We’re in the middle of collecting data for the eighth time, the results of which will be published in 2025.
• Hundreds of studies on the routine coverage of sports have similarly found that media coverage of women’s sports rarely exceeds 10% of total sports coverage.
• This is a recurring pattern across media platforms – print, TV, radio, social – in English-speaking countries.

Leapfrogging the gatekeepers

• Podcasts like “Hear Her Sports,” “The Gist of It,” “Tea with A & Phee” and “Attacking Third” directly appeal to women’s sports fans.
• They can simply directly engage with them on social media, producing and pushing content that bypasses traditional media gatekeepers.

Leveraging feminism

• But my colleague Dunja Antunovic and I observed an important shift in sports media starting in the mid-2010s: the mobilization of feminism and principles of equality to promote and sell women’s sports.
• In one chapter of our latest book, “Serving Equality: Feminism, Media, and Women’s Sports,” we focus on how women’s sports leagues and teams, as well as their corporate sponsors, have used the imagery, language and slogans of feminism and social justice movements to sell merchandise and tickets.
• The video accompanying the campaign interspersed scenes of WNBA games with scenes from the 2017 Women’s March on Washington.

Being the change they want to see

• While corporations and leagues deserve credit for highlighting the value of women’s sports, it’s also important to acknowledge how female athletes themselves have been driving change.
• The activism of women athletes through the years has also created visibility for women’s sports.
• In March 2019, the U.S. women’s national team players sued the U.S. Soccer Federation for gender discrimination.
• Last year was the first year since the 1980s that the women’s tournament was broadcast on network television.

Cheryl Cooky has received funding and support from the Women's Sports Foundation. She consults on gender equality issues in sports and has partnered with Gatorade, Nike and Buick.