Earlier this year, we wrote about the growing popularity of women’s soccer in the United States and how the sport’s growth promised to open up exciting new investment opportunities in markets across the country. The Women’s World Cup, which took place in July and August, attracted record numbers of spectators and television audiences around the world, including in the United States, where fans watched watch American team matches despite kickoff times that often took place in the middle of the night for most American viewers. (And also, as we hoped, the NWSL officially announced that a new expansion team will come to the San Francisco Bay Area during the 2024 season.)
But football is not the only women’s sport to be in the spotlight this year. A new women’s hockey league, the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL), should start playing in six markets in the United States and Canada in January 2024. The PWHL will become the only professional women’s league in North America. The league intends to collaborate with the NHL to host games and events in the United States and Canada, including neutral-site games outside of the league’s six domestic markets, in an effort to raise the profile of the new league, its teams and its players, and sport in general. The league has signed a collective bargaining agreement with the National Women’s Hockey Players Association (something previous women’s hockey leagues were unable to accomplish) and has strong financial support.
Women’s basketball is also booming and in the spotlight. The 2023 WNBA regular season saw the league better in-person participation in 13 years, and the largest television audiences in 21 years. The momentum carried into the playoffs – the WNBA Finals, featuring the New York Liberty and the defending champion Las Vegas Aces, take place this week – where the second game between the Connecticut Sun and the New York Liberty took place. highest average audience of any WNBA playoff game (excluding Finals games) since 2001.
The WNBA is not shy about leveraging its growing footprint in the American sports landscape. This week, the league announced that a new expansion franchise will be established in the San Francisco Bay Area and will begin play during the 2025 season. It will be the first new team since 2008. The team will be part of the Golden State Warriors franchise of the NBA and the two teams will share a commercial structure. The new WNBA team will play at Chase Center in San Francisco’s Mission Bay neighborhood, where the Warriors have played since the facility opened in 2018, and will be headquartered and hold practices in Oakland at the facility that housed the Warriors before their move. the Bay. And the league isn’t stopping its quest for expansion in the Bay Area, as reports have revealed that Portland is also “strongly considered” for a WNBA expansion team of its own.
As was (and still is) the case with football, the growth of women’s sports in general, including hockey and basketball in the United States, presents exciting opportunities for owners, managers, investors, lenders and club advertisers. Just as the world of women’s soccer benefited from this summer’s hugely popular Women’s World Cup, women’s sports, including basketball, are expected to receive an additional boost of attention during the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris next year. In particular, those in the world of women’s basketball will have the chance to capture the attention of new audiences as the game grows in the United States and around the world. And as the WNBA adds teams to its ranks, additional opportunities will present themselves as teams seek new or renovated arenas and practice facilities, game day and equipment providers, broadcast and media, as well as physical and digital retail spaces.
And in another parallel with the NWSL, existing WNBA franchises are seeing their valuations soar. Earlier this year, the Seattle Storm sold a minority stake in the team at a price valuation of $151 million, which broke the previous record for a WNBA franchise. With at least one new team joining the league in the coming years and an ever-increasing number of people following league games, the valuations of the franchise and the league itself will almost certainly continue to grow.
In February we said “there is good reason to pay close attention to women’s football as an area of opportunity in the coming months”. It appears the same is true for women’s basketball and hockey.
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