Across leagues and competitions worldwide, women’s sports are gaining unprecedented momentum. The scale of that growth is visible in the numbers:
- More fans are showing up – the WNBA set a new single-season attendance record in 2025.
- Revenues are climbing – global women’s elite sports generated $1.88 billion in revenue in 2024, nearly doubling year-over-year, according to Deloitte.
- Brands are investing – sponsorship deals are reaching new heights, including a record-breaking $28 million jersey partnership in the NWSL.
But there’s another way to measure the rise of women’s sports.
Look at the moments being shared.
As sports consumption increasingly shifts toward short-form highlights on social media and sports apps, the volume of clips created around a competition offers a revealing signal of its visibility and reach. To capture the largest audience, rights holders have to meet fans where they are most open to sports highlights.
And over the past year, those moments around women’s sports have multiplied dramatically.
The Data Behind the Moments
Data from the WSC Sports platform offers a window into how the storytelling around women’s sports is evolving.
The numbers from 2025 tell a striking story.
- Videos created – up 73.7%
The surge in output reflects the rapid expansion of digital storytelling around women’s competitions. - Highlights created during live matches – up 172.3%
The increase suggests that moments from women’s sports are increasingly entering the real-time social conversation around the game. - Videos created per game – up from 9 per game to 23.6 per game
The growth shows how each match is now generating far more shareable moments and storylines for fans to follow.
The Rise of Player Stories
One of the most striking shifts in the data is the growth of player-focused highlights.
Videos centered on individual women athletes increased 146.1% year-over-year in 2025 on the WSC Sports platform.
Increasingly, audiences follow athletes as closely as they follow teams. As more highlights focus on individual performances, female athletes are appearing more frequently in the clips circulating across social media and sports platforms.
As a result, the visibility of female athletes is increasing dramatically, as the overall rise of women’s sports demonstrates. More of the moments fans see and share now revolve around the athletes themselves.
Where Fans Are Watching the Game
The growth in the number of highlights is also changing how those moments reach fans.
Short-form, mobile-first video formats are expanding. On the WSC Sports platform, vertical and social-native formats saw some of the fastest growth over the past year.
Vertical video (9:16) highlights increased 130%, while 4:5 formats grew 161%.
These formats are designed for the platforms where many fans now experience sports: Instagram, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and other mobile-first feeds.
As more highlights are created in these formats, moments from women’s sports appear more often in exactly the places new audiences discover athletes and teams.
More Moments, More Visibility
Attendance, revenue, and sponsorship all point to the rising momentum behind women’s sports.
The data on highlights goes a long way in explaining it. Every game-changing play becomes another opportunity for fans to discover and follow the players behind the action.
And as those moments circulate, they introduce new fans to the athletes and competitions shaping the future of the game.
The story of women’s sports is growing. Increasingly, it’s being told in more moments than ever before.
