Key Takeaways:
- Women’s sports are attracting a rapidly growing audience, creating a major opportunity for rights holders to build lasting fan relationships.
- Women’s sports fans place particular value on athletes’ personalities, journeys, and impact, making athlete-led storytelling central to an effective content strategy.
- AI-powered content creation platforms can turn personality-led moments into platform-native content at scale, helping rights holders keep pace with growing demand for women’s sports content.
The WNBA was riding a wave that showed no sign of washing out.
Before the All-Star Game at the end of July, viewership was up 12% year-over-year, and the league reached more than 73 million unique viewers – surpassing last season’s total by 10 million. In the middle of August, a game between the Indiana Fever and the Atlanta Dream averaged 2.58 million viewers on ESPN, the largest WNBA audience ever on cable.
And then everything stopped. At the end of August, the league paused for two-and-a-half weeks due to the FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup, which kicks off in Berlin on September 4. For most sports organizations, pausing at the crest of the season, with the playoffs less than a month away, would be a worst-case scenario. But in the case of the WNBA, the momentum is more likely to pick up than dwindle.
With the highly anticipated debut of Caitlin Clark on the World Cup stage, and TNT Sports providing wall-to-wall coverage of the tournament, the ratings are expected to be among the highest for the event. Every game will be surrounded by studio programming, and additional content across TNT Sports’ owned-and-operated platforms, including Bleacher Report, could put the WNBA – and women’s sports as a whole – on a course for a record-breaking year.
Women’s Sports Hits Its Stride
That’s especially true in the US. According to a new Nielsen report titled “More Fans, More Often: The Commercial & Cultural Evolution of Women & Sports,” women’s sports has moved firmly into the American mainstream and is on pace to have its best year ever, with record ratings and surging fan engagement across platforms. Key findings include:
- In 2025, US audiences consumed 46 billion minutes of women’s sports, marking a 71% increase from 2022.
- In the first half of 2026, 28.3 billion minutes of women’s sports were consumed in the US, an 18% increase over the same period in 2025.
- 122.5 million Americans – 52.8% of the total population – are interested in women’s sports.
- Nearly half of US women (48%) say they are very interested in at least one sport.
- Women are among the fastest-growing segments of sports fans, including for the biggest men’s properties.
- Since 2022, ad spend in women’s sports has increased by 120%.
“The rise in popularity of women’s sports isn’t just a fleeting trend,” said Charlene Polite Corley, vice president of inclusive insights at Nielsen. “It is a cultural realignment where access to games, storytelling around athletes and ongoing investment from brands are changing the economy of global sports.”
What Women’s Sports Fans Want
The key to this economic change lies in understanding women’s sports fans. A new study by ad tech firm The Trade Desk set out to do just that. Using qualitative and quantitative methods, including a survey of 700 women’s sports fans and 300 men’s sports fans in the US, the study reveals the motivations, attitudes, and behaviors that set women’s sports fans apart from other audiences. Among the insights offered:
- 62% of women’s sports fans would choose to follow their favorite athletes over a team. Men’s sports fans lean in the opposite direction: 59% would prefer to follow just one team.
- Women’s sports fans are 1.3 times more likely to notice how inspiring the athletes are for the next generation. Men’s sports fans, on the other hand, are 1.3 times more likely to think about their pure athletic talent.
- Women’s sports fans are 2.4 times more likely to think about the person behind the athlete, e.g., how they juggled sports with jobs or school, their identities as parents, and what they represent culturally.
- 72% of women’s sports fans consume sports content daily – 14 percentage points more than men’s sports fans.
“Women’s sports fans are different from men’s sports fans,” the study’s authors conclude. “To engage this audience in 2026 and beyond, it’s not enough to simply replicate traditional sports marketing strategies. Women’s sports fans are more invested in individual athletes’ stories and seek out meaningful coverage through a range of related media formats like recaps, highlights, podcasts, and more.”
Scaling Stories That Matter
As women’s sports reach new levels of attention, rights holders have a golden opportunity to build deeper connections with the audience that follows it. That starts with storytelling that highlights athletes’ character, journeys, and lived reality, delivered at the speed and scale women expect.
This is where AI-powered content creation platforms become essential. By instantly transforming personality-led moments into platform-native stories, rights holders can provide a steady stream of compelling content that moves fast and reaches far. At the FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup, doing so can keep fans invested in the players and stories they discover, giving the WNBA an even stronger foundation to build on when its season resumes.
Actionable Insights:
- Put athletes at the center: prioritize stories that reveal personality, character, and journeys alongside on-field performance to deepen connections with women’s sports fans.
- Build for daily consumption: develop a steady mix of highlights, recaps, and personality-led content that gives fans compelling reasons to return between games.
- Scale personality-led storytelling: use AI-powered tools to quickly turn athlete moments into platform-native content, tailored to the formats and channels your audience uses most.
