SPOKANE, WASHINGTON - MARCH 28: Aneesah Morrow #24 of the LSU Lady Tigers takes photos with fans ... More after the Sweet Sixteen round of the 2025 NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament held at Spokane Arena on March 28, 2025 in Spokane, Washington. (Photo by Tyler Schank/NCAA Photos via Getty Images) NCAA Photos via Getty Images The business of women’s sports has boomed over the past several years. A number of converging factors, from social media to analytics to growing audiences, have benefitted the business of women’s sports. Sports writer and professor Jane McManus explores the burgeoning women’s sports business in her new book, The Fast Track: Inside the Surging Business of Women's Sports. I talked with McManus to get the scoop on what’s behind the financial growth of women’s sports. Jane McManus' new book, The Fast Track, explores recent growth in the business of women's sports. Temple University Press The timing of our conversation is really great given we're in the middle of March Madness, and that's the place where I think we see some of the most significant gains for women's sports. Your book really does a nice job of giving details about how we've gotten to this moment. What would you say are the top two or three contributors to the sea change that we've witnessed over the past couple of decades in women's sports? I would say number one is probably social media, and the reason for that is that there has always been a lot of reluctance around platforming women's sports, not because people aren't interested in women's sports, but because the advertising model makes that challenging when it comes to sports. Advertising is sold to men. I mean, that is just the way that it is. That's the business model for your average sports network, whether it's radio or TV, and that's always made it challenging, but social media showed that there was audience. When you have Megan Rapinoe or Serena Williams, and they have 2 million followers on a platform--2 million people bothered to click follow--that's an audience, and you can't deny that. And you know, who's really not interested in denying it are sponsors and companies who want to find “influencers.” And athletes who play in women's sports leagues are some of the best influencers out there. What that means is, there's a demonstrated marketplace now, and I think that, in and of itself, is a huge factor. MORE FOR YOU NYT Mini Today: Hints, Clues And Answers For Tuesday, April 1 iOS 18.4—Update Now Warning Issued To All iPhone Users Trump Approval Rating Tracker: Americans Dissatisfied With Tariffs I think once there's this demonstrated audience, then that means you pay attention to that audience, you respect the audience. You want to sell that audience products, and the audience followed to TV. The pandemic kind of set up this little perfect storm for what was already bubbling to really overflow, and that was the WNBA and the NWSL coming back first from the pandemic. Those ratings were there. The audience was there. It showed that platforming these games can find success. LYON, FRANCE - JULY 07: Players from USA lift the FIFA Women's World Cup Trophy following her ... More team's victory the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup France Final match between The United State of America and The Netherlands at Stade de Lyon on July 07, 2019 in Lyon, France. (Photo by Naomi Baker - FIFA/FIFA via Getty Images) FIFA via Getty Images And then, and then the next thing would be, you know, a conversation around equity. I think it was in 2019 with the US Women's National Team, that's where you had a literal chance of equal pay. And then you have the NCAA coming back, and Sedona Prince’s moment, which capsulized all of those things together, you know, equity, audience, and social media coming together to really demonstrate the power of women's sports. The book really focuses on sports as a business. What did you discover as the key takeaways for how the business of women's sports has changed over the past couple of decades? Data. I think there was very little interest in figuring out who the fan of women's sports was if they didn't act exactly like the fan of men's sports. And it was the de facto mode. Think about, for example, Google. If you were to put a search into Google, you know, “NCAA games”, you would have just been fed back men's games. So, it was always the default. But now you know again, audience. You can see the audience. The audience is arriving, capitalizing on that and figuring out who that audience is. So I think now you have sports innovation labs, Wasserman Collective, Big Blue, you know, all of these other entities which are interested in really getting into the analytics on the women's sports marketplace. Who is the consumer? How much do they spend? How are they consuming women's sports? Is it watching a game from beginning to end, or is it some other way of consuming, and I think there's more interest now in trying to meet the market, rather than expecting the market to meet the presentation. So of course, you know, one of the things that's happened recently is the transfer portal and NIL. How do you think those things have shifted the business of women's sports? I think it just goes to show you how NCAA college sports are so driven by revenue. Now that's such a difference in your and my lifetimes, you know? It does mean that women, just like men, can make money during their college years. And however, I think the marketplace for NIL and men is a little bit different than the marketplace for NIL and women. Women are still cultivated as influencers for the same reason that women have always been useful in advertising, which is physical attractiveness. And so, you know, again, there's no point in railing at the moon about this. It's just the way that it is. You know, it's very hard to say to somebody who's really marketable don't make money. Of course, they should go and make money in the way that they can. However, the marketplace around men and NIL is much more around athletic excellence and your last name if you happen to be Deion Sanders’ kid. So there are other things that have an influence, rather than just how well you do. I think, it's been a real benefit for women who play sports; the same inequities, however, show up on an individual basis. Another thing you write about is the potential still for a lot of growth in women's sports as a business. Where do you see the greatest potential for that? PORTLAND, OREGON - MARCH 30: JuJu Watkins #12 of the USC Trojans smiles after a play during the ... More second half against the Baylor Lady Bears in the Sweet 16 round of the NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament at Moda Center on March 30, 2024 in Portland, Oregon. (Photo by Steph Chambers/Getty Images) Getty Images I think we're seeing a lot right now at the WNBA with Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese, that kind of rivalry coming in at the same time and extending into the WNBA from the NCAA. That rating for that game for the NCAA Women's final four last year—it’s a paradigm busting number. So you see that kind of wash into the WNBA. You have Paige Bueckers and Juju Watkins, they're not far behind. So I think that it could continue. I also think because of the association with the NBA, which has not let it fail in 25 years despite different levels of interest and revenue generation, you do have that solidity. I think they realize now that they have a potential gold mine on their hands in terms of where a women's basketball is in the American consciousness at the moment. I see so those the rights fees when it comes to broadcast rights, the buy in when it comes to expansion teams. Numbers are all going way, way up, particularly in the WNBA with the NWSL too. I think the WNBA right now is really poised to capitalize. One of the things I really appreciate it is that very early on the book, you center women's bodies in the conversation. Why did you do that? Why did you see bodies as so central to the conversation? I think the reason I wanted to do something about bodies is because you cannot get away from it, that the expectations of women as physical creatures is very tied to their ability to move in the world. It’s only recently that women really have had meaningful bodily autonomy in our in Western culture. And I think it's really important, because [young people] don't really have a sense of what happened before they were born or before they were 10. They don't really understand what how hard that fight was, and they kind of feel like things have just arrived, and this is the way it is. And that's true, but it's not the way it's always will been or always will be. Thinking of the current moment as some sort of inevitability on the road to progress is a mistake in my mind, because things are cyclical, and they go back and forth. You cannot look at women's sports without looking at women's bodies. You cannot have women's professional sports at scale without having reproductive freedom and autonomy. And so I felt like it was really important to establish that because, in this country, changing laws and changing norms around that will have an impact on women's sports. Your book's coming out as we've entered a new political era that's been marked by the targeting of DEI and women's bodies, and trans women in particular. Given what you've learned as you did your research for this book, what impact do you think things like Executive Orders, state legislation, corporate backtracking on diversity commitments, and Project 2025 will have on women's sports? This is a really important time for people to be very aware and wary. I think of political headwinds for sure. I think the idea of policing the bodies in women's sports will be pretty detrimental for women who want to play ,and for girls, if you have it set up, if there are laws that are passed so that for any 12-year-olds soccer team, another opposing parent can point at a little girl and say, “That's a man.” I had a I had a young woman come up to me at a college where I was speaking, and she was a volleyball player, tall and, you know, impressive. And she said, “When you said that, it really spoke to me. Because, there were parents who--I was the tallest girl sometimes, when I had short hair, somebody could easily misgender me.” Particularly as somebody who used to be a 12-year-old girl myself, I know how that feels. I know what it feels like to be accused of something, how that feels in the pit of your stomach. And I just think there's a lot of opportunity for situations where girls end up quitting because something just feels so bad. And that's what happens if you imagine you have to have period trackers in order to play in high school, or you have to go to a doctor and have a physical examination in order to prove to an opposing parent that you can actually play in the category of the team that you want to. I just think these things are ultimately things that will dampen the enthusiasm around women in sports. I also think you're right that the idea of DEI could be problematic because so many companies that are investing in women's sports do consider it to be part of the DEI platform. I think they just need to remove that. I think they need to remove that from that area of DEI. There are plenty of reasons to invest in women's sports, data, audience, etc, etc. You don't have to have it check the DEI box. Find other reasons, because the business proposition is there, and that remains strong. And I think it's probably a stronger reason. You know, there have been a lot of like things like, “well, it's the right thing to do.” Those aren't as compelling to people. In a capitalist society, revenue generation counts, and the revenue is being generated right now. There’s no other reason that really matters in the current moment. I think that the athletes who play and the women who want to play and the fans of women's sports just need to be very aware that this is a precarious environment. Show up, support, buy products. The fact of the matter is that if something is successful in our current moment on a sports platform, it’s hard to just undo that. It's not impossible. I mean, we have seen the WNBA go from being super popular its first couple of years to a real trough, but it's back, and I think you have more girls and women playing sports now. You have more interest in women's sports now. So, the momentum is definitely on the side of the category, but it it could swing in the other direction as well. Follow me on Twitter. Editorial StandardsForbes Accolades