When the 24‑year‑old Satheesh Shubha set India on course for victory over England in this month’s Test match, it was the first time she had ever batted for her country. And yet Shubha was already worth more than most of the women in India’s cricketing history. Earlier in the month, Royal Challengers Bangalore had purchased her for the second season of the Women’s Indian Premier League, the tournament that changed not just women’s cricket, but the entire landscape of women’s sport.
When its 951 crore (£95.4m) rights deal was announced in January, the WIPL instantly became the second most valuable women’s sports league in the entire world. Nat Sciver-Brunt, the highest paid overseas player in the draft, received £320,000 for the three-week tournament. Alex Hartley, the former England bowler who announced her retirement in August, calls it “unheard of amounts of money”. “And as a result we’ve seen young Indian players come through who’ve done really well. When you have a high- cost competition like the WIPL, people improve quickly.”
2023 may well be remembered as the tipping point year for women’s sport – the one it finally began to realise its commercial possibilities. In November, the US National Women’s Soccer League signed a four-year media rights deal for $240m, a 40-fold increase on its previous agreement. A report by Deloitte predicted that global revenues would top £1bn in 2024 – a 300% increase on the industry’s valuation in 2020. The creation of NewCo to govern top-tier women’s football in England – breaking the shackles of FA control – proved that the industry is preparing for one giant leap.
The managing partner Jenny Mitton leads the women’s sports team at the marketing agency M&C Saatchi and has seen a seismic shift in the past 12 months as the conversation turns from the social benefits of women’s sport – such as health outcomes and gender equality – to its investment potential. It may be a startup compared to the commercial behemoth of the men’s industry, but that’s what makes women’s sport so appealing. “Investors are coming into the space not because it’s a good thing to do, but because in 10 years’ time they want to cash a big cheque,” says Mitton. “And as we’ve not seen any fluctuations in the market they can make an informed decision that it’s only going in one direction.”
Pam Melbourne, who founded Decibel Sport Management to represent female athletes across a number of sports, says that the creation of NewCo is an acknowledgment that the industry needs commercial focus to grow further. She likens the current state of women’s sport to caring for a teenager in the middle of a sudden growth spurt. “One minute you’ve got to change the trousers, then the top, then the feet grow. As soon as you’ve fixed one thing you’ve got to fix something else. That’s not a criticism, it shows how fast it’s growing. The infrastructure is having to catch up.”
The industry has recovered well since the pandemic, which had forced it several steps back on its journey – “the light is back on and people know now that it’s not flickering, it’s only getting brighter,” says Melbourne. Record attendance figures were recorded across women’s sport, from the crowd of 58,500 witnessing England’s grand slam victory over France at Twickenham in the Six Nations to the almost two million spectators at the Fifa Women’s World Cup to the women’s Ashes series, which attracted nearly five times as many spectators as in 2019.
Hartley identifies the joint marketing of the men’s and women’s Ashes this summer as a model for future success. “My frustration is when people have to search for the women’s team’s fixtures. During the Ashes, England’s women were selling out, but when they played Sri Lanka at the end of the summer no one even knew it was happening.”
The broadcast deals that provide such eye-watering sums to men’s sport are currently of less financial significance in the women’s industry, where sponsors provide the greatest income. But the visibility they provide is crucial in engaging new audiences. Mitton was personally disappointed when the BBC and ITV both chose to pass up the offer of free rights to show England’s Red Roses take on Canada in September. “I was one of the few people who got up at 3am during the Women’s Rugby World Cup to watch England play Canada,” says Mitton, “and it was some of the best rugby I’ve seen.”
But change can’t happen overnight, and Mitton points out that the BBC’s investment in women’s sport has been “incredible”. “It’s unfair to say every match suddenly has to be broadcast,” she says, pointing out that the BBC’s Six Nations coverage has improved year on year from mainly highlights and red-button coverage to the stage where almost all games are broadcast live.
One of the most rapidly growing markets in women’s sport in 2023 was Australia, thanks to the strong performances of the co‑host nation in the Fifa Women’s World Cup. The Matildas’ was the biggest-selling sports shirt in a country where women’s football has now overtaken men’s in both merchandise sales and viewership. “It was like what we saw here in the UK around the Euros,” says Melbourne. “Every major tournament, whatever sport it may be, is validating the proposition. All roads are pointing towards meteoric growth.”
That doesn’t come without challenges. A year-long contract dispute between Netball Australia and players in the country’s professional Super Netball league showed that female athletes, increasingly aware of their own value, are demanding a say in the commercial decisions being taken on their behalf. They went without pay for months as their players’ association lobbied for the revenue-sharing model that was eventually agreed to by the organising body this month.
Jess Thirlby, the head coach who guided the England Roses to their first World Cup final in August, is relieved that a settlement has been reached – it was “hard and sad” to hear of the financial hardship the out-of-contract players were experiencing. “As uncomfortable as it might be watching that play out,” says Thirlby, “it feels to me there was a real standing to continue to fight for what they feel is the right direction of travel for the players and the sport.”
Her own side’s successes at the World Cup in South Africa have also boosted the global game – a more competitive international scene is vital for the sport to increase its audience appeal. After England’s groundbreaking gold at the Commonwealth Games in 2018, Thirlby knew more was needed to mount a continuing challenge to Australia and New Zealand’s historic dominance.
“If you look at the infrastructure and the lack of depth in the talent pool when I came into the post, it’s a stretch to be competing in the top two and making finals,” says Thirlby. Beating New Zealand to reach a World Cup final that had eluded them throughout the 60-year-old tournament was a major shift was credit to “an evolving and transformational” group of players.
Player welfare has been identified as a new frontline in women’s sport’s all-conquering campaign – Hartley is already warning, for instance, of the dangers of “chasing the money” across a burgeoning universe of franchise cricket. “They’re going to want to play in every series – I know I’d definitely want to. But you could burn yourselves out before the summer’s even started with all that’s going on.”
Welfare is also at the centre of the debate in women’s boxing over the move away from 10 two-minute rounds. Calls for the adoption of the men’s format have intensified since Amanda Serrano defended her featherweight world titles against Danila Ramos in 12 three-minute rounds in October, and only this month Serrano vacated her WBC title after the World Boxing Council refused to allow her to defend it in the same fashion. Mikaela Mayer, challenging Natasha Jonas for her IBF world welterweight title in January, has announced that she wants the fight contested in the longer format and Jonas says she is open to the possibility.
But Jonas points, also, to the dearth of independent research about the different formats. “Everyone’s got science to back up what they’re saying,” says Jonas – the WBC, for instance, insists that the data shows that the risk to women increases drastically, far more than men’s, with an additional 16 minutes of ring time. “There’s no independent research being done to tell us, the athletes, which is safer.”
For motorsport, the issue continues to be one of opportunity. Abbi Pulling, who competed in two seasons of the all-female W Series, was part of the first intake to the F1 Academy, established with the aim of developing a female pathway into the sport’s top tier. Her seven podiums, two pole positions and four fastest laps helped her to finish fifth in the standings, but she admits that she is lucky to be racing at all.
“If it wasn’t for these opportunities it’s a sad reality that my dream and career would be over,” says Pulling, who points to the difficulty of finding funding in an extremely expensive sport. “If I was a guy I wouldn’t still be racing.” Instead she finished the season driving in front of 400,000 on the weekend of the US Grand Prix in Austin, pushing the eventual champion, Marta García, all the way to the chequered flag.
At the elite level, 2023 was a year that change came quickly. In the light of the damning conclusions found in the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket’s report on discrimination across the game, the England and Wales Cricket Board announced that the women’s national side would be paid the same match fees as men. The superstar all-rounder Sciver- Brunt will have netted roughly half a million pounds from her various contracts this year. By the time she turns 20, Alice Capsey may already have earned as much as a double World Cup-winner such as Lydia Greenway made from her entire career.
Melbourne says it’s important in these circumstances to remember that life remains hard for female athletes further down the pyramid. The golfers competing in September’s Solheim Cup, for instance, had plenty to celebrate when the tournament was given its own window in the calendar, and aggressively marketed: its viewed hours increased 50% on 2022, climbing from 6 million to 9 million. “If you look at the Ladies European Tour, you’ll get a very different story,” says Melbourne. “These are top 50 golfers, but very few have equipment sponsors and it’s a battle to survive.
“There’s a danger people think female athletes are earning a fortune, whereas it’s actually a struggle for most Women’s Super League footballers to get a boot deal. Sport needs to check that the gap doesn’t keep growing and leave a lot of people behind.”
