DENVER — Professional girls’s sports are experiencing hypergrowth, increasing 4.5 occasions quicker than males’s sports. According to the consulting agency McKinsey, international revenues for girls’s sports are projected to achieve $2.3 billion this 12 months.
“People love watching sports. They love watching winners,” Jared Bahir Browsh mentioned.
Browsh, the director of important sports research at CU Boulder, mentioned the present success is the results of long-term efforts.
“This has been a growth project, and it takes time to build a fan base, and we’re finally seeing the fruits of that in women’s sports,” Browsh mentioned.
The growth is fueled by a massive enhance in viewership. Both the WNBA Finals and the National Women’s Soccer League championship video games final 12 months noticed over 1,000,000 common viewers. Fans are additionally filling stadiums.
“I went to several of the Denver Onyx rugby games last year. I think I’m going to get season tickets this coming spring,” Jess Hollingshead mentioned.
Hollingshead is among the many rising variety of followers attending stay occasions. She has an extended checklist {of professional} girls’s sporting occasions she has attended, together with the PWHL girls’s hockey takeover video games, and she went to her first WNBA sport final summer season.
Hollingshead can also be one among greater than 50,000 followers who’ve already purchased tickets to observe Denver’s first skilled soccer workforce, Denver Summit FC on March 28.
“I cannot wait to go and have a professional team that I can go to here. That’s soccer. That’s one of the biggest women’s sports that were accessible to my generation growing up,” Hollingshead mentioned.
Hollingshead shared her pleasure at The 99ers Sports Bar, Denver’s first sports bar devoted to girls’s athletics. Co-owners Miranda Spencer and Annie Weaver have constructed a group on the bar since 2024 despite some doubters.
“We’re on social media, and people are commenting, like, they will not last longer than a week, you know? So, so it’s easy to get in our heads, but ultimately overcame all that,” Weaver mentioned.
“I would say that our retention is our return rate is probably 35%,” Spencer mentioned.
The enterprise addresses an issue followers have when making an attempt to entry video games obtainable solely on streaming or cable providers.
“A lot of these teams or leagues still don’t have broadcast partners, which is really unfortunate, especially because of how many fans they have, and how they’ve taken off. I will say, since we opened, it has changed a tremendous amount,” Weaver mentioned.
Scripps, the dad or mum firm of Denver7, has partnered with the WNBA, NWSL, and PWHL to broadcast video games.
While challenges round equality stay, skilled girls’s sports have gone mainstream, and native followers need to see extra growth.
“I hope Denver gets all of the professional sports teams. I hope we get a WNBA team. I hope we get a PWHL team, somebody with money, bring a WNBA team to Denver, we’re hoping, fingers crossed,” Weaver mentioned.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been transformed to this platform with the help of AI. Our editorial workforce verifies all reporting on all platforms for equity and accuracy.
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