New data shows market gap in fans wanting to watch women’s sports

The GIST: Sports Poll by SSRS — the world’s longest-running market research study on sports fandom — dropped some data proving what we’ve known all along: it shouldn’t be this hard to watch women’s sports.

• A July poll revealed that nearly 20% of respondents had no way to watch the women’s pro and college sports they are interested in, with only 42% saying they have access to all or most games. We need to talk about this.

The problem: Established leagues like the NWSL and WNBA — both of which touted lucrative media deals as part of their recent collective bargaining agreements — require complicated and costly combos of paid streaming apps like Prime Video, Peacock or Paramount+, cable or satellite access, live TV streaming, and other paid subscriptions if your team is out of market.

• League-specific apps like NWSL+ or WNBA League Pass don’t show every game as they have national blackouts for marquee matchups. These extensive lineups run between $50 to $100 a month and, in addition to the cost, it’s a major inconvenience to not even easily know which of the seven apps has the game you want.

The effect: It gets even worse when you look at new leagues where this lack of accessibility disproportionately affects their ability to grow. Less than two days before its season started, the Women’s Professional Baseball League (WPBL) announced its games would no longer be free, a last-minute switch that frustrated fans. With the majority of games behind a paywall, casual watchers are inhibited from exploring a new, exciting product.

• People are similarly angered that WAFCON, African women’s soccer’s biggest tournament, is nearly impossible to watch in North America and the games that are available to stream suffer from a lack of quality announcing — a huge loss for what’s been an excellent tournament.

Zooming out: It’s worth noting that the hybrid model of free and paid can work when it’s simple. Both the PWHL and F1 Academy rely on YouTube for the majority of their calendar and after seasons of turning casual viewers into fans, also offer premium content on paid platforms like Prime Video, TSN, or AppleTV.

• It all comes back to access. If fans can’t watch, leagues won’t have a chance to make it out of their infancy — media deal or no.