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Women's Sports Popularity Skyrockets All Around
By: Malyn Barnett
Date: 3/10/25
If you walked into an Indiana Fever game during the 2024 season, it would be packed, everyone flocking to see Caitlin Clark, the rookie out of Iowa. This season the Indiana Fever averaged 17,036 fans per game. But in seasons before they only sold 4,067 tickets per game, the least popular team in the WNBA(Women’s National Basketball Association).
They aren’t the only WNBA team to see increases in attendance over the past few years. The New York Liberty, 2024 champions, saw total attendance go up by 99,000 from 2023. The attendance increase isn’t only due to Caitlin Clark’s popularity, more people want to watch women’s sports.
College basketball has seen increased viewership as well, according to an article by Forbes, “The [2024] NCAA women's basketball championship game between Iowa and South Carolina drew 18.9 million viewers, setting records as both ESPN's most-watched college basketball game ever and the largest audience for any women's college basketball game in history.” This game was also the second most watched women's sporting event of all time (in the U.S), sitting behind the Women’s 2015 World Cup final.
The United States Women's National Soccer Team has been talked about for a long time because of how many Olympic Gold Medals they have won, but women's soccer has seen increases in interest recently too. The same Forbes article quoted above agrees, “The NWSL(National Women's Soccer League) also hit attendance milestones in 2024 when the league surpassed two million fans in regular season attendance, marked by a sellout crowd at Portland's Providence Park during Christine Sinclair's final regular season match.” The 2024 number was up a lot from 2022, when total league attendance was only 1,042,063.
Viewership says a lot about the popularity of women's sports but so does the interest in investing. The NWSL and WNBA are both going through some major expansion growth. In the soccer world, the NWSL has added 4 new teams since 2021, Angel City FC, San Diego Wave, Utah Royals FC, and Bay FC. Two more teams in Boston and Denver will join the league in 2026 bringing the total number of NWSL teams to 16.
The WNBA has seen lots of attention around expansion too. The Golden State Valkyries are getting ready for their first season, which kicks off on May 16th. While the final roster isn’t set, stars on the team include Tiffany Hayes and Monique Billings. In 2026 two more teams are set to join the league, the Toronto Tempo and a team in Portland, OR. The expansion fee has increased a lot too, while the Valkyries owners only paid $50 million, the most recently added Portland team paid $125 million.
The 3 teams talked about above bring the WNBA to 15 teams, with a goal of having 16 in play by 2028. According to Cathy Engelbert, the WNBA commissioner, the league is looking for “great committed ownership groups with a great arena situation, and a great player experience.” Listed in a USA Today article, ownership groups in Detroit, Houston, Nashville, Philadelphia, and Cleveland have all submitted formal bids to host a team. There has been chatter around bringing teams to other cities like Milwaukee, Kansas City, St. Louis, and Austin, but no bids have been submitted.
While basketball and soccer took up the majority of this article, there have also been boosts in professional women's hockey and volleyball too. The Professional Women's Hockey League launched their inaugural season on January 1st, 2024. With 72 games across that regular season, the PWHL brought in 392,259 fans. Now, in their 2nd season they’ve already surpassed that number, still with games to go. An article published on the PWHL site on March 11th says, “the league’s 2024-25 season attendance through 66 games to 487,939 – an average of 7,393 per game.”
Volleyball has also seen rising popularity levels, both on the collegiate and professional levels. In 2023, the Nebraska Women’s volleyball team hosted an outdoor game in a football stadium, “Drawing over 92,000 fans,” according to an article by Morgan Smith on CNBC’s Make It website. Professional volleyball is a big hit too, with 3 professional leagues in the United States: Athletes Unlimited, League One Volleyball and the Professional Volleyball Federation.
In the last few years, women's sports have seen rises in popularity and interest resulting in many things talked about in this article. One big result not touched on was that more viewership and bigger leagues gives more players opportunities past the college level. Overall, the most important impact of the increased interest and popularity is the options it’s opened up for these athletes.
Sources:
https://sportsnaut.com/indiana-fever-attendance-2024/
https://soccerstadiumdigest.com/2022-nwsl-attendance/
https://www.nwslsoccer.com/news/denver-colorado-awarded-nwsl-s-16th-franchise
https://www.nwslsoccer.com/news/nwsl-media-kit-events-and-milestones
https://valkyries.wnba.com/roster
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPD1z1TuMVg
https://www.thepwhl.com/en/news/2025/march/11/pwhl-weekly-notebook-mar-11-2025
https://apnews.com/article/pro-volleyball-lovb-6c23e4485f3b76e1d063805c27355e45
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