Latest / Raising the Game: Covering WNBA, NWSL, PWHL & More / Episode 15 | Deloitte $3B Report, WNBA Draft, USWNT vs. Japan, PWHL Playoff Race

Transcript

Episode 15 | Deloitte $3B Report, WNBA Draft, USWNT vs. Japan, PWHL Playoff Race · Raising the Game: Covering WNBA, NWSL, PWHL & More

• 0:00
  There was there was a note in our in our prep that was that
• 0:02
  women's sports are built on community and cause.
• 0:05
  And I I the kind of snarky question I put down was, will
• 0:10
  women's sports save our country slash culture like?
• 0:13
  And I hope so. We can, if we can, base more
• 0:16
  things on community and 'cause I think that's always a good
• 0:19
  thing. Hi, I'm Caitlin.
• 0:27
  Hi, I'm Alex. And this is Raising the Game, a
• 0:30
  women's sports podcast covering primetime performers, the
• 0:33
  business behind the athletes and leagues, and what the growth of
• 0:36
  women's sports means for the next generation of women's
• 0:39
  athletes. We are back.
• 0:41
  Exciting night. The WNBA draft is happening as
• 0:46
  we speak. They were watching it with our
• 0:47
  girls. They were really into mommy
• 0:50
  predictions. Yeah, which I was very bad.
• 0:52
  At very you little off, little off, little off it.
• 0:54
  Was a little off, but pretty fun.
• 0:57
  So yeah, big night tonight for for women's sports.
• 1:00
  We'll get into that. I'm really excited to talk about
• 1:04
  some business numbers like yes, one of the most exciting things
• 1:08
  for me is to talk about numbers, so.
• 1:10
  Yeah. And I love the business side of
• 1:12
  this, right. I love analyzing the industry
• 1:16
  from the perspective of like, what signals can you use to
• 1:21
  invest to expand, right? All of those things.
• 1:25
  And like, the growth behind women's sports doesn't happen on
• 1:28
  accident. And we actually get to talk
• 1:31
  about how we got here today based on a report that was
• 1:34
  released recently from Deloitte. That'll be fun, and then I think
• 1:39
  we have just a little bit of a roundup.
• 1:41
  Women's national team played. Women's national team played
• 1:44
  first of three. Yep, got a couple of interesting
• 1:47
  PWHL games coming up and I think that's that's most of it.
• 1:53
  That'll be the that'll be the episode, yeah.
• 1:55
  Before we get into headlines, let's do favorite thing.
• 2:01
  I mean, we, we were at the same thing this weekend.
• 2:03
  So I mean, we went to another Frost game, which was amazing.
• 2:07
  Yeah, We went and saw the Frost play the New York Sirens.
• 2:11
  The Sirens had to win in any fashion in order to Seattle in
• 2:19
  yes, yes, yeah. And so the Frost eliminate
• 2:23
  essentially eliminated the Seattle torrent by winning that
• 2:26
  game. It was kind of a weird game and
• 2:30
  like we scored. They scored really quickly and
• 2:34
  then there was like a quiet second period and then the third
• 2:36
  period was wild. It just exploded.
• 2:38
  What was really fun and different about this for us was
• 2:41
  we got tickets down on the double attack, double attack end
• 2:47
  on the in a hockey rink, and so we got to see a lot of offensive
• 2:51
  action up close and personal. My personal favorite was Taylor
• 2:56
  Heisey's goal. Where?
• 2:58
  She like dangled two players in the in the neutral zone and then
• 3:04
  came in and shot like an odd angle top shelf like pick your
• 3:08
  spot thing. Like she's just on fire.
• 3:12
  I am buying a jersey. Yes, I'm buying a jersey.
• 3:14
  We're lucky there wasn't one there because you would have had
• 3:16
  one. I would have bought 1.
• 3:18
  It was. It was also fun being by all of
• 3:20
  the. It's kind of like the.
• 3:22
  The fan like. The student section, yeah, like
• 3:24
  the supporters section, right, Right there.
• 3:26
  So. Right behind our double attack
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  goal, yeah. A lot of people cheering and and
• 3:30
  making up. Fun fun.
• 3:31
  Cheers for everyone to take part in.
• 3:33
  So it was a lot of fun. And it was pride night too.
• 3:35
  So it was just like a lot just like real good vibe of like
• 3:39
  inclusivity, like whenever they, they do a lot of feature night,
• 3:42
  but I always feel like whenever we have a pride night, whether
• 3:44
  it's for the Lynx or Aurora or whatever, like there's just like
• 3:47
  a really good feeling of like everybody belongs here.
• 3:52
  And it was fun to share that with the girls.
• 3:54
  Yeah, should we dive into our headlines?
• 3:57
  Let's do it. All right, I think #1 here
• 3:59
  Dallas Wings take AZ fudd #1 pick in the WNBA draft.
• 4:04
  Yes, I'm sure we will talk about some of the other picks.
• 4:07
  I think there was like a little uncertainty on whether or not
• 4:11
  easy would get this one. I think she was like a lock late
• 4:14
  in the college basketball season, but then she had not
• 4:18
  like her best performance in the tournament.
• 4:22
  But really fun to see her go to the Wings.
• 4:24
  That team, we're going to talk about how teams are doing and
• 4:27
  free agency in the draft. That team is going to be a team
• 4:30
  to watch. They're going to kind of flip
• 4:32
  their fortunes here, I think. Yeah, not going to be 10 and 34
• 4:34
  at this coming season, that's for sure.
• 4:37
  TD Garden sells out for a battle at the top of the standings
• 4:39
  between Boston Fleet and Montreal Victoire.
• 4:43
  Yeah, almost 18,000 people. Again, the only reason there
• 4:46
  weren't is because they don't have.
• 4:48
  That many seats? In TD Garden so this coming one
• 4:51
  week after they eclipsed 18,000 at Madison Square Garden in a
• 4:56
  game between the sirens and the. Fleet, I think, yeah, I think it
• 5:03
  was, yeah. Sophia Wilson returns to the
• 5:07
  pitch for the for the US Women's National team, starting starting
• 5:10
  in A-21 win over Japan, led by Roosevelt's goal and assist.
• 5:15
  Yeah, we'll talk about this game, but it's so fun to see
• 5:18
  Gigi's mom, yeah on the pitch and to see Gigi like they showed
• 5:23
  when so she got subbed out they they panned Gigi like.
• 5:27
  Against the window. Window of the box that her
• 5:29
  family was so. Cute.
• 5:31
  There was a cute video of MO carrying her around, coaching
• 5:34
  with her. It was.
• 5:35
  Yeah, it was great. All of everything.
• 5:37
  I'm obsessed with it. And WNBA free agency was Wilding
• 5:41
  all week long, with big moves and even bigger rumors swirling
• 5:44
  about who will end up where. Like I said, we'll talk a little
• 5:47
  bit about I've got kind of like winners and losers on this.
• 5:51
  Alex and I were having a good time.
• 5:52
  Just like following all the drama on threads we're.
• 5:56
  Going to talk about, I have a little bit about that in.
• 5:58
  My. Section so the 2026 NCAA women's
• 6:02
  college basketball tournament drew the second highest
• 6:04
  viewership in network history. So that title game right between
• 6:08
  UCLA and South Carolina drew an average of 9.9 million viewers,
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  peaking at 10.7, which is really interesting.
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  I think what we're seeing is this trend in average versus
• 6:21
  peak, that gap shrinking, which means that more people are just
• 6:26
  watching the whole thing, right? This was second highest
• 6:31
  viewership in a tournament to the 2024 tournament, which was
• 6:35
  Caitlin Clark senior year. That's going to be a hard #2
• 6:39
  eclipse, but really cool to see it rebound after last year.
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  They had a little bit lower viewership, yet you had the same
• 6:46
  four teams in the final four as last year.
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  So good to see that upward momentum there for the
• 6:51
  tournament. Relate Issues Game Changers
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  report Project projects that women's sports will exceed 3
• 6:57
  billion in revenue in 2026. Bottom line up front, and this
• 7:01
  is what I tell my people at work, so we're going to dive
• 7:04
  into that, but there's the headline.
• 7:06
  The White House has stalled U s s bid to Co host the 2031
• 7:10
  Women's World Cup, with the administration demanding FIFA
• 7:13
  issue a transgender athlete ban akin to what was just issued by
• 7:17
  the International Olympic Committee.
• 7:20
  This just makes me mad and sad at the same time.
• 7:25
  I there's a lot more that we can talk about as it relates to
• 7:29
  this, but it's disappointing when there is a lot of
• 7:36
  opportunity for goodness in having that opportunity here in
• 7:42
  the United States, especially given the growth in women's
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  sports. And we can't talk about women's
• 7:48
  sports without talking about equality for all.
• 7:52
  And this is just like such a small proportion of people that
• 7:57
  are being targeted. And it's it just, it's really
• 8:00
  upsetting. Yeah, SI Swimsuit Edition
• 8:03
  featured WNBA stars Nafisa Collier and Sophie Cunningham.
• 8:07
  Yes, I think they were the first WNBA players to feature in the
• 8:12
  MSI swimsuit edition. I read they looked great.
• 8:17
  Yeah, they did look great. Girls.
• 8:19
  Sue Bird will join the studio desk for NBCS coverage of the
• 8:22
  WNBA during the 2026 season. Yeah, so this is this is big,
• 8:27
  right? Sue Bird has a brand in and of
• 8:30
  herself, but that media deal as NBC airing at least 50 games
• 8:37
  between regular season and postseason.
• 8:39
  So they're going to have her on the desk to do that analysis.
• 8:42
  She put out a statement. She's really excited to like be
• 8:45
  able to kind of talk basketball, XS and OS and things like that.
• 8:50
  And then what's other Also interesting, we just mentioned
• 8:53
  Sophie Cunningham featured in the SI Swimsuit edition.
• 8:56
  She's actually going to sit at the at the desk occasionally
• 9:01
  during the season when it works. She's actively playing for the
• 9:05
  Fever in the WNBA, but she's got a big podcast where she talks
• 9:09
  all about women's sports and clearly somebody that they've
• 9:12
  kind of keyed in as being potential talent that they can,
• 9:16
  yeah, bring more viewers in with.
• 9:18
  But also, I wonder if that's a path she's wanting to go down
• 9:21
  once she's done playing. Yep.
• 9:24
  WNBA formally approved expansion teams in Cleveland, Detroit and
• 9:28
  Philadelphia. Yeah.
• 9:29
  So these will drop just in that same order respectively,
• 9:33
  20282029 and 2030. I did see a really interesting.
• 9:39
  So there's there's a guy named Bill Simmons.
• 9:41
  I don't know who that is, but apparently he's known enough in
• 9:46
  like the sports community that there was reason for this to be
• 9:50
  a something that came across my feed.
• 9:52
  But he was like, this got announced and he was like, this
• 9:55
  is so irresponsible. Like they're just growing for
• 9:58
  growth sake and stuff like that. And like look at these like past
• 10:01
  7 decades of I think he's referring to the NBA when he
• 10:05
  says that because the WNBA has not been.
• 10:08
  Around now. And I, I was, I watched a clip
• 10:13
  of some other, like, people talk about his reaction.
• 10:16
  And I was like, yes, thank you. Like, why are you talking?
• 10:19
  Yeah. I think his concern is like, are
• 10:24
  we just growing because we can? Yeah.
• 10:26
  And it's like, buddy, we are at an unprecedented moment and we
• 10:32
  also have no fricking idea what the financials are like in the
• 10:36
  West. So as we've talked about, like
• 10:40
  he's the stand down. Man, the type of guy who is the,
• 10:43
  you know, common refrain of nobody watches women's sports,
• 10:45
  so why are they doing something like this?
• 10:47
  It's like he's not paying attention at all.
• 10:48
  Yeah, you're just don't, don't speak.
• 10:51
  Yeah, Columbus seems to be in final stages of formally
• 10:55
  securing an NWSL team. That does appear Speaking of
• 10:59
  expansion to be we've talked about that here on the pod.
• 11:03
  The next move for them. It's not coming without its
• 11:08
  challenges within the community. There's, you know, they've got
• 11:12
  to like move a park or get rid of a park and that's like
• 11:16
  pissing the neighbors off. So it'll be interesting to see
• 11:20
  how that that plays out. But excited to see some more
• 11:25
  soccer go to YEAH. I think that's kind of what we
• 11:28
  talked about too. They were kind of seeming like
• 11:30
  they were the next spot. Yeah, and make a ton of sense,
• 11:33
  right? They've got a good fan base
• 11:35
  there. They've got a men's team in
• 11:37
  Columbus already. They talked about that
• 11:39
  partnership being really important from an infrastructure
• 11:42
  and and support perspective, so. All right, let's let's dig into
• 11:47
  this Deloitte Game Changers report. 3 billion is the number
• 11:53
  that we're talking about here. Yeah.
• 11:54
  So this this is the report as Alex just mentioned, it's called
• 11:58
  Game Changers. It's issued every year by the
• 12:01
  consulting company Deloitte, one of the biggest consulting.
• 12:05
  If you don't know that name, get out from under the rock.
• 12:09
  Yeah. And they have issued it every
• 12:12
  year since 2021, I believe. So it lasts five years, right?
• 12:19
  And the purpose of it was I think they picked up on like,
• 12:23
  hey, there's an industry here that you need to be monitoring.
• 12:28
  And to me, this is like what's really important about this
• 12:31
  coming out and saying what it's, we're going to talk about a a
• 12:36
  legitimate huge consulting company is coming out and saying
• 12:41
  you need to be monitoring this as an asset class.
• 12:44
  This is something that is. An emerging industry.
• 12:47
  Yes. And if you're deciding to put
• 12:49
  money in places where it can make you more money, this is a
• 12:53
  place you should be doing that. And I think that is like what a
• 12:57
  signal does that send to investors to venture capital,
• 13:04
  like things like that to say like we are legitimizing this
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  as, like I said, an asset class that you should be considering.
• 13:13
  Yeah. And it's no longer like, it's
• 13:15
  kind of like if you could get in early on a startup, like be an
• 13:19
  Angel investor, It's kind of what they're saying is you've
• 13:22
  got a short chance. This is it right now.
• 13:24
  Like you're gonna get in and it's gonna just grow from here
• 13:26
  over the next hour many years. Right.
• 13:29
  So we're going to break this down kind of in four sections.
• 13:32
  The first section we're going to talk about kind of the numbers,
• 13:35
  right? What is this report saying as
• 13:37
  far as changes in 2026 versus 2025 across different revenue
• 13:42
  streams. We're going to get into the
• 13:46
  history of this. So like really what got us into
• 13:50
  this position, right? And there's two, there's two
• 13:54
  sort of segments to that. There's kind of like the slow
• 13:56
  build and there's there's moments that we've already
• 13:59
  talked about here on the pod. So they should feel familiar to
• 14:01
  our audience. There's accelerants and then
• 14:04
  there's these catalyst moments that we're going to hit on.
• 14:07
  But what's I find really, really fascinating about this is we'll
• 14:12
  get into towards the end here, the differentiators.
• 14:18
  So how does women's sports, how are they approaching this very
• 14:24
  differently from how men's sports grew right to where it is
• 14:28
  now? And I really am excited to talk
• 14:30
  about that piece because there's some trends that we've picked up
• 14:32
  on that we really want you kind of our listeners to be watching
• 14:36
  out for and certainly things that we're going to be watching
• 14:40
  out for too. While we were going through the
• 14:41
  research, I was felt so validated that so many of the
• 14:44
  things we've talked about from a business perspective, I felt
• 14:47
  like they're in here, right? They're in here like, oh, we
• 14:50
  were already talking. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 14:51
  Like we talked about this without knowing this report.
• 14:53
  So like that felt kind. Of good and I would agree with
• 14:55
  that yeah, we and it's it was cool to see it like all pieced
• 14:59
  together in a way that like we've been kind of piercing our
• 15:03
  it together on our own so let's get in.
• 15:06
  But let's get into, I think the the money is what we're going to
• 15:08
  kind of talk about first. Year.
• 15:10
  And it's broken up into three different categories.
• 15:13
  And the way as I was doing the research is kind of categorizing
• 15:17
  it as like leading, current and then lagging indicators almost.
• 15:23
  And so upfront, the leading indicator is the commercial
• 15:26
  revenue, which I think was 1.1 billion last year and this year
• 15:32
  expect to be 1.4 billion. And that comes from I believe
• 15:36
  sponsorships, brand deals. And like I think the big thing
• 15:42
  about that is it's brands recognizing that there are
• 15:47
  investments to be had here that are going to pay off.
• 15:51
  And so they are going to put that money towards that because
• 15:56
  they feel like it's such a like it's a guaranteed thing.
• 15:59
  They've seen it work in action, right.
• 16:02
  And so they are going to put it there now.
• 16:06
  And then some of the numbers we have here on that is that the
• 16:09
  sponsorships grew 12% year over year, which is versus 8% in
• 16:17
  men's sports across five men's pro leagues.
• 16:21
  Yep. So nearly 50% faster.
• 16:23
  Yep, 86% of sponsorships said their investment met or exceeded
• 16:28
  expectations, and one third said it delivered better results than
• 16:32
  expected. Yeah.
• 16:34
  And then the WNBA change Maker partners averaged a 286% ROI and
• 16:39
  one partner turned 5 million into $18 million.
• 16:44
  So if you wanted any proof that this is a worthwhile investment
• 16:49
  in certain pockets. Now I do want to back us up a
• 16:52
  little bit and just say like we're looking at women's sports
• 16:55
  as an industry. The majority of this, I don't
• 16:59
  know if we get into like this in a little bit, but it's coming
• 17:03
  from majority of it right now is coming from North America,
• 17:06
  primarily the WNBA and the NWSL as far as revenue generators.
• 17:13
  But but there is a growing segment that is now up to about
• 17:17
  1/3 of that revenue generation coming from outside of the US,
• 17:25
  which is about 3637%, Europe, which is about another 33 or 34.
• 17:31
  There's like a 32% segment that's coming from other places
• 17:35
  in the world, which is I think like a really important part of
• 17:39
  this. And I think going back to this
• 17:41
  brands thing, you know, butts and seats, we're going to talk
• 17:45
  about that in just a second, like viewership and things like
• 17:48
  that. But this isn't this isn't this
• 17:51
  is like a true investment like you are, you are accepting risk
• 17:55
  in putting money into and putting your name on, right,
• 18:00
  These teams, these athletes, that sort of thing.
• 18:02
  So there's a, there's a belief that's being built there in the
• 18:07
  value that could be had that I think is really, really critical
• 18:11
  to recognize. I think one of the other things
• 18:13
  I saw was that I don't think there's a McKinsey report or
• 18:17
  something. Maybe it was there's another
• 18:20
  sports research firm out there that said that women three more
• 18:26
  times likely to buy from when a. Woman is.
• 18:29
  Sponsoring something you are you have like kind of this higher
• 18:33
  intent to purchase audience for people who watch women's sports.
• 18:38
  We kind of talked about how they go women's sports fans kind of
• 18:44
  cross sports more often than men do.
• 18:46
  It's like you have that that higher intended audience.
• 18:48
  They might see someone advertising something for soccer
• 18:51
  and they're going to buy from someone also who's in
• 18:53
  basketball, right? So yeah, like crossing those
• 18:56
  different sports. Yeah.
• 18:57
  And we'll dig a little bit more into that when we get to those
• 19:00
  differentiators at the end. So then Next up just kind of
• 19:05
  your current indicator is your like you said butts and seats
• 19:07
  match day revenue now last year was 748 million, this year
• 19:12
  projected to be 911 million. And so we have some other
• 19:20
  numbers here of average annual attendance across from sports
• 19:23
  rose 55% between 2021 and 2024. And the city current built the
• 19:30
  first stadium purpose built for women's soccer.
• 19:34
  And we have a bunch of WNBA teams moving into larger
• 19:37
  stadiums for their games, like actual NHL and NBA stadiums.
• 19:42
  Yeah, yeah. And I was going to say like that
• 19:45
  first step that you just read off is that growth in attendance
• 19:48
  from 2021 to 2024. We have been coming at y'all
• 19:53
  non-stop with attendance records on this show this year.
• 19:57
  And so just a few things that I pulled out.
• 20:00
  We talked about the 63,000 at the Denver Summit inaugural home
• 20:04
  opener. There is a game tomorrow being
• 20:07
  played at Wembley Stadium in London between the English
• 20:11
  national team and the Spanish national team, two of the
• 20:13
  premier national teams in the world, right.
• 20:17
  Already 70,000 tickets sold right and that was a couple days
• 20:20
  ago that they reported that. So I imagine there's probably
• 20:23
  been more since then. You think about the PWHL, we
• 20:26
  just talked about the the gardens right and the sellouts
• 20:29
  there. We talked about the women Six
• 20:33
  Nations rugby just had 77,000 people.
• 20:37
  We're going to get into like some 90,000 markers and various
• 20:41
  things that have happened over the years.
• 20:43
  And so like, I think when you think about that ticket revenue
• 20:47
  or like the match day revenue that they're talking about, it's
• 20:51
  it's tickets. But then it's also like merch
• 20:54
  that gets bought when you're there, like I am.
• 20:56
  We almost always end up buying like something when we get,
• 21:00
  yeah, it's probably a bad habit, but whatever.
• 21:04
  And so you there's a compounding effect there too, of like the
• 21:07
  more people you can get in the door, the more that you're also
• 21:11
  selling other things that are going to contribute back to the
• 21:14
  growth of the sport. The other thing, like with the
• 21:16
  Kansas City current building that stadium is infrastructure
• 21:21
  is permanent. So they're not viewing this as a
• 21:23
  short term investment, right? This is like we are building
• 21:27
  this for the long term. We expect us to go for at least
• 21:30
  30 to 40 years and then we'll build another one.
• 21:33
  Yeah, right. So exactly.
• 21:35
  And then coming up third, the kind of lagging indicator is the
• 21:38
  broadcast revenues last year was $551 million, this year expected
• 21:44
  to be 765,000,000. And I think the biggest thing is
• 21:49
  we saw, you know, I think there's an NWSL broadcast deal,
• 21:53
  WNBA broadcast deal, the ESPN. Yep, Sunday night spot like
• 21:59
  spotlight. And I think there's some
• 22:02
  rumblings of a PWHL deal coming potentially soon.
• 22:07
  So yeah, I mean, it's just that's kind of like your, we've
• 22:13
  done everything else and then they'll this is now that we've
• 22:15
  proven it these two other ways. You have this this backup which
• 22:18
  is now the the broadcast. Yeah, there is a little bit of,
• 22:22
  I do want to talk about this really quickly.
• 22:25
  There's a little bit of a chicken and the egg too on the
• 22:27
  broadcast. So like PWHL as an example, they
• 22:32
  broadcast all of their games for free on YouTube, which is great.
• 22:35
  There's no national deal here in the States, but they have chosen
• 22:40
  to still invest money into making that production and the
• 22:44
  the fan experience, the viewer experience consistent.
• 22:48
  We've seen a very different example as we've tried to tune
• 22:51
  into some Women's National Football Conference games and
• 22:55
  we've talked a lot about how like if they want to start to
• 22:58
  generate more buzz in that that that league, they need to invest
• 23:04
  in just like a little bit more sophistication in their
• 23:07
  production value. Like I totally get there a new
• 23:10
  league, they might not have as much funding as others, but like
• 23:13
  there are some simple things to do about could just consistency
• 23:16
  and how you display information, right?
• 23:20
  We won't go into the details. It's just there's a lot of
• 23:22
  things you could do to make things consistent, make it look
• 23:25
  normal, normal camera positions, like normal graphics and all
• 23:29
  that type of thing. So.
• 23:30
  And I compare those two because the PWHL, well, we're in the
• 23:33
  third season now, but it's like still a relatively young league.
• 23:36
  The WNFC has been around for seven years.
• 23:40
  Like we we were surprised by that.
• 23:42
  And so it's it's like some of those like intentional choices
• 23:46
  to now the PWHL is sitting on the cusp of potentially signing
• 23:51
  a national broadcast deal because they have drawn the fans
• 23:54
  and fans are watching because they're getting a good fan
• 23:57
  experience when they're watching from home or in the arena.
• 24:01
  So really important. Pay attention to both.
• 24:05
  All right, So we would be remiss if we did not talk about and,
• 24:13
  and sort of pay homage right to the people who got us here.
• 24:17
  And so some of this is going to feel like I said at the outset,
• 24:20
  like really familiar to our audience members, but always a
• 24:23
  good reminder and refresher. So prior to 20/20/2020 is really
• 24:28
  like this big inflection point for women's sports.
• 24:31
  There's a lot of reasons for that, which I think Alex will
• 24:34
  talk about or maybe I'll talk about.
• 24:36
  We'll both. We'll both talk about it.
• 24:38
  There's been like this really this slow build and it really
• 24:43
  started with Title 9 was kind of the the the point in time that
• 24:48
  we could pick that really pivoted all of this momentum we
• 24:51
  had, we talked about in our pioneers episode like Althea
• 24:55
  Gibson and Wilma Rudolph and Billie Jean King, right?
• 24:59
  And like the the importance of those women, but Patsy Mink in
• 25:03
  Title 9 in 1972 really set the stage for building the pipeline
• 25:10
  that's required to develop talent that then becomes your
• 25:14
  product that then you can generate revenue.
• 25:17
  Revenue with yeah. Following Title 9, immediately
• 25:21
  after Billie Jean King founds the WTA, you know, that became
• 25:26
  the first Women's Professional Sports Association.
• 25:30
  Equal prize money, things like that, right?
• 25:32
  Then you Fast forward about 20 years and we had the 1996
• 25:38
  Olympics in Atlanta and there were some really pivotal moments
• 25:41
  for women's sports at those Olympics.
• 25:44
  You had Carrie Strug with her. Gymnastics for.
• 25:47
  Sure. Epic.
• 25:48
  You know, on a sprained ankle. Win the gold medal, the
• 25:51
  Magnificent 7. Like all of that stuff.
• 25:54
  You had Lisa Leslie and Cheryl Swoops and Rebecca Lobo winning
• 25:59
  a gold medal for Team USA Basketball.
• 26:02
  That then you know what started in 1997, folks?
• 26:06
  The WNBA, right? That league was born out of that
• 26:10
  Olympic success. You had the future 90 Niners
• 26:14
  'cause this is pre 90 Niners, that whole title 9 gang of
• 26:17
  Brandy Chastain and Mia Hamm and Julie Foudy coming through in
• 26:20
  the Olympics, 76,000 people showed up to the final where
• 26:24
  they won the gold medal there. And so this is even prior to
• 26:28
  like some of the moments that we think of, right?
• 26:32
  So then we get to 1999. We've got 90,000 plus people
• 26:36
  watching the World Cup championship between the USA and
• 26:39
  China. Epic sports bra moment with
• 26:41
  Brandy Chastain I think spurred a generation of women to want to
• 26:47
  be professional athletes, probably soccer players.
• 26:50
  But and then Fast forward again 20 years later, right?
• 26:55
  And we've gone through some of the struggles of the different
• 26:58
  leagues in that time, but FIFA commits a billion dollars to
• 27:03
  globally, excuse me, to women's football infrastructure.
• 27:06
  And so that structural commitment, as I said before,
• 27:10
  when we were talking about the distribution of where this
• 27:12
  revenue is coming from, a big part of that is commitments like
• 27:16
  this from governing bodies to grow the game, not in one place,
• 27:20
  right? We talked about this and on an
• 27:22
  episode last week where like the NFL, like the Premier League in
• 27:27
  the United States struggles it or is struggling with expanding
• 27:32
  and growing outside of the country, right?
• 27:35
  And they're making efforts to do that, don't get me wrong, but
• 27:38
  they have, they didn't really have like the foresight to try
• 27:41
  and build that out globally earlier on, right?
• 27:45
  And then 2019, that same year, women's sports media coverage
• 27:50
  triples from 5% to 16% of total coverage after like years of
• 27:58
  stagnation. Like you couldn't find women's
• 28:00
  sports on the TV if you tried, right?
• 28:02
  What was what was? Was there a single event or was
• 28:05
  it just the flywheel catching up that suddenly they just started
• 28:10
  doing? That I think, I think there was
• 28:11
  probably, I mean we probably could go back I would imagine.
• 28:15
  So 20/19 was when I think about like WNBA history, that was the
• 28:20
  year that they probably had some, there was some explosion
• 28:25
  in the WNBA because they renegotiated the old CBA, most
• 28:30
  recent one that year. And then COVID happened in 2020
• 28:34
  and that they were projecting like 20% growth year on year.
• 28:38
  That was how that whole CBA was structured.
• 28:40
  We won't. Get back into it.
• 28:42
  And then also in 20 in the World Cup, Yep, the Women's World Cup.
• 28:47
  So that was the back-to-back win.
• 28:49
  So this was the one in Paris, Megan Rapinoe, Alex Morgan,
• 28:53
  right. So I think there's probably some
• 28:55
  some catalyzing events around there, right?
• 28:58
  So moving into some of the accelerants here and then Alex
• 29:04
  is going to take us through some of the catalysts, right?
• 29:08
  We're now in 2020, we have what is fondly referred to as the
• 29:13
  wobble. You heard me, the wobble.
• 29:17
  So in the summer of 2020, all 144 WNBA players gathered in
• 29:24
  Bradenton, FL to play their season, right?
• 29:27
  They wanted to continue to have a season empty arenas, but they
• 29:32
  kept that thing going, right? But what also happened in 2020,
• 29:39
  if you're remembering your recent history correctly, was
• 29:42
  George Floyd was here in Minneapolis.
• 29:46
  And instead of shutting up and dribbling, those women decided
• 29:52
  to use that time as a way to platform for advocacy, for equal
• 30:00
  rights, for a lot of things that are really, really important for
• 30:04
  our society, for people to thrive in our society.
• 30:08
  And I think this was one of the first times we're on a very
• 30:11
  large scale. We saw activism through athletes
• 30:17
  on a large scale. Now, there have been activist
• 30:20
  athletes for decades. I mean, look at Billie Jean
• 30:22
  King. But like this, this was a big
• 30:25
  moment. Yeah.
• 30:26
  And I think back to our Pioneers episode, it was like almost
• 30:29
  every single person we talked about had some sort of activist
• 30:33
  great thing there. And you don't, you don't.
• 30:36
  You see that a little bit with male athletes, But I think one
• 30:39
  of the things we're going to get to is not as much as with female
• 30:42
  athletes. Yeah.
• 30:43
  And what's interesting, too, is that brands took notice of this,
• 30:48
  right? And fans take notice more in
• 30:52
  women's sports than men's. And you've already said this.
• 30:55
  To align to or align values to the people they support, they
• 31:01
  are willing to give their money to institutions, players,
• 31:06
  brands, whatever it might be that seem to align with them
• 31:09
  from a values perspective. OK, so that was one major
• 31:13
  moment, but when we think about kind of that ignition, right?
• 31:17
  And the second one is in 2021, there were some pictures shared
• 31:24
  at the NCAA basketball tournament.
• 31:27
  And in 2021, I we were still kind of in the weird COVID era.
• 31:31
  So I think they had the men's and women's tournament like in
• 31:34
  this. No, it was like in the same area
• 31:38
  and the pictures that were shared were a picture of the
• 31:42
  men's weight room. Which was like this, fully
• 31:44
  kitted it looked. Fully outfitted all rogue which
• 31:48
  is like a very expensive equipment.
• 31:52
  Rubber mats everywhere. Weight plates, racks, barbells
• 31:57
  dump full sets of dumbbells. 80 to $100,000 setup, yeah,
• 32:00
  minimum. That juxtaposed next to a
• 32:03
  picture of what was provided for the women, which was like ace, I
• 32:07
  kid you not, a single dumbbell tree with dumbbells that went
• 32:12
  from like 5 to 30 lbs. So like let's talk about the
• 32:16
  assumption being made there. And then I think they had like
• 32:19
  maybe a physio table and like a few other things.
• 32:22
  Suffice to say it was not 80 to $100,000 worth of.
• 32:25
  You'd probably find more in your hotel than what was.
• 32:28
  There. Yeah.
• 32:29
  Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so I think when I think
• 32:33
  about this, right, the, the, the way that social media was used
• 32:41
  to expose quickly that inequity, right?
• 32:45
  That also has been played a huge role in how we can have
• 32:49
  conversations about we need to elevate this side of the, the,
• 32:55
  the coin, the women side of the coin, Because if that had
• 32:59
  happened and it, and it has been happening, right, you wouldn't
• 33:04
  have seen it, right? Hey, social media is good for
• 33:07
  something. One thing.
• 33:08
  Yeah, exactly. Couple things.
• 33:11
  And really like the outrage around this generated structural
• 33:15
  change. Like now that is not the case.
• 33:17
  Yeah, right there. It there was also pictures of
• 33:20
  like the swag bags were completely different.
• 33:23
  The food the players got was completely different, right?
• 33:27
  And you could tell that they had just totally shrifted, short
• 33:31
  shrifted the women's side. And then I think to wrap this
• 33:35
  little section up and then we'll get into like these ignitions
• 33:39
  around this, the Yates report can't be discounted.
• 33:43
  So we've talked about the Yates report when it comes to the
• 33:45
  history of the NWSL, this really broad reaching systemic abuse of
• 33:52
  players and cover ups by team ownership and things like that.
• 33:56
  And as we've talked about here, really horrible thing that
• 34:00
  happened, a ton of bravery required for some those players
• 34:03
  to come forward. But through the change that that
• 34:09
  catalyzed brought in Jessica Berman and really saw a
• 34:13
  transformation in growth from an NWSL perspective.
• 34:18
  So I think that's another one that it bears mentioning.
• 34:22
  And then when we get to 2022, so the Yates report came out in
• 34:26
  2021, we get to 2022. This is the year that Deloitte's
• 34:30
  basing these growth numbers off of.
• 34:32
  So from 2022 to 2026 and in that year we had a lot happened,
• 34:40
  right. So we had the US women's
• 34:42
  national team equal pay settlement.
• 34:44
  They got $24 million with from US Soccer plus equal pay going
• 34:49
  forward with the men's team. That has really been a jumping
• 34:55
  off point now for the CBA negotiations and things like
• 34:58
  that. We had Angel City FC and the San
• 35:01
  Diego Wave join the NWSL and they both like took the league
• 35:06
  by storm, frankly. And Angel City in particular
• 35:10
  modeled this new ownership blueprint, right?
• 35:13
  It was, you know, celebrity driven.
• 35:15
  We're also seeing that with unrivaled where there's like
• 35:17
  investment coming in from people who again, want to support
• 35:21
  brands and leagues that they, excuse me, feel values aligned
• 35:25
  with. Camp New, which is the stadium
• 35:28
  in Spain where Barcelona plays, breaks the attendance record
• 35:34
  with 91,648 fans for UEFA Women's Champions League
• 35:42
  semifinal semifinal, the largest crowd ever for women's sporting
• 35:47
  event at the time. It would be broken in just over
• 35:51
  a year. And Alex is going to talk about
• 35:53
  that and that's really interesting, not because of the
• 35:57
  number, again, it's the rate. How quickly?
• 36:00
  That happens, which we are seeing right now, like every
• 36:03
  week we're breaking into this record.
• 36:05
  And then obviously, of course, social media really is, We see
• 36:08
  players using social media to build their own personal brand.
• 36:12
  And we've already talked about like the importance of that when
• 36:15
  it comes to attracting fans and followers and things like that.
• 36:18
  So. Yeah.
• 36:21
  So moving from 2022, we pop right into kind of one of our
• 36:26
  first catalysts here and it's the the 2023 World Cup, which
• 36:32
  was the most watched women's sports event in history, about
• 36:37
  two billion, 2 billion worldwide.
• 36:40
  The prize money also increased from I think it was 300% to $150
• 36:46
  million. Yeah, which was still I think
• 36:49
  1/3 of the men's, but hey, get it.
• 36:52
  Progress is progress. We're getting there.
• 36:53
  Get in there. And then Morocco had a run that
• 36:56
  kind of brought in this global audience, I think, that hadn't
• 37:00
  really been seen before, right? Yeah, so you have an African
• 37:02
  nation, right, making this run competitively against these, you
• 37:07
  know, superpowers of, of women's football.
• 37:10
  And again, I can't, I can't like, you know, stress that
• 37:14
  point enough that this growth, we talk a lot about the leagues
• 37:17
  here in America 'cause we're America.
• 37:19
  But like, this growth is not happening in isolation.
• 37:23
  This is global. Then we move into later that
• 37:29
  year, we're going to break the record. 92,000 and three fans
• 37:34
  attended a Nebraska volleyball game.
• 37:36
  Nebraska Cornhuskers A volleyball doubleheader.
• 37:41
  Largest ever sporting event for a woman sporting event.
• 37:45
  Yeah. And I think what's interesting
• 37:47
  about this too, is like it wasn't like a marquee event.
• 37:51
  It wasn't a tournament regular season.
• 37:52
  It's just a regular season game. They were like, hey, let's try
• 37:55
  this out. Just a normal Tuesday.
• 37:57
  And they're like, let's bring everyone into the football
• 37:59
  stadium, and they packed the football stadium.
• 38:03
  So I think that, you know, records that used to last for
• 38:09
  decades. That was broken in 14 months.
• 38:11
  Right. Less than a year or a little
• 38:13
  over a year. Excuse me.
• 38:14
  And you're like, OK, here we are again.
• 38:16
  And then probably one of the biggest catalysts on this list,
• 38:21
  Caitlin Clark and the Caitlin Clark effect.
• 38:26
  Yeah, the 20 when we talk, what was the earlier number from this
• 38:29
  year for the championship viewership?
• 38:33
  For this year it was 10.7 million.
• 38:35
  We had 4.5 million viewers. 2022 Champions.
• 38:40
  The 2022 championship, the Indiana Fever that drafted her,
• 38:47
  saw a 43% increase in sponsorship volume between 2023
• 38:52
  and 2024. I believe that, you know, that
• 38:55
  whole first year they were moving all these different WNBA
• 38:58
  games. Into every game that the Fever
• 39:02
  was coming to town in was a sellout yeah and in multiple
• 39:06
  cases they had to move games to bigger arenas if they weren't if
• 39:11
  the team wasn't already playing in ANBA arena right.
• 39:14
  It's like the Lynx play in Target Center, which is where
• 39:17
  the Timberwolves play but teams like the Washington Mystics
• 39:20
  don't usually play where like a the men's team would play the
• 39:24
  Wizards. So they does the Wizards even
• 39:29
  exist anymore? Yeah.
• 39:30
  I'm not. I'm not up on the NBA teams.
• 39:33
  So I mean that and then that merchandise sales for her
• 39:37
  jurors. I mean, you go to any.
• 39:39
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 39:39
  I don't care if it's men's or women's basketball game.
• 39:42
  You will see a Caitlin Clark jersey.
• 39:43
  Yeah. At least one.
• 39:44
  Yeah, if not like 6. I will say before, before her,
• 39:48
  it would be very hard for me to name the upcoming college,
• 39:53
  right? You know the pipeline there,
• 39:55
  right? But now I tend to know more of
• 39:57
  them than even sometimes even men's football.
• 39:59
  Like it's just one of those things that's kind of
• 40:02
  highlighted that pipeline even further.
• 40:04
  Yeah. I also to be clear on like the
• 40:09
  championship viewership, I think like to put a little bit finer
• 40:13
  point on it. I think what the argument is
• 40:16
  there is like we just talked about 9.9 on average, which is
• 40:20
  what you were kind of comparing to the viewership prior to
• 40:25
  Caitlin Clark was less than half of that.
• 40:27
  And now we're consistently seeing, even after she's left
• 40:32
  viewership, that's double what it was prior to her kind of
• 40:35
  coming onto the scene. And then we're moving, we move
• 40:39
  into the 2024 Paris Olympics, which was the first gender,
• 40:44
  gender equal games in history with equal athlete
• 40:48
  representation on the field of play.
• 40:52
  So women athletes generated 53% of social media engagement, but
• 40:55
  only had 43% of news coverage. So they kind of outperformed
• 41:02
  their the coverage that they got.
• 41:05
  Yeah. And then we had some kind of
• 41:07
  cultural moments that transcended sport.
• 41:10
  Biles and Childs bowing to another name.
• 41:15
  Andrade. Andrade Ilonomar kind of
• 41:18
  becoming a social media darling. Yes.
• 41:21
  And Julian Alfred becoming Saint Lucia's first ever Olympic
• 41:24
  medalist. And I wanna, I wanna just take a
• 41:27
  pause for a second on this. We've just talked about Caitlin
• 41:30
  Clark, and then you've got, you know, Biles and Chiles and
• 41:33
  Andrade and Ilona Maher. And like, we're talking about
• 41:36
  social media, we're talking about branding.
• 41:38
  And like, it can be really easy to fall into the trap of like,
• 41:41
  oh, they're just really good at like, engaging an audience.
• 41:45
  Yeah, Yeah, they're really good at engaging an audience because
• 41:49
  they're really freaking good at what they do.
• 41:52
  And I don't want it to be lost on anybody that the level of
• 41:58
  talent that these women have is off the charts.
• 42:04
  The reason so many people wanted to watch Caitlin Clark was
• 42:08
  because her ability to shoot was unmatched.
• 42:14
  Unmatched. You don't see people shooting
• 42:16
  threes from the logo in the NBA. No.
• 42:21
  And like it, it's just, it's one of those things where like, I
• 42:24
  think as human beings, we do love excellence on display,
• 42:29
  right? We love seeing kind of the
• 42:33
  extraordinary play out in front of us.
• 42:35
  It feels like a cool thing to be a part of.
• 42:38
  And I think what we're seeing more and more is that we're able
• 42:40
  to see the extraordinary play out in women's sports.
• 42:45
  We weren't always able to see that because the opportunity for
• 42:48
  viewing wasn't really there. And so we love seeing that open
• 42:53
  up. We love being able to kind of
• 42:54
  pay homage to the work that all of these women put into becoming
• 42:59
  really, really good at their craft.
• 43:01
  Yeah. And then moving into kind of
• 43:04
  2024 and 2025, we had the PWHL launch.
• 43:09
  Like we said, they're breaking attendance records, 18,000 at
• 43:12
  MSG and then LLVB raised 160 million in funding.
• 43:20
  Their championship is actually this weekend, so we'll talk
• 43:23
  about that and what to watch. I wanted to point out that one
• 43:27
  of our favorite commentators, Holly Rose, said that she thinks
• 43:30
  LOVB is the next volleyball. Yeah, volleyball in general.
• 43:35
  Yeah, I think that one is one that seems to be on the rise.
• 43:38
  They have multiple leagues and the crowds that they draw for
• 43:43
  those games are pretty significant.
• 43:46
  The other interesting thing that I kind of saw about PWHL is like
• 43:50
  they haven't necessarily had a massive like Caitlin Clark esque
• 43:55
  star. They've kind of just been
• 43:58
  patient with just doing all of the right things, like you said
• 44:01
  earlier with like the production, just how they
• 44:04
  present the game and kind of knowing that if they do all the
• 44:07
  right little things, it's going to kind of they have this
• 44:10
  patient in patience in growing that game and thinking that the
• 44:14
  game is going to be what the game is and bring in those
• 44:17
  viewers. Yeah, yeah.
• 44:19
  And we'll, I think I'll build on that here in just a second.
• 44:22
  So we wanted to explore like what's different, right?
• 44:27
  Why is women are women's sports growing kind of at the rate that
• 44:32
  they are? How do we differentiate this
• 44:35
  from men's sports? And so this was our my kind of
• 44:41
  my analysis and take on that. And we'll talk through each of
• 44:44
  these. So I've got 3 pillars that we're
• 44:46
  going to center ourselves around.
• 44:47
  So the first one is cultural ambassadorship over celebrity.
• 44:53
  So we just talked about this as it relates to the wobble.
• 44:58
  We've seen it in in other arenas, both going back to the
• 45:02
  50s and 60s, right, all the way up to present day.
• 45:06
  And I think like you said before, like more than men's
• 45:11
  athletes. How did I we were prepping for
• 45:15
  this And I said I had AI had a way of phrasing it of like, in
• 45:20
  my view, and I'm very biased y'all, but I think men's
• 45:25
  athletes take for granted that there's a spot for them.
• 45:30
  Women's athletes do not take that for granted.
• 45:32
  And they recognize that they have to fight to be in the
• 45:36
  position or that they had to fight to get into the position
• 45:40
  that they're in. And so that advocacy piece is
• 45:42
  sort of built in just inherent in the fact that to to be able
• 45:47
  to play, you had to be willing to represent something bigger
• 45:50
  than yourself. Whereas a lot of male athletes,
• 45:54
  not all, but a lot of male athletes just like are like, oh,
• 45:57
  I want to play in the pros one day and the pros are just there.
• 46:00
  And as long as I work hard and I get seen by the right people and
• 46:04
  I work with the right coaches, like I have that opportunity for
• 46:08
  women athletes. Up until very recently, that
• 46:11
  wasn't the thing. Well.
• 46:12
  Yeah. And I, I think a lot of the men
• 46:14
  don't take like an any sort of advocate type stand because they
• 46:18
  just think, well, if, if I don't, there will just be spots
• 46:22
  there anyways for the men because they know it'll be there
• 46:25
  for the men. Right we talked about this too
• 46:28
  with fans like fans of women's sports have this like values
• 46:32
  first mindset. 70% of women's sports fans agree that quote,
• 46:38
  brands have a responsibility to support women's sports and
• 46:41
  promote positive social change. And so there's a, there's a, a
• 46:46
  deep rooted belief within the fandom, right, that we want to
• 46:49
  be associated and everything around the team we support and
• 46:53
  athletes we support, we want to feel aligned with that.
• 46:57
  You know, we, you talked about Ilona Maher, she doesn't just
• 47:01
  play rugby, right? She advocates, she educates, she
• 47:05
  entertains, like, and that draws fans.
• 47:10
  I think we also talk about players who in the WNBA we hear
• 47:15
  from like Natasha Cloud a lot, like very outspoken about human
• 47:19
  rights and things like that. Nafisa Collier, Amy James
• 47:24
  Turner, right? Like talking about things around
• 47:27
  climate or you know, like I said, human rights, reproductive
• 47:32
  rights, things like that. And so I think that advocacy is
• 47:35
  just inherent and built in because they don't take for
• 47:40
  granted the fact that they have, yeah, a platform.
• 47:43
  Yeah, right. There was there was a note in
• 47:45
  our in our prep that was that women's sports are built on
• 47:49
  community and cause. And I I the kind of snarky
• 47:52
  question I put down was, will women's sports save our country
• 47:57
  slash culture like? And I hope so if.
• 47:59
  We can, if we can, base more things on community and 'cause I
• 48:02
  think that's always a good thing.
• 48:04
  Well, and you feel that we, we talk about this whenever we
• 48:07
  encourage y'all to go to a women's sports event like you,
• 48:11
  you feel so like connected. I don't know any of the people
• 48:15
  there, but like, I want to be around them, right.
• 48:18
  I was telling you, I'm like, we got to get season tickets to
• 48:20
  something like I feel, I feel so alive when I'm there.
• 48:24
  And so I think there is something to like that sense of
• 48:28
  welcoming and inclusion that just like is inherently human in
• 48:32
  my view that they've they've really grabbed onto.
• 48:36
  So our second pillar when it comes to the how right is
• 48:41
  athletes personal brand as a league driver.
• 48:44
  We have talked about this a lot, right in men's sports leagues,
• 48:50
  built stars in women's sports, stars build leagues, right?
• 48:55
  And so the, I think about this in terms of like when players
• 49:01
  move teams, I'm going to use this as an example, right, Brett
• 49:08
  Favre. Yep.
• 49:09
  Played for a long, long time for the Green Bay Packers.
• 49:12
  And then he came to Minnesota. Yep.
• 49:14
  Right. And like, beloved in Green Bay.
• 49:17
  Yeah, they could immediately hate him because he played for
• 49:21
  the Vikings, right? On the women's side.
• 49:24
  You do not see that. You see, like, oh, this player
• 49:27
  moved here. Now I'm a fan of that team.
• 49:28
  Yes, exactly. Or, you know, whatever hat like
• 49:33
  there's just like a way of connecting.
• 49:35
  And I think one of the things that we've talked about a little
• 49:38
  bit with like Unrivaled as an example, is that these leagues
• 49:41
  are also noticing that fans are connecting with those individual
• 49:45
  personas. And they're leaning into if we
• 49:48
  can give fans like a peek behind the curtain and like, really
• 49:51
  humanize these people, kind of like make them a little silly,
• 49:54
  make them a little whatever, Like that seems to draw them in,
• 49:59
  right? So you've got people like
• 50:03
  Cameron Brink and Angel Reese in the WNBA with a ton of brand
• 50:08
  sponsorships and things like that.
• 50:10
  I think Cameron Brink was the first female athlete signed to
• 50:14
  New Balance. Angel Reese was just the first
• 50:17
  ever WNBA player in the Victoria's Secret modeling.
• 50:24
  I think Angel Reese's move to the Atlanta Dream is going to be
• 50:28
  huge for that. Well, for that team though,
• 50:31
  right? Like, good for her, but she will
• 50:34
  draw a ton of fans there and she had drawn a ton of fans to
• 50:39
  Chicago. It's because people follow the
• 50:41
  player. I think an interesting thing I
• 50:42
  saw with the Cameron Brink New Balance deal was that was a deal
• 50:47
  that she made that turned into a partnership for the WNBAI think
• 50:52
  there's actually a partnership. OK, yeah, that's cool.
• 50:55
  She is responsible almost for like.
• 50:56
  Bringing that into the league, yes, yeah, see, and smart, like
• 51:00
  the league's smart. Like you should like, lean into
• 51:03
  that, right? We also see Alex mentioned this
• 51:08
  before, but women's sports fans are twice as likely to buy
• 51:12
  merchandise or purchase products that are endorsed by a female
• 51:17
  athlete as compared to other influencers.
• 51:20
  And they're 45% more likely to buy from sponsoring brands.
• 51:24
  Like there's a, there's a weird like inherent trust I think
• 51:28
  that's built whether it's like psychosocial or not, like
• 51:31
  between the, the athlete and and the fandom.
• 51:35
  So the third pillar that we're going to talk about is the fan
• 51:40
  experience as identity, not transaction.
• 51:45
  And so we've alluded to this a little bit.
• 51:47
  I think women sports fans in general don't just like consume
• 51:53
  sport they become part of. So this is going back to like
• 51:57
  your community and cause versus like heroics and whatever and
• 52:03
  that really changes. So like we've, we've heard this,
• 52:08
  it changes the approach from the leagues and how they think about
• 52:10
  the fan experience. We've heard this from the PWHL,
• 52:13
  the NWSL. Like every time I hear an
• 52:16
  interview with leadership of those leagues, they are talking
• 52:20
  about like, what's our pregame fan experience going to be like?
• 52:23
  What's our postgame fan experience going to be like?
• 52:26
  What's the in game fan experience going to be like?
• 52:29
  And they're really thoughtful about like, like, how do we
• 52:32
  continue to engage the fans with brands or athletes or whatever
• 52:36
  it might be so that they feel included and frankly, special,
• 52:41
  right? Like you feel like you're part
• 52:42
  of something. And that sense of community is
• 52:45
  so like biologically inherent to our species that they're really
• 52:50
  tapping into that in a really cool way.
• 52:54
  All right, so that was a lot, but we really had a lot of fun
• 53:00
  kind of digging into this report and really thinking through like
• 53:05
  we just talked about like those differentiators, 'cause I think
• 53:08
  as we've gotten more and more intimately familiar with these
• 53:11
  different leagues, we're starting to pick up on those
• 53:14
  patterns and gems. And we see them not only as like
• 53:19
  cool things for us as fans, but really, really strong indicators
• 53:26
  for our business minds to be looking at these leaks and
• 53:31
  saying, OK, like you are on to something here.
• 53:36
  Like you, you have a lever that you can pull that can help to
• 53:40
  grow this and continue to see the rise that we've seen.
• 53:46
  I think it's, I just think really this report has made it
• 53:51
  so fun, like I said earlier, that we are noticing certain
• 53:54
  trends that are happening and then a firm like this comes out
• 53:58
  and says these are the trends we're seeing and they're exactly
• 54:00
  what Alex and Caitlin are talking about, not that we came
• 54:04
  up with it. Legitimized.
• 54:06
  I think if you listen to our show, you're going to kind of
• 54:09
  understand these things before they actually happen a little
• 54:13
  bit. You're going to be able to
• 54:14
  better kind of make those connections like we've been
• 54:17
  making. Yeah.
• 54:19
  So let's like let's wrap this up by talking about like this 3
• 54:22
  billion projection. First of all, I'd like to
• 54:25
  mention that I think that the industry itself has overshot the
• 54:29
  projection every. Year since this report is
• 54:31
  coming. So we might eclipse 3 billion,
• 54:33
  but what does this really mean in in practice, right?
• 54:36
  This means more pay for the athletes.
• 54:39
  We're already seeing that the W the free agency.
• 54:41
  It's like so cool to see these players signing $1,000,000
• 54:45
  contracts when they we're making 120. $5000.
• 54:49
  Last year you've got you've talked about this, but like the
• 54:52
  infrastructure investment. So we've got that happening
• 54:56
  around the globe. Yeah, you've got the broadcast
• 54:59
  quality and access, right? That's going to continue.
• 55:02
  You've got league survival. We talked about how like the
• 55:05
  NWSL. So long for them to.
• 55:07
  So long. So many different leagues.
• 55:09
  Right. And then you talk about
• 55:10
  expansion, the PWHL, the WNBA and WSL unrivaled.
• 55:15
  Like you've got the athletes unlimited leagues, like there's
• 55:19
  just so much going on, so much opportunity.
• 55:21
  And that all culminates in this next, the next generation.
• 55:26
  Yeah, right. It's it's our daughters, yeah,
• 55:28
  exactly who are growing up in this world where they get to see
• 55:33
  this sense of community. We get to see these women being
• 55:36
  paid what they're owed. So many chances like that are
• 55:39
  out there now. So many, I mean, I was, I was
• 55:42
  throwing the football in the backyard with our daughter the
• 55:44
  other day our our eldest and she can throw like a pretty tight
• 55:48
  spiral. She's 6 1/2 y'all.
• 55:51
  And I was like, you could play flag football.
• 55:54
  Yeah. And you probably, I got a little
• 55:56
  ahead of myself, I'm gonna admit.
• 55:58
  But I was like, you probably could play this pro.
• 56:00
  Yeah. Because that's gonna be a thing.
• 56:02
  Yeah, it'll be a thing. And it's so cool to sit there
• 56:05
  and be like you have, so if you want it, it's there.
• 56:11
  And and she's not even old enough yet to realize that you
• 56:15
  did not have that. Right.
• 56:17
  And and it's and it's it goes back to like women have
• 56:21
  consistently had to advocate for this space.
• 56:24
  And I'm not saying that our daughters won't have to continue
• 56:27
  to advocate for their right to be in the room, right?
• 56:30
  Because I mean, go look on the Internet like there's a lot of
• 56:33
  people who don't support what we talk about here.
• 56:37
  But the fact that that opportunity is even out there
• 56:41
  for her right now. She could go play like rec flag
• 56:43
  football. Yeah.
• 56:45
  Amazing. Yeah.
• 56:46
  It's great. It's amazing.
• 56:47
  So we're super psyched about it. Definitely something we're going
• 56:50
  to be watching. I would encourage y'all to go
• 56:53
  check out the report. There's it's really cool.
• 56:55
  They did a great job. Of course they did.
• 56:57
  I put together slides too for work Deloitte and I'm good at
• 57:01
  it. All right.
• 57:04
  All right, well, let's let's get into this.
• 57:07
  We've got a few, we've got a few things to talk about here.
• 57:11
  We've got the WNBA draft like we talked about the beginning of
• 57:15
  the show. Yes, we do.
• 57:17
  You've got a lot of notes there. I think you were taking notes
• 57:19
  while the things were happening. Yeah, I was just jotting down
• 57:22
  the draft picks because I was excited and like what not.
• 57:25
  But I think what I really wanted to hinge on is between free
• 57:29
  agency and the draft, like what teams are looking like they're
• 57:31
  coming out in good position and what teams are looking like,
• 57:35
  what are you doing? So I have a couple when it comes
• 57:39
  to our big winners. I do feel like Atlanta is on
• 57:44
  that list. They had the huge trade with
• 57:46
  Angel Reese. They retained Ryan Howard,
• 57:48
  Alicia Gray, among some others down there.
• 57:51
  And so I do think that that is going to be a strong team this
• 57:56
  year. They were in the playoffs last
• 57:57
  year. Like I think they'll be decent.
• 58:00
  Chicago. Dare I say Chicago?
• 58:05
  Despite everything, they usually do somehow.
• 58:08
  Now it would be very Chicago of them to like completely implode
• 58:11
  and a lot of our threads friends have pointed out that they have
• 58:16
  a lot of really strong personalities on that team that
• 58:20
  you'd never know how that's going to gel right in a
• 58:22
  competitive space. The LA sparks are looking very
• 58:26
  good. They were able to sign NECA
• 58:28
  Gumuke from the Seattle Storm re sign Kelsey Plum.
• 58:33
  Lots of jokes flying around about like why didn't they pay
• 58:35
  her $1,000,000 and the reason is is because she.
• 58:38
  She's a troll. She goes into a completely
• 58:41
  different tax bracket in California if she if she did
• 58:45
  that. So she was like, I'm gonna just
• 58:47
  stay at $999,999. Like she's smart is what she is,
• 58:55
  Dallas, we said. Earlier tonight, they're no
• 58:58
  longer a 10 and 30. Four, they are no longer A10.
• 59:01
  No, if they are 10 and 34, they're doing it wrong.
• 59:04
  But picking up AZ Fudd, they strengthen their roster.
• 59:07
  They stole two of our faves from up here in Minnesota and Alana
• 59:11
  Smith and Jess Shepherd. And then Vegas, the defending
• 59:15
  champions they've got they they were able to keep their kind of
• 59:18
  core 3IN Asia Wilson, Chelsea Gray and Jackie Young added some
• 59:24
  talent into that group. So I think they're going to
• 59:28
  continue to be strong. I'm not going to talk about the
• 59:31
  links because I know you're going to talk about the links
• 59:34
  big. Oh, and then from an expansion
• 59:35
  perspective, I do think Toronto is looking strong on the flip.
• 59:39
  Side what is going? On I don't know what Portland's
• 59:42
  doing. I can't figure that out.
• 59:44
  I also have no idea what is happening in Seattle and today
• 59:50
  on the draft they. Were talking.
• 59:51
  About they just kind of like owned the fact that Seattle's in
• 59:55
  a rebuilding. I don't know if I don't know if
• 59:58
  you. Want then they traded for flage.
• 1:00:01
  I don't. I feel bad for Flage.
• 1:00:05
  So yeah, Seattle Storm, What are y'all doing?
• 1:00:07
  When you look at the list of players they lost, it's like
• 1:00:10
  what happened here, the Washington Mystics there,
• 1:00:15
  there's people on on threads being like we're holding open
• 1:00:18
  tryouts. We have no one now.
• 1:00:20
  They did just land Lauren Betts, Angela Duke, Duke Dougalish
• 1:00:28
  can't Talk and who I have, I have them on my list here, Cody
• 1:00:34
  McMahon. So they just landed.
• 1:00:35
  They had three first round picks in the draft, which is going to
• 1:00:39
  help them out. But it was looking a little
• 1:00:42
  scary there for a minute. And then like we said, Portland,
• 1:00:46
  I had the I had the Phoenix Mercury on here for a little
• 1:00:49
  while too. They kind of lost some players.
• 1:00:52
  They were able to re sign Alyssa, Tom Thomas and Kalia
• 1:00:56
  Copper, but lost out to Sabali. So that'll be interesting,
• 1:01:00
  especially for a team that went to the finals last year.
• 1:01:04
  Yeah. I mean I'm going to talk about
• 1:01:06
  the links. I for all of y'all that thought
• 1:01:10
  that X or Twitter was insane, I have to say I have learned that
• 1:01:15
  threads is equally insane in other ways.
• 1:01:18
  On the WNBA on. The WNBA, actually, I think any
• 1:01:22
  women's sports, there's some, there's some ridiculous things
• 1:01:24
  being said out there. We were watching free agency all
• 1:01:29
  weekend on threads and it was just like at one point someone
• 1:01:32
  came out and just said like, I think Natasha Cloud's coming to
• 1:01:36
  the links because that makes me feel better when I think about
• 1:01:38
  it. Not per league source.
• 1:01:40
  Actually love that I notice where she's going.
• 1:01:44
  But then, you know, so a lot of people over the weekend were in
• 1:01:47
  this. We just have to trust Cheryl
• 1:01:50
  that she's. She's Cheryl would trust.
• 1:01:52
  Yeah, and today there was apparently a Wolves podcast that
• 1:01:57
  was happening and and the owner, a Rod was on there and basically
• 1:02:02
  said that the hints he gave where Cheryl calls me, I go out
• 1:02:07
  to lunch with Fee and then sometimes I'd write a check.
• 1:02:11
  And so it's like, yes, Cheryl and Fee are doing something
• 1:02:14
  there. They know what they're doing.
• 1:02:16
  And I think we we can trust what's going to come out of that
• 1:02:19
  no matter what. And we saw Olivia Miles drafted
• 1:02:22
  tonight so. Yeah, I mean, I think Cheryl
• 1:02:25
  Reeve has earned the right to just run the ship how she wants
• 1:02:29
  to run the ship, right? She's been, she's she's a Hall
• 1:02:32
  of Fame head coach. She's responsible for the four
• 1:02:36
  championships that the Lynx won. She's been coaching the Lynx now
• 1:02:40
  for 17 seasons or something like that.
• 1:02:43
  So she she has wrote the book on how to construct a championship
• 1:02:47
  team and and attract the right talent.
• 1:02:50
  And it's also very clear that they are going to be building
• 1:02:53
  around fee in this new under this new CBA era.
• 1:02:58
  They were able to re sign Courtney Williams and Kayla
• 1:03:00
  McBride, which those were kind of their core 3.
• 1:03:04
  When you think about the team last year, I think adding Miles,
• 1:03:09
  I actually think is going to be great.
• 1:03:12
  They they have had the success they had the last couple seasons
• 1:03:16
  without a true point guard. They've sort of like Courtney is
• 1:03:21
  played can do it, but like she's not, she's more of a 2A shooting
• 1:03:25
  guard. And so I'll be really curious to
• 1:03:29
  see how they show up. Now.
• 1:03:31
  What I'm also extra curious about is like what is actually
• 1:03:35
  the state of fees recovery? Yeah, I think I it was a few
• 1:03:39
  weeks ago, she was still in a cast and people were like, she's
• 1:03:42
  not starting the season. Yeah.
• 1:03:43
  So like, we'll see how that goes.
• 1:03:45
  We shall. Unless she was faking it and
• 1:03:47
  she's like Nah it's gotcha I'm here.
• 1:03:49
  She just wanted to be pushed around the sand on the beach for
• 1:03:52
  the SI swimsuit. She she was loving.
• 1:03:55
  She was loving the the cart. I like it.
• 1:03:57
  All right, let's let's go into this US Women's national team
• 1:04:01
  game. All right, so first game of
• 1:04:05
  three against Japan, such a unique challenge to to play
• 1:04:12
  three games against the same team in succession.
• 1:04:14
  And then also that the team is Japan who are like we've talked
• 1:04:18
  about this so many times. I love Japan.
• 1:04:21
  So just disciplined, so technically sound.
• 1:04:26
  They will wear you down just by like making you be patient and
• 1:04:30
  if you can't be patient, they take advantage of of your your
• 1:04:34
  misstep. So decent quality win against a
• 1:04:37
  really good team. Like I just said, like I think
• 1:04:40
  it was good to get the win. Was it like the best win ever?
• 1:04:44
  No, like there is things that we still need to be working on and
• 1:04:48
  we will see that in the next two games.
• 1:04:52
  You could clearly see our, our mission was to build out of the
• 1:04:56
  back. Japan actually held a really,
• 1:04:59
  really high press, which kind of created some weird moments at
• 1:05:03
  times, but you're able to navigate through that.
• 1:05:07
  I felt like Lindsay Heaps was like non existent for most of
• 1:05:11
  the game until she scored her goal.
• 1:05:12
  I, I, I don't recall hearing her name.
• 1:05:18
  And so like that. I don't know what that's a
• 1:05:22
  symptom of or if it's just like that's just sometimes I think
• 1:05:26
  that's just how she plays. I know them get a lot of Flack
• 1:05:30
  for being a super heaps fan, but like I said, great leadership
• 1:05:34
  qualities. Just I don't love her style of
• 1:05:36
  play. Someone needs to talk to Trinity
• 1:05:40
  Rodman. I don't know what is going on
• 1:05:43
  with her, but it feels like ever since she signed her big deal
• 1:05:46
  club and country, she's seemed like a little like kind of just
• 1:05:50
  felt seemed flat. Seemed a little like and she had
• 1:05:56
  an assist right. So she did get the assist, but I
• 1:05:58
  just I haven't seen the same like energy from her and I don't
• 1:06:03
  know if it's a her problem or if it's a scheme problem.
• 1:06:06
  Yeah, that's. What I was wondering.
• 1:06:07
  So something to watch is what I would say.
• 1:06:10
  And then the other thing I've been watching for, I said this
• 1:06:14
  before, she believes is like that back line, right?
• 1:06:17
  Do we have a left back? What's going on with centre
• 1:06:19
  back? Tyranno was back in but didn't
• 1:06:21
  play. Sonnen also didn't play cuz she
• 1:06:23
  took a knock. So they had Wesley in the middle
• 1:06:25
  with Derma, which is kind of cute because they actually
• 1:06:28
  played together at Stanford in college and so they got some
• 1:06:31
  reunite. Kennedy looked really good.
• 1:06:34
  I thought she was good. I am loving Giselle Thompson at
• 1:06:37
  left back. I also especially love Emily
• 1:06:41
  Fox. I don't actually think I said
• 1:06:44
  this to you. I don't actually think you can
• 1:06:46
  score in the run of play against our defense because nay is nay
• 1:06:52
  Secretary of Defense. And then Giselle and Emily are
• 1:06:55
  so fast. Like you showed me that video
• 1:06:59
  straight on. Oh my God of like the Japanese
• 1:07:02
  attacker was like alone in the. And then?
• 1:07:05
  Out of nowhere, Giselle Thompson comes across and takes the ball
• 1:07:09
  off of her. They're so good.
• 1:07:11
  So I think what's really cool as we go forward in these next two
• 1:07:16
  games, there will be one played by the time this episode is
• 1:07:19
  released. But the strength of our roster,
• 1:07:23
  when you think about the players that Emma was able to bring on
• 1:07:26
  in that first game, it started with a pretty senior experienced
• 1:07:30
  roster in the first game. It's likely that in the second
• 1:07:34
  game, it's going to be a probably a pretty close to a
• 1:07:37
  completely different starting 11.
• 1:07:39
  And the fact that you can start Trinity Rodman, a Sophia Wilson
• 1:07:46
  and an Alyssa Thompson, and then you can bring on an Emma Sears
• 1:07:50
  and Ally Centnor and you know, a Jamice Joseph is like what is
• 1:07:56
  going on here? Or Jaden Shaw, right?
• 1:07:59
  Like the depth of talent. And we like, thank goodness we
• 1:08:03
  don't have to make these decisions.
• 1:08:06
  So I think we'll see a completely different lineup in
• 1:08:09
  the game on Tuesday. I think we may see a different
• 1:08:12
  tactic as a result. They they had a certain scheme
• 1:08:16
  they were playing in the game on Saturday.
• 1:08:18
  I won't bore you with that right now.
• 1:08:21
  And then when we get to that third game on Friday, I expect
• 1:08:25
  my anticipation is that it's going to be a best of.
• 1:08:27
  So, yeah, Emma's going to have done her assessment from 1:00
• 1:08:31
  and 2:00, and she's going to say, OK, he's the best.
• 1:08:34
  I know the pieces that I need. We're going to try this now.
• 1:08:37
  Yeah. Is the Trinity Rodman thing,
• 1:08:40
  like, do you think that's any sort of like system thing where
• 1:08:44
  it might be, well, they know we're going to go to her, let's
• 1:08:48
  try and exploit A weakness that might be somewhere else.
• 1:08:51
  Yeah, possibly. And actually, I really, if I
• 1:08:55
  think back to the game, I think like what I'm what I'm talking
• 1:08:58
  about is like she just doesn't seem to be able to find her
• 1:09:02
  moments where she can impact it in a more direct way.
• 1:09:06
  I did like she had a lot of, there's a lot of fluidity
• 1:09:09
  between. You could tell like her and Soph
• 1:09:11
  on the field again together was so good.
• 1:09:14
  Like there's so much fluidity between how they play.
• 1:09:16
  They don't like they don't stay in lanes like they're moving all
• 1:09:20
  over and they are both equally threatening no matter where they
• 1:09:23
  are on the pitch. And so it also could be like
• 1:09:26
  that was her first time playing with Sophia back.
• 1:09:30
  So maybe it was like kind of getting that out of the system.
• 1:09:34
  I just like the games I've seen her play, like I said, both club
• 1:09:38
  and country. It just like it seems like like
• 1:09:43
  she seems a little stuck and I and she might be worried about
• 1:09:46
  her back. Remember she hurt her back and
• 1:09:48
  that she believes copper. Maybe it was even the
• 1:09:50
  friendliest before that. No, she believes.
• 1:09:54
  The other question I had was, I think it was a really efficient
• 1:09:56
  game, less volume overall in the shots.
• 1:09:59
  I think it was nine shots, USA, 12 Japan.
• 1:10:02
  Do you think they're looking to kind of up that volume or just
• 1:10:06
  stay efficient on the chances they do have?
• 1:10:09
  I would say against a team like Japan, it's about efficiency
• 1:10:14
  yeah. I don't know that you're going
• 1:10:15
  to generate a ton of shots on goal just because that
• 1:10:19
  possession is like a a a premium against a team like Japan.
• 1:10:23
  And I actually think we did out possess them, which I think
• 1:10:26
  there's a statistic out there that like if you out possess
• 1:10:29
  Japan you you will beat them. So you need to make sure that
• 1:10:32
  you have the the time on the ball.
• 1:10:35
  So I like the efficiency piece. I also just, I think in general
• 1:10:40
  it's great to like get shots, but.
• 1:10:42
  If. You're not putting him in and
• 1:10:44
  you're not gonna win. So I think that's really
• 1:10:48
  important and I hope to see that continue to convert all.
• 1:10:52
  Right. Let's move it on PWHL.
• 1:10:57
  Potential announcements coming from the PWHL.
• 1:11:01
  Yeah, so the two two weeks ago now they had that game at
• 1:11:06
  Madison Square Garden, the 18,000 fans attended and prior
• 1:11:09
  to the game again going to fan experience and things like that,
• 1:11:13
  they had a little panel with Billie Jean King and Stan
• 1:11:17
  Caston. So Stan Caston is a member of
• 1:11:20
  the Advisory Board. He is a co-owner of the Dodgers
• 1:11:25
  with Mark Mark and Kimber Walter as well as the Los Angeles
• 1:11:29
  Sparks. So like a crossover series here
• 1:11:32
  and they were talking about, he was actually talking about how,
• 1:11:36
  you know, on a nightly basis right now the PWHL is in the
• 1:11:40
  red. They they don't make money,
• 1:11:42
  right? But his tone and attitude was
• 1:11:46
  like so bullish. He like, almost like he's like,
• 1:11:50
  we're about to get there. We're about to get there, which
• 1:11:52
  made me think you're signing a broadcast deal.
• 1:11:55
  Like that's one way to bring in a lot of money really quickly.
• 1:11:59
  Now, the pushback on that is do they have enough teams to
• 1:12:03
  warrant a broadcast deal? Yeah.
• 1:12:06
  And so then it goes to. Expansion what?
• 1:12:08
  Is expansion gonna look like and we are you guys we are expecting
• 1:12:11
  that expansion announcement like any any day, yeah any day now,
• 1:12:15
  any day now. So he just to kind of wrap this
• 1:12:19
  section up right. I think it's sort of like, do we
• 1:12:22
  need the expansion to get the broadcast deal?
• 1:12:24
  Like are they kind of two for one package?
• 1:12:28
  And he did say that the league is tracking ahead of schedule
• 1:12:32
  financially. So when you anytime you start a
• 1:12:35
  business, you expect that you're not going to make money for a
• 1:12:37
  certain amount of time. And so they're looking at that
• 1:12:41
  schedule, saying we're ahead of schedule.
• 1:12:45
  We've we've got some big moves, you know, coming here.
• 1:12:48
  And his vision is for that schedule to both the teams to
• 1:12:53
  expand more teams and the schedule to expand.
• 1:12:56
  So right now, they play 30 games in the season.
• 1:13:00
  He is anticipating that overtime we're going to go to 40 and then
• 1:13:03
  eventually 50, which is fantastic.
• 1:13:07
  Now, what he was very clear to say was inherent in all of this
• 1:13:10
  is we have to be able to pay the players.
• 1:13:12
  Yeah, Yeah. And I do think that.
• 1:13:14
  The really important part of this?
• 1:13:16
  Yes. And you think about who else
• 1:13:17
  sits on that Advisory Board. Billie Jean King, Who the.
• 1:13:20
  Whole thing is fighting for so that gets me really excited.
• 1:13:26
  All right, we're going to we're going to talk about this fourth
• 1:13:28
  playoffs, but I need my little stat sheet here.
• 1:13:30
  All the I could have gone into 20 different.
• 1:13:33
  There are three teams y'all vying for one spot.
• 1:13:36
  Like we said earlier, Seattle's officially out.
• 1:13:38
  We knocked them out this past week, past weekend.
• 1:13:42
  We have Ottawa has three games left at 36 points, Toronto has
• 1:13:48
  four games left at 34 points, and New York is at 31 points
• 1:13:53
  with four games left. So the Max amount that New York
• 1:13:58
  could get is 43 total points, which means they need Ottawa at
• 1:14:05
  Max to win some combination of 6 points.
• 1:14:10
  OK, are you all following this at home?
• 1:14:14
  Toronto's a little bit more lucky.
• 1:14:16
  They could. They could win all of their
• 1:14:21
  games and overtake Ottawa, even if Ottawa wins all their games,
• 1:14:26
  all their games. So Toronto kind of is the one
• 1:14:29
  that controls our destiny here. Fully.
• 1:14:32
  Fully. Here's the other kind of
• 1:14:35
  wrinkle. Ottawa plays New York, Boston
• 1:14:37
  and Toronto. Toronto plays New York twice.
• 1:14:41
  Minnesota and Ottawa, and then New York again.
• 1:14:44
  Yeah, plays Toronto twice. And then Ottawa and Boston.
• 1:14:47
  OK, so what's really funny about this is none of them play
• 1:14:50
  Montreal, no. Or Vancouver?
• 1:14:53
  Yeah. Or Seattle.
• 1:14:55
  They they. All they somehow got all boxed
• 1:14:58
  together against the teams that they need to lose.
• 1:15:01
  And they all have to play each other at least once.
• 1:15:04
  Yes, in this last little bit here.
• 1:15:06
  And so it's going to be extremely, extremely messy how
• 1:15:10
  this how this turns. Out.
• 1:15:11
  Oh man, you got to be glued to your TV and you have draft
• 1:15:15
  implications on the line, right? Do you wanna?
• 1:15:18
  You still wanna do you? You're trying your heart.
• 1:15:20
  You're absolutely the hardest to get into that fourth spot.
• 1:15:22
  Well, I think we saw that like we played New York, right and
• 1:15:25
  like we've already, we had already clinched New York took
• 1:15:29
  it to. Us.
• 1:15:29
  Yeah, they from the beginning, they were winning that game.
• 1:15:31
  We looked so flat footed. They definitely looked like a
• 1:15:34
  team that needed to win a game, right?
• 1:15:37
  Needed to get some. Points.
• 1:15:38
  Some points. And so.
• 1:15:41
  They got none. Well, we do have the highest
• 1:15:43
  score. Team in the league.
• 1:15:46
  But yeah, it's gonna be a race to the finish.
• 1:15:49
  I think that coupled with like, you know, impending news and
• 1:15:52
  expansion, like there's a lot of reasons to be excited.
• 1:15:55
  And then I think we we've talked about it here, but the the
• 1:15:58
  playoffs are gonna also be some level of that playoff is gonna
• 1:16:02
  be nationally televised too. So we'll get to see this on TV.
• 1:16:06
  We are planning to try and go back to the playoff game.
• 1:16:08
  We'll see if we can go to another championship game that
• 1:16:10
  ends in a triple overtime. I would love to see a
• 1:16:13
  championship finish before we have to leave the.
• 1:16:17
  Stadium, I mean, we'll jump into what to watch and we'll actually
• 1:16:19
  jump straight to that. PWHL, we have three of those
• 1:16:23
  games this week, Toronto at New York on Wednesday, the 15th at
• 1:16:27
  6:00 PM Central, New York versus Ottawa 1:00 PM.
• 1:16:30
  Central on Saturday and Toronto at Minnesota 12:30 PM on Sunday.
• 1:16:35
  Nice. So all of those have 4th place
• 1:16:38
  implications of it. I think we talked about this
• 1:16:42
  already. You will be listening to this
• 1:16:44
  podcast the day after the second game.
• 1:16:47
  Maybe just a few hours. Maybe this game is very late.
• 1:16:50
  It was very late. 9:00 PM Central, and then the third game
• 1:16:56
  is on Friday at 8:00 PM Central, and that's on TNT and HBO Max
• 1:17:02
  for the US women's national team.
• 1:17:04
  Yeah, get your popcorn. That's going to be, I think,
• 1:17:07
  like I said, best of for for Emma Hayes.
• 1:17:10
  And I believe this is they're playing it in Commerce City,
• 1:17:12
  which is a the two game home of the Denver Summit.
• 1:17:16
  Until later this year could have big attendance.
• 1:17:19
  Numbers there. We also have NCAA gymnastics and
• 1:17:24
  the way this works is there are two semi final matches.
• 1:17:29
  I think they called meets on Thursday, April 16th.
• 1:17:33
  Those are at ESPN 2/1 at 4:30 and 1:00 at 9:00 and then the
• 1:17:38
  national championship on I'll be Saturday 4:00 PM.
• 1:17:45
  And then like we talked about LOVB, if you want to watch some
• 1:17:48
  volleyball, we have Salt Lake versus Utah.
• 1:17:50
  They have two matches, not meets matches.
• 1:17:56
  This one's matches. One on Thursday, April 16th 7:00
• 1:18:00
  PM Central on USA and then the second match Saturday April 18th
• 1:18:05
  at 7:00 PM Central on USA as well.
• 1:18:09
  Woof, some good. Like championships coming.
• 1:18:15
  Like we got playoffs we got. Playoffs for hockey, which?
• 1:18:17
  I thought we were going to be in like a wolf for a little bit
• 1:18:19
  here. But as soon as the hockey
• 1:18:21
  playoffs are over, WNBA. Right away, right away, right
• 1:18:25
  away. Training camp starts on Sunday.
• 1:18:28
  Yeah, there we go. So we'll have teams by then
• 1:18:31
  because we. Don't seem.
• 1:18:32
  To have full teams yet for WNBA. All right, let's wrap it up with
• 1:18:38
  winners and losers. Losers first.
• 1:18:40
  You got 1. Man, I'd actually thought about
• 1:18:45
  these and I didn't write them down.
• 1:18:46
  It's terrible for. This doesn't work well for you.
• 1:18:48
  Doesn't. Work well for me.
• 1:18:52
  I don't know. We'll kind of thing is Chicago
• 1:18:55
  Sky to start out. We'll we'll kind of see how that
• 1:18:57
  works out. I'm really interested.
• 1:19:00
  Like you said, the big personalities there is going to
• 1:19:02
  be interesting. I think they're going to gel for
• 1:19:04
  the first quarter of the season and then it's going to be.
• 1:19:08
  I think there's too much ego. Something happening there?
• 1:19:11
  We'll see. Those will be entertaining games
• 1:19:15
  to watch, I will say. So if you have the opportunity
• 1:19:18
  to watch Chicago Sky play, I would.
• 1:19:20
  TuneIn Yeah, I, I my loser is going back to one of our
• 1:19:29
  headline topics of just holding up the bid for the only bid for
• 1:19:36
  the Women's World Cup in 2031. The plan is we didn't really
• 1:19:41
  expand on this, but it is for the US to Co host with Mexico,
• 1:19:45
  Costa Rica and Jamaica. And the fact that we're turning
• 1:19:55
  this amazing opportunity into a political pawn or something that
• 1:20:02
  is a a non issue, a non issue from the perspective of
• 1:20:07
  affecting the large majority of people.
• 1:20:11
  Like there's there are so few trans women in.
• 1:20:16
  Soccer in any sport. And so it just makes no sense to
• 1:20:22
  me that we're we're taking that route now.
• 1:20:25
  I have seen on the flip side, I have seen a lot of advocacy for
• 1:20:31
  maybe Mexico just hosts it and I'm like, that's close enough.
• 1:20:35
  And frankly, like, that'd be fun to travel to.
• 1:20:37
  I'd go to Mexico. So the thing that will be
• 1:20:41
  interesting to watch is the men's World Cup is here and that
• 1:20:44
  is already a little. It's coming here.
• 1:20:45
  In the summer, and that's already a little bit of a mess,
• 1:20:48
  baby. Well, it's already kind of been
• 1:20:50
  in shambles with ticket sales and like people buying tickets
• 1:20:53
  that aren't actually the tickets.
• 1:20:55
  So like, I don't know that we're actually like putting our best
• 1:20:58
  foot forward to be a host nation and going to the thing around
• 1:21:03
  like community and 'cause I would much rather, as much as I
• 1:21:07
  would love for it to be here in the States, it doesn't
• 1:21:11
  necessarily mean that access is easier.
• 1:21:13
  For us, yeah. And I would much rather it be in
• 1:21:16
  a place where people, everybody, can feel accepted, included and
• 1:21:22
  a part of the community that's so important around the sport.
• 1:21:25
  So for sure that will be my loser.
• 1:21:28
  Winner. My winner is the UCLA Bruins
• 1:21:34
  women's basketball team they just had that was.
• 1:21:38
  Insane. Five first round draft picks.
• 1:21:42
  I think if you actually extended it out to the top 18 picks, so
• 1:21:46
  that's the first three. In the second round they had 66.
• 1:21:50
  So that's one out of every 3 picks, one through 18 coming
• 1:21:55
  from UCLA and we talked about how special that senior classes,
• 1:21:58
  but I think it was really cool to watch.
• 1:22:01
  Speaking of production value, they do a great job with that
• 1:22:04
  draft. The women looked fantastic.
• 1:22:08
  They're all dressed up, and it's just like, so cool to hear them
• 1:22:11
  talk about realizing their dreams.
• 1:22:15
  And Holly Rowe speaks French. Yes.
• 1:22:19
  What happened there? I don't know.
• 1:22:21
  She just starts speaking. I was that was.
• 1:22:24
  Amazing. She was talking to one of the
• 1:22:25
  international draft picks from France and and she's asking her
• 1:22:29
  questions in French and then the the woman is answering in in
• 1:22:33
  English, right. But I was like, she is
• 1:22:36
  bilingual. Yeah, woman of many talents.
• 1:22:38
  She always, always What's a winner A.
• 1:22:41
  Winner. You really didn't do a loser
• 1:22:43
  either. You're getting off the hook.
• 1:22:45
  Yeah, I know. Well, I did.
• 1:22:46
  Kind of Oh, you said this. Guy, yeah, said this guy.
• 1:22:50
  I think I don't even. I did have one and now I'm
• 1:23:05
  totally just like blanking on what I had thought of.
• 1:23:08
  Taylor Heisey, Grace Sumwinkel became the 13th player in the
• 1:23:13
  PWHL to. What I mean?
• 1:23:15
  50 points. Kelly Panic.
• 1:23:17
  Kelly panic is. Really close scored the she tied
• 1:23:20
  I think she's tied the points per season.
• 1:23:23
  Yeah. I think we'll see here.
• 1:23:24
  I mean that's that's probably one of my one of my winners for
• 1:23:27
  this. I think one of my kind of funny
• 1:23:31
  winners is I saw a video of Courtney Williams at the draft
• 1:23:35
  and she said she said I'd probably look like 1,000,000
• 1:23:38
  bucks. Feel like I look like like a
• 1:23:40
  million. Bucks, which is amazing, so I'll
• 1:23:43
  take those as my winners. Which is funny cuz now she does
• 1:23:46
  make a million. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:23:49
  I love it. Again, leaning into the
• 1:23:51
  personality and leaning into the individual brand, connecting
• 1:23:54
  with with the with the people. So I love it.
• 1:23:59
  That's it. Where can they find us?
• 1:24:01
  Rtg_pod.instagramandthreadsandyoutubeandsubstackraisingthegameraisingthegamepod@gmail.com RTG, pod.com or website Sign up
• 1:24:14
  for Sub Stack Newsletter Here's your inbox every Friday.
• 1:24:18
  Every Friday morning. And we'll see you next week.
• 1:24:21
  Yeah, bye, Bye.