From tennis champion Coco Gauff’s recent major doubles French Open win to Caitlin Clark’s winning streak in professional women’s basketball, the global sports phenomenon for women is only getting bigger. 

We have celebrated the likes of Serena Williams (tennis), Sania Mirza (tennis), Alina Zagitova (figure skating) and more women who have broken records and contributed to leveling the playing field in professional sports. Now, we are beginning to see more opportunities to do so, for more female sports players around the world, as global audience viewership and sports brand investment increases. 

If we rewind back to 2023, it was the year when sports headlines including women players saw an unprecedented rise. With all eyes on the Women’s World Cup, the launch of the first ever 24/7 women’s sports network and the fight for pay equity in sports making headlines, it was clear that the interest in women’s sports was headed towards an upwards trajectory. 

That momentum gained further traction when EA Sports included women’s teams and players in their video game for the first time with EA FC 2024. 

A year later with the Paris Olympics taking place this summer, it has come to light that considerable work has been done to include more women at both, athlete and operational levels at the highly anticipated global sporting event. Of the 10,500 Olympians competing at Paris 2024, half will be female, which is an increase from 48 per cent representation of female athletes at the Tokyo Olympics in 2020. Additionally, women will account for 40 per cent of technical officials, up from 30 per cent in Japan. 

While there will be an equal number of male and female athletes at Paris 2024, gender parity remains some way off from the field of play, particularly in decision-making roles within the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and in the president or chief executive positions at international federations whose sports will be represented this summer. Still, it is a positive lining in the cloud that often prevents women from achieving their representation on the global sporting stage at Olympics. 

According to research by Deloitte, women’s sports will generate revenue of around $1.28 billion in 2024, up nearly 300 per cent from just three years ago. This surge in women’s sports interest is not a future trend; it’s happening now and presents a massive growth and inclusion opportunity for brands across the board. As per Anna Reynolds in AdWeek, if brands wait any longer to take advantage of the potential growth associated with this change, it will be too late in the game.

‍Reconceptualizing The Women’s Sports Market 

Today, the data warrants a need for brands to consider the women's sports market bigger than it used to be. It is only through the full understanding of the diversity behind potential female audiences that businesses can gain growth benefits. For example, a one-size-fits-all approach to women’s sports apparel is not going to cut it. Similarly, sports equipment must be reimagined so it does not limit choices for women and girls, and/or also does not enforce outdated gender stereotypes. Some great early wins for brands can result from creating innovative clothing that addresses the physiological differences between men and women, along with diverse types of sports equipment to suit female athletes as they endure different physical and mental changes throughout their lives. 

Another example is that of Nike - the brand tried a gender-specific approach with their Phantom Luna soccer cleats released before the 2023 World Cup. According to Nike, they were the most researched women-led cleats in history and took over two years of research to create. The sportswear brand introduced a women-specific stud pattern on the cleat to avoid injury, a new fitting system to better fit women’s feet. Made by and for women, the move paid off with the Phantom Luna being one of the most popular models among Nike’s women athletes.

Ideally, more major brands are expected to adopt a similar approach to purpose-driven innovation, which can result in more niche brands getting inspired to produce innovative varieties to potentially create an increasingly inclusive sports industry for women and girls. 

‍A Mainstream Career Choice For Women & Girls

As one of the most important socio-cultural learning experiences for people, sport carries benefits that should be afforded to women and girls, alongside the encouragement and celebration of their participation in it. Also, it must not just end there but serve as an inception point for women and girls to actively pursue professional careers in sports. 

It’s no surprise that girls’ sports participation in Olympic sports increases significantly following the Olympic Games, one of the few times that coverage of women’s sports is equal to that of men’s sports. Aspirational role models drive youth demand for sports. This top to bottom synergy has an opportunity to become commonplace in women’s sports by simply increasing college and professional sports opportunities and television coverage for women and girls.

With the female players already participating on professional levels, governments, businesses and communities must take every opportunity to support and promote them in order to instill a healthy culture that creates more personal and professional fulfillment pathways. 

With 50 per cent of Paris Olympics 2024 athletes being female, there is no better time for organizations in charge to continue supporting women’s choice to build mainstream careers in sports as well as brands associated with sports, so as to increase their inclusion and create global economic growth opportunities.‍

AI-Driven Empowerment For Female Athletes ‍

There is potentially a great deal of opportunity to empower female athletes with AI. For instance, according to Vinayak Shrivastav of VideoVerse, analytical capabilities through AI can provide pivotal insights to close the persisting gaps between men's and women's sports in viewership, media coverage and compensation.

He also expresses how gender bias influences search algorithms and reminds us that while Google search results more often than not skew toward male athletes, campaigns like "Correct the Internet" are working to negate those effects by discovering living data to analyze and recognize women's sporting events, ensuring equal coverage and promoting the achievements of trending female athletes.

AI technology will also help women receive fair review decisions in games such as tennis that have relatively outdated umpire decision-making rules which rely on a single umpire’s judgment instead of a second video decision-making option for players, which is something that tennis champion Coco Gauff has also recently expressed during the Roland-Garros 2024 tournament. ‍

AI-driven advancements also have the potential to provide deeper insights into female fans' interests and values, enabling the development of richer, more resonant women's sports brands. However, it is important to call out that broadcasting and content need to be more diversified across publishing houses, as only 10% of sports editors and 11.5% of sports reporters are women.‍

Game On‍

Recently, the trend has been clear: the increased participation and success of female athletes at the Olympic Games, increased television coverage of women’s college sports, new women’s professional sports leagues and the participation increases of females in all sports and all age levels.

A shift that has, in reality, been happening for decades, it is important for global audiences, organizations-in-charge and brands to help women achieve an equitable standing in the sports industry. It has become apparent that AI, technology and consumer trends are reinventing sports experiences, making the case beyond strong to continue the worldwide transformational momentum to help female athletes evolve to the elite level. 

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