Women’s Sports Have Momentum. Now Invest in the Infrastructure.
Attending the FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup in Berlin solidified something I have believed for years: the global potential of women’s sports is enormous.
At a time when so much of our public life feels defined by division, distrust, and democratic backsliding, women’s sports is one of the places where people are generating — and experiencing — extraordinary positive energy. It creates belonging. It showcases what is possible when women are given the opportunity to compete, lead, build, and be seen.
Abby Wambach calls this energy “the stardust.” But we cannot mistake momentum for maturity.
Women’s sports are having a breakthrough moment. The question is whether we will build the infrastructure necessary to sustain it.
That means investing not only in teams and leagues, but in the interconnected systems of health, research, player development, education, policy, technology, facilities, media, ownership, and leadership that allow girls and women to participate, perform, lead, and generate economic value throughout their lives.
For women’s sports to thrive — and to keep the stardust — we need these systems designed around female bodies, women’s lived experiences, and equitable access to resources, opportunity, and decision-making power.
Infrastructure is not simply what supports women’s sports; it determines who has access to opportunity, who creates value, and who captures the economic, health, and leadership returns generated by women’s participation in sport.
And in American and global sports, policy and leadership ultimately determine where the resources flow.
We are at an infrastructure inflection point
Consider what is happening in college sports today.
The Senate is currently considering S. 4668, the Protect College Sports Act. The legislation would codify into federal law an unrealistic financial model for Division I athletics. The scale is enormous — and the consequences for the broader college sports ecosystem would be equally enormous.
The original proposal had payments of more than $20 million annually per institution. Now, the sponsors have capitulated to the SEC and Big Ten and doubled that figure, pushing the potential cost above $48 million per institution.
That raises fundamental questions:
Can any school actually afford this model? What happens to everything else when the money only flows to football and men’s basketball players?
The Drake Group has documented the financial vulnerability of 360 Division I athletic departments, showing negative balances based on budgets that predate the full implementation of the House settlement.
If the financial demands placed on athletic departments continue to escalate, we should be asking not only whether the model is sustainable, but what gets cut to pay for it. And history tells us where we should look first.
Women’s sports has too often been treated as the flexible line item in the athletic department budget — the program expected to stretch, survive, and do more with less.
That is why I am sounding the alarm.
The dismantling of the college sports ecosystem, the emerging push for private equity into youth sports, ongoing harassment and safety challenges, and enormous gaps in sports medicine and performance research for female athletes all point to the same conclusion:
Female-forward infrastructure needs our attention, voice, and targeted capital now.
Four things investors need to understand
With more attention around women’s sports, I keep coming back to four realities.
1. Modern sport was built around the wrong blueprint.
For more than a century, many athletic performance systems — including training protocols, recovery models, nutrition guidance, injury prevention, sports medicine, and equipment design — have relied disproportionately on research involving male bodies.
Women have often been expected to perform inside systems that were never designed with their physiology as the starting point. The research gap is substantial. That is no longer simply a medical or academic problem.
It is a performance problem. An economic problem. A talent-development problem. And an investment opportunity.
As women’s sports enter a global growth phase, we have an opportunity to build the next generation of performance infrastructure differently from the beginning.
That means female-first research. Female-first equipment. Female-first health and performance care. Female-first data. And female-first approaches to athlete development across the entire lifespan — from adolescence through pregnancy, postpartum, peak performance, and menopause.
This is not about creating a separate system but rather modernizing the system so that it actually works for women.
2. Women are powerful culture carriers — and the market is still undervaluing them.
The volume of Name, Image, Likeness (NIL) deals are higher for females than males BUT women get 1/10 of the dollar amount the men receive. Yet, female athletes enjoy a 7-percentage-point trust advantage over male athletes in product endorsements and fans are nearly 3 times more likely to purchase products recommended by women athletes.
Female athletes have demonstrated extraordinary influence as creators, community leaders, storytellers, and brand ambassadors. Women receive a greater volume of NIL deals than men in some analyses, yet the total dollars flowing to female athletes remain dramatically smaller.
At the same time, research continues to demonstrate the power of female athletes as trusted voices. Female athletes can create meaningful connections between brands, communities, and consumers.
This market disconnect: Women generating enormous cultural value while still capturing a disproportionately small share of the economic value they create. This gap is an infrastructure problem.
We need more onramps and communities for athlete marketing, financial education, intellectual property, data rights, entrepreneurship, and investment. And we need more women participating not just as athletes and fans, but as owners, investors, founders, board members, and capital allocators.
3. College athletics has a resource-allocation problem.
Title IX established the principle that women and men should have equitable opportunities in educational sport. Yet decades later, significant disparities remain. Ninety three% of all colleges are NOT in compliance with providing males and females equitable participation opportunities.
Running average annual operating deficits of $15 to $20 million, only 25 of the 350 Division I schools break even on an operating basis Football continues to be the largest receiver of the funds in an athletic department and alongside men’s basketball is getting 95% of the $20 million of each college’s current mandated payment from the House Settlement. AND, the highest paid public employees are football or basketball coaches in 40+ states.
Women’s sports succeed when marketing resources, media rights opportunities, and leadership offer equitable opportunities and resources for growth.
4. Funding the female-forward ecosystem is transformative — and more accessible than many people realize.
The good news is that you do not have to buy a professional sports team to participate in the growth of women’s sports. There are opportunities across the ecosystem:
Invest in women’s sports companies.
Support female-first health and performance innovation.
Fund research.
Buy season tickets.
Buy merchandise.
Support women’s sports media.
Invest in facilities and equipment.
Support athletes as entrepreneurs.
Make restricted gifts to women’s athletics.
Back founders building the next generation of infrastructure.
This is the work we are trying to make more visible through Make the Assist: creating pathways for more people to move from being fans of women’s sports to participating in its ownership, investment, and growth.
Because the opportunity is not simply to watch the next billion-dollar team valuation emerge. The opportunity is to help build the ecosystem that makes those valuations possible.
The investment opportunity is bigger than the next team
Since writing my October 2024 piece, Investing in Women’s Sports: The Investment Opportunity of Our Lifetime, and producing the first Investing in Women’s Sports Symposium, I receive at least one inquiry a week from a founder or potential investor interested in women’s sports. Everyone is hungry to chase and find the next billion dollar team valuation, Oura ring, or entry point into the projected 2030 women’s sports global revenue of $256 billion.
Everyone wants to know:
What sport will drive the next billion-dollar opportunity?
They are looking for the next franchise valuation, the next breakthrough consumer product, or the next entry point into the projected global women’s sports economy. That excitement is warranted.
We are seeing record setting growth in valuations, audiences, sponsorships, media rights, and investment. The WNBA Golden State Valkyries, for example, went from an expansion franchise valued at $850 million to a reported $1 billion valuation in roughly a year.
Private equity is paying attention. Venture capital is paying attention. Brands are paying attention. And smart women investors are paying attention.
But every time I have one of these conversations, I try to zoom out because the asset everyone wants to invest in — the team, the league, the athlete, the technology — sits inside an ecosystem.
Build what comes next
The next era of women’s sports will not be built by teams and leagues alone. It will be built…
By researchers who close the female-athlete research gap.
By founders developing products around women’s bodies.
By investors willing to fund infrastructure before it becomes obvious.
By philanthropists supporting women’s athletics when budgets are under pressure.
By policymakers protecting equitable access in educational sport.
By athletes demanding ownership and agency.
By media telling the stories of athlete excellence versus appearance and click bait content.
By fans becoming shareholders, customers, members, donors, and investors.
And by all of us paying attention to where the money flows.
Here are five ways to participate now:
1. Protect college sports.
Contact your Senator and make your voice heard about S. 4668 and the future financial success of college athletics.
2. Amplify the sisterhood.
Follow, fund, and share the people already building women’s sports infrastructure — researchers, founders, athletes, investors, journalists, advocates, and Title IX experts.
3. Make restricted gifts.
If you support a college athletic program, consider directing your contribution specifically toward women’s athletics. In a period of enormous financial transition, earmarking matters.
4. Write checks — and engage in the build.
Invest where you can. Buy tickets. Buy merchandise. Support women’s sports media. Back female-forward technology, health, research, equipment, and businesses. And use resources like the Investing in Women’s Sports Tracker to track who is driving the investments and to what.
5. Join the movement.
Make the Assist is creating pathways for more people to participate and invest in the growth of women’s sports. Sign up on the website to join us, or reach out to info@maketheassist.com with any questions
Let’s make infrastructure sexy.
The greatest opportunity will be the infrastructure we build underneath it. Because when we invest in infrastructure, we are not simply supporting women’s sports. We are determining what women’s sports becomes and how women’s sports will continue to change culture and leadership.
We get to decide whether the next generation lives and competes in a system designed for the bodies, brilliance, leadership, and economic power of women.
The stardust is already here. Now let’s build the infrastructure worthy of it.