Women’s sport is growing
Revenues in elite women’s sports are forecast to jump sharply this year, with Deloitte predicting at least $3 billion in 2026 and football accounting for a big slice of that growth. Media distribution is following money—ESPN is moving the weekly show “Women’s Sports Now” onto its platforms next week—so the commercial lift will likely filter down into local clubs, sponsors and athlete participation. (insideworldfootball.com, sportsvideo.org)
A market that brought in about $692 million in 2022 is now on track to clear at least $3 billion in 2026, according to Deloitte’s new forecast for elite women’s sports. Deloitte says 2025 already reached $2.4 billion, which means this year’s jump is not a one-off spike but the next step in a four-year climb. (deloitte.com) Deloitte breaks that 2026 total into three buckets: commercial deals, broadcast rights, and matchday income. Matchday alone is forecast to hit $911 million, or 30% of the total, which means fans are not just watching on screens but buying tickets and showing up in person. (deloitte.com) Football and basketball are expected to be the two biggest engines, with each sport accounting for about 35% of all elite women’s sports revenue in 2026. In plain terms, roughly seven dollars out of every ten are projected to come from those two sports alone. (insideworldfootball.com) North America is still expected to be the biggest market, generating 54% of 2026 revenue in Deloitte’s forecast. That puts the United States and Canada at the center of the money flow even as Europe and other regions start posting faster growth from a smaller base. (deloitte.com) That helps explain why media companies are moving now instead of waiting. ESPN said on April 10 that “Women’s Sports Now” will premiere on April 16 and then run weekly across ESPN digital platforms on Fridays, with Suzy Shuster, Renee Montgomery, Colleen Wolfe, and Sarah Tiana as hosts. (sportsvideo.org) ESPN had already announced a bigger summer package in February called “Women’s Sports Sundays,” built around Women’s National Basketball Association and National Women’s Soccer League games in prime time. A weekly studio show and a weekly prime-time game block are two pieces of the same bet: there is now enough audience to program women’s sports as a habit, not just an occasional event. (espnpressroom.com, sportsvideo.org) The money mix matters because commercial revenue is still the biggest piece of the business. Deloitte says sponsorships, partnerships, and merchandise remain the main driver, while broadcast and matchday are growing fast enough to make the whole model less dependent on any single stream. (insideworldfootball.com, deloitte.com) Once that mix gets sturdier, the effects usually spread beyond the top leagues. More reliable media windows help sponsors justify bigger deals, bigger deals help clubs spend more on staff and facilities, and better-funded clubs make it easier for more athletes to stay in the sport long enough to become stars. That is an inference from how Deloitte describes the revenue base broadening across commercial, broadcast, and matchday lines. (deloitte.com) The clearest sign of the shift is that last year’s forecast was too low. Deloitte had originally projected $2.35 billion for 2025, and the market still came in higher at $2.4 billion, which is the kind of miss companies like to make because it means demand outran expectations. (deloitte.com) This is no longer a story about whether there is an audience. It is a story about how fast broadcasters, sponsors, and leagues can build around an audience that is already spending, already watching, and now large enough for ESPN to give it recurring space on its own platforms starting April 16, 2026. (sportsvideo.org, deloitte.com)
