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During September’s U.S. Open tennis tournament, ESPN cut away from a marquee match between two-time champion Naomi Osaka and the 2023 title-holder Coco Gauff to air an ad for other sports coverage on the channel. The athletes in the spot? Caitlin Clark and several of her WNBA peers.

The moment

served as a powerful reminder that women’s influence in American sports has gotten too big to ignore.

The money has been flowing into the sector for the past few years now. In 2024, revenue for all of women’s sports surpassed $1 billion for the first time, and it is projected to hit $2.5 billion by 2030. According to a recent report by McKinsey, revenue from women’s sports is growing at more than four times the rate of men’s sports. Meanwhile, the WNBA’s 11-year, $2.2 billion media rights deal will begin next year, quadrupling the value of the league’s previous contracts and virtually ensuring that viewership records will continue to be broken.