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This is the year gymnast Simone Biles led Team USA to Olympic gold, the year Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese made women’s basketball the hottest event to watch and turned the WNBA tunnel into a runway. This is the year Coco Gauff, Emma Navarro, and Jessica Pegula pulled in streams of fans—more than ever—to the US Open, the year Suni Lee made her triumphant return to the mat and Katie Ledecky swam her way into becoming the most decorated female American Olympian of all time. It’s the year rugby player Ilona Maher won an Olympic medal and went viral on TikTok for challenging body stereotypes for female athletes. But most importantly, this is the year that the world started to care, to finally give women’s sports the attention they’ve long deserved.
It’s easy to pin the entire success of women’s sports this year to the Paris Olympics—the most watched ever and the first to have full gender parity, by the way—but it’s more than that. The momentum has been building for a while, and the Games, the WNBA All-Star Game, the Conacaf W Gold Cup, and the many pro tennis tournaments around the globe that have taken place in the past several months have all helped it peak. Of course, it’s not solely the events but also the coverage of the events on both traditional media outlets and social media that have grown the fandom around these female athletes and disciplines. Who didn’t obsess over South Korean sharpshooter Kim Yeji’s no-nonsense performance, or Jordan Chiles’s fun floor routine at the Games? And who hasn’t been entranced by the dunks pro basketball players make after arriving at their arenas in full designer street-style fits?
The athletes themselves have also started to put more attention into creating their own brands and fan bases on their platforms. Lee and Maher have become full-on TikTokers, while Biles and track star Gabby Thomas share snippets of their lives almost daily on Instagram. And we can’t forget to mention how GOATs Serena Williams, Megan Rapinoe, and Sue Bird continue to promote sports on their feeds, make public appearances at tournaments, and act as mentors for the next generation.
One thing this constant exposure has done, proving that we’re at a never-before-seen peak in women’s sports fandom, is that it’s given us, as spectators, a chance to fall in love with the humanness of these athletes. It’s not only about the sport anymore. No, like true millennials and Gen Zers, we’re involved in the love stories, the drama, the controversies. We’ve fought alongside Chiles for her Olympic bronze medal, we’ve been there to support Naomi Osaka as she speaks openly about how postpartum has affected her game, and we’ve certainly blinked away some tears watching videos of Olympian Tara Davis-Woodhall and Paralympian husband Hunter’s magnetic displays of romance. We’ve speculated about the motivations behind Raygun’s wacky breakdancing routine in Paris, and we’ve even made Ellie the Elephant, the New York Liberty’s sassy mascot, a full-on celebrity. And, while Taylor Swift is not a pro athlete herself, she is dating one, and she’s made being a WAG the dream of every other Swiftie.
As is the way of life, once the fans come, so do the sponsorships. Prada has taken Clark under its wing, Chiles walked the runway during New York Fashion Week, Adidas made custom acrylic nails for a campaign with soccer star and beauty It girl Trinity Rodman, and Kim Kardashian’s Skims tapped WNBA stars including Candace Parker, Cameron Brink, and DiJonai Carrington for a global campaign. Dior put together a dream team of 15 international female athletes—who became ambassadors for the French fashion house—ahead of the Olympics, Off-White made custom jackets for the New York Liberty (and their elephant), Biles dropped a clothing collection with Athleta, and New Balance made Paralympic racer Catherine Debrunner the first woman in a wheelchair to be featured in one of its global clothing campaigns. Equal pay is also on its way—with female soccer players in the U.S. Women’s National Team now guaranteed the same salary as their male counterparts—though, of course, we have a ways to go in that realm, and it starts with support from fans.
Now, what pro female athletes want is for the momentum to continue and for more young girls to realize they can have a career in sports. We can only go up from here.
