Women's sports are filling seats, fulfilling dreams

Caitlin Clark is in front of a movement that doesn't seem temporary.

Mallory Swanson

It’s not just Caitlin Clark. It’s not just the U.S. Women’s National Team. It’s not a sprout here and a sprout there. 

There is no such thing as a series of outliers. The world of women’s sports is not just having a moment. It is living the life that it created.

Last Aug. 30, Nebraska played Omaha in Lincoln’s Memorial Stadium. The sport was volleyball and the crowd was 92,003, which was the world record for any women’s sporting event worldwide. That was a great visual, but it didn’t reflect the depth of what’s happening. 

On Dec. 14, the semifinals of the women’s Final Four filled Amalie Arena in Tampa, a crowd of 19,598, and the participants were Nebraska, Pitt, Wisconsin and Texas. No “home” team. Two nights later, when Texas won the championship over Nebraska, the crowd was 19,727.

On Sept. 13 Wisconsin played Marquette in Milwaukee’s FiServ Center and drew 17,037. On Dec. 6, Marquette’s eighth-ranked men’s basketball team played Texas in the same building, where the Bucks play, and drew 16,833.

In late October, Fox showed two Big Ten volleyball matches after its NFL telecasts. Over 1.66 million watched.

This is grassroots stuff. Women’s volleyball participation in high school rose 12 percent last year. Club teams are everywhere. There was 4,200 at an AAU event in Orlando last year. And why not? It’s a kinetic sport with stark athleticism, both vertically and horizontally, and its players are unmasked and emotional.

Then there’s hockey. 

The Professional Women’s Hockey League opened in six NHL cities. Minnesota’s opener, against Montreal, drew 13,316 in Xcel Energy Center, where the Wild plays. The other cities are Toronto, Ottawa, New York and Boston — yes, their own Original Six, in places where the game already runs deep. Except for New York, which plays some games in the Islanders’ UBS Arena, the games are in smaller buildings, part of the managed growth plan that one would expect from the Mark Walter Group, which runs the league and owns the Dodgers.

When New York played Toronto, three major Canadian networks broadcast it live, and the total audience was 2.9 million. Then Ottawa’s home opener drew 8,319. Until then, no women’s professional game had drawn more than 6,000 in North America.

“It kind of hits you when you’re driving to the game and you see signs: ‘Event parking here,’’’ said Kendall Coyne Schofield, the Olympian who plays for Minnesota. “People are talking about how they have to get here early to get parked.”

Then there’s soccer.

On Dec. 10, Arsenal’s women’s team played Chelsea in Emirates Stadium. The crowd was 59,042. That was a record for the Women’s Super League, which Arsenal set a few weeks earlier, also at home, against Liverpool. Arsenal hopes to top itself on Feb. 17 when it plays Manchester United. But then Chelsea and Man U drew 77,390 to Wembley Stadium last May 14.

In the States, the raging success of the USWNT was unmistakable for decades, but no one knew if Alex Morgan, Carli Lloyd and Megan Rapinoe would trigger a successful pro league. When does sports saturation reach critical mass? We still don’t know, because the National Women’s Soccer League set its attendance record with a month left in the 2023 season. Its crowds were up 26 percent and exceeded 1.2 million. The championship game was in San Diego’s new Snapdragon Stadium and drew over 25,000, even though the local Wave wasn’t involved. The Wave did average over 20,000 fans for the season, and LA’s Angel City FC and the Portland Thorns topped 18,000.

There is concern over some markets, like Chicago, which didn’t average 5,000 for the Red Stars, but the league will expand from 12 to 14 clubs in 2024. And the 2023 numbers might have been higher if the USWNT hadn’t face-planted during the World Cup. Then again, the fact that the pro league’s success has decoupled from the national team’s fate is a net positive.

Beyond that, the Thorns were just sold to Raj and Marta Bhathal for a league-record $63 million. And Mallory Swanson, whose husband Dansby is the Chicago Cubs’ shortstop, signed a five-year deal with the Red Stars for $2 million, another league record.

Then there’s basketball.

David Jones, columnist for the Harrisburg (Pa.) Patriot-Ledger, recently theorized that Clark is the first woman who is the most prominent college athlete in any sport and of any gender. Iowa’s women’s games are sold out for the season and so are all their remaining Big 10 road games. The women draw 14,998 per outing, but the Iowa men have only drawn 10,000 for one home game (Michigan). Clark is averaging 31.3 points, and the Hawkeyes are 18-1.

Emulating Nebraska volleyball, Iowa played DePaul in Kinnick Stadium and drew 55,646, with all proceeds going to the university’s children’s hospital.

Iowa and South Carolina became the first two women’s teams to draw 200,000 fans for a season in 2022-23. Connecticut, which sold out for the season, and Iowa State both drew 10,000 fans per game, and four others topped 8,000 per game. One of those was LSU, the national champion, which beat Iowa in the NCAA Finals and not only jump-started a real rivalry but brought a staggering TV audience of 9.9 million, the top rating for any ESPN college game, men’s or women’s. Overall, the Final Four averaged 6.5 million.

The men’s championship game between Connecticut and San Diego State drew 15.5 million, but that was a bit skewed because the event returned to CBS after it was shown on TBS in 2022.

But then ESPN’s regular-season women’s broadcasts were up 11 percent in 2023, and LSU’s regular season loss to South Carolina drew 1.5 million.

USC and UCLA just finished their head-to-head series and sold out both arenas. The game at USC’s Galen Center, in which USC handed the Bruins their first defeat, drew 10,657; the one at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion lured 13,659. Both were program records.

The WNBA started in 1996, a brazen bet. Would a generation of prominent college stars like Sheryl Swoopes and Lisa Leslie bring people through summer turnstiles? It was an open question for years, as the league overextended from eight to 16 teams and even lost the Houston Comets, its most successful franchise. Now there are 12 reasonably solid teams with San Francisco joining up in 2025.

Last season the Las Vegas Aces won their second consecutive championship and led the league with an average crowd of 9,551. That boosted the league’s average to 6,615, which was its best in five seasons, and was a 16 percent increase over 2022. Chicago and Minnesota played an exhibition in Toronto’s ScotiaBank Arena and drew 20,000. Beyond that, the league’s telecasts had its best ratings in 11 years, and its ABC telecasts were up 21 percent over 2022.

It helped that the WNBA arranged a rivalry between Las Vegas and New York, and that players like A’ja Wilson and Brianna Stewart have become celebrities beyond their markets. But how gaudy will the numbers get when Clark joins up?

We citizens of Distraction Nation have trouble digesting incremental change. So does a sports media landscape that would rather wallow in its weekly dissection of Dak Prescott than extract its head.

What’s happening is the natural extension of an eternal struggle, from the days when college hoop coaches had to sew the numbers on the uniforms, when women’s teams had to practice at odd hours and at the mercy of the men’s programs, when the idea of women actually earning a living in sports was a delusion.

Now we’re at a point where we, or at least our children, can rationally expect a woman to coach an NBA team someday. Rachel Balkovec was a waitress 10 years ago. Last year she was the manager of the Tampa Tarpons, the Yankees’ Class A team. Now the Miami Marlins have hired her as their director of player development. Jobs like that often produce general managers.

But make no mistake. This is not just happening because gender barriers have fallen and gender stereotypes have been erased from the national mind, although certainly we’re trending that way. It is happening because women’s sports is good business, because athletes like Clark and Olivia Dunne are making big bucks in NIL and collective endeavors and in commercials, because advertisers are plugged into the market’s mind.

Credit Donna Lopiano and the Title IX warriors; credit Billie Jean King and those who fought for equal pay at the tennis Slams and who never missed a chance to plant a dream. Maybe equality, in all forms, is possible someday, but that’s not the story right now. The story is identity, and how women are thriving in sports because they’re emulating no one but themselves.

Call it a moment if you must. It’s not momentary.