{"id":550746,"date":"2026-03-28T16:36:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-28T16:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/550746\/"},"modified":"2026-03-28T16:36:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T16:36:07","slug":"womens-pro-sports-experience-massive-growth-and-record-viewership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/550746\/","title":{"rendered":"Women’s pro sports experience massive growth and record viewership"},"content":{"rendered":"

DENVER \u2014 Professional women’s sports are experiencing hypergrowth, expanding 4.5 times faster than men’s sports. According to the consulting firm McKinsey<\/a>, global revenues for women’s sports are projected to reach $2.3 billion this year.<\/p>\n

“People love watching sports. They love watching winners,” Jared Bahir Browsh said.<\/p>\n

Browsh, the director of critical sports studies at CU Boulder, said the current success is the result of long-term efforts.<\/p>\n

“This has been a growth project, and it takes time to build a fan base, and we’re finally seeing the fruits of that in women’s sports,” Browsh said.<\/p>\n

The growth is fueled by a massive increase in viewership. Both the WNBA Finals and the National Women\u2019s Soccer League championship games last year saw over a million average viewers. Fans are also filling stadiums.<\/p>\n

“I went to several of the Denver Onyx rugby games last year. I think I’m going to get season tickets this coming spring,” Jess Hollingshead said.<\/p>\n

Hollingshead is among the growing number of fans attending live events. She has a long list of professional women’s sporting events she has attended, including the PWHL women’s hockey takeover games, and she went to her first WNBA game last summer. <\/p>\n

Hollingshead is also one of more than 50,000 fans who have already bought tickets to watch Denver\u2019s first professional soccer team, Denver Summit FC on March 28.<\/p>\n

“I cannot wait to go and have a professional team that I can go to here. That’s soccer. That’s one of the biggest women’s sports that were accessible to my generation growing up,” Hollingshead said.<\/p>\n

Hollingshead shared her excitement at The 99ers Sports Bar,<\/a> Denver\u2019s first sports bar dedicated to women\u2019s athletics. Co-owners Miranda Spencer and Annie Weaver have built a community at the bar since 2024 in spite of some doubters.<\/p>\n

“We’re on social media, and people are commenting, like, they will not last longer than a week, you know? So, so it’s easy to get in our heads, but ultimately overcame all that,” Weaver said.<\/p>\n

“I would say that our retention is our return rate is probably 35%,” Spencer said.<\/p>\n

The business addresses a problem fans have when trying to access games available only on streaming or cable services.<\/p>\n

“A lot of these teams or leagues still don’t have broadcast partners, which is really unfortunate, especially because of how many fans they have, and how they’ve taken off. I will say, since we opened, it has changed a tremendous amount,” Weaver said.<\/p>\n

Scripps, the parent company of Denver7, has partnered with the WNBA, NWSL, and PWHL to broadcast games. <\/p>\n

While challenges around equality remain, professional women\u2019s sports have gone mainstream, and local fans want to see more expansion.<\/p>\n

“I hope Denver gets all of the professional sports teams. I hope we get a WNBA team. I hope we get a PWHL team, somebody with money, bring a WNBA team to Denver, we’re hoping, fingers crossed,” Weaver said.<\/p>\n

This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Coloradans making a difference | Denver7 featured videos<\/p>\n

Denver7 is committed to making a difference in our community by standing up for what’s right, listening, lending a helping hand and following through on promises. See that work in action, in the videos above. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DENVER \u2014 Professional women’s sports are experiencing hypergrowth, expanding 4.5 times faster than men’s sports. According to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":550747,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[245038,245039,46185,208772,99,171204,434,152201,1765,245040,245041],"class_list":["post-550746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-99ers-sports-bar","tag-denver-summit-fc","tag-nwsl","tag-pwhl","tag-sports","tag-sports-viewership","tag-wnba","tag-womens-sports-growth","tag-womens-sports","tag-womens-professional-sports-see-massive-growth-as-fans-pack-stadiums-and-viewership-hits-record-highs","tag-womens-sports-stats"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=550746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550746\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/550747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}