How the Pandemic Super-Charged Broadcast’s Interest in Women’s Sports

Lisa Baird became the commissioner of the National Women’s Soccer League on March 10, 2020. Two days later, she suspended the season—and then plotted the league’s careful June return from their quarantine bubble that would end up breaking sports rating records. "To be the first team sport to come back in a bubble was an unbelievable and monumental accomplishment,” said Dan Weinberg, evp of programming for CBS Sports. “It was nothing short of miraculous. I give them all the credit in the world, and they became an example of how to do it. And it was a blazing success." Viewership spiked 493% year-over-year Just how much of a blazing success was the month-long Challenge Cup, which aired on CBS and on CBS All Access (now rebranded to Paramount+)? As viewership of the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB all saw double-digit declines in 2020, the National Women’s Soccer League recorded its seven most-watched games ever, led by the championship match-up, which attracted 653,000 viewers on the CBS broadcast network. Viewership of the league was up an astounding 493% year-over-year, and social media mentions jumped 152%. ViacomCBS, which was “very pleased” with the reception, Weinberg said, is looking to cash in again on linear and on streaming. That begins tonight as the league is back in action with the return of the Challenge Cup. Tonight’s match-up features a contest between the Chicago Red Stars and the Houston Dash at 8:30 p.m. ET on CBSSN, followed by Portland Thorns vs. Kansas City on Paramount+ at 10:30 p.m. ET. As the competition kicks off tonight, so too does another season of growing interest in women’s sports across network television. Ratings across nearly every professional sports league dipped in 2020, due in part to a pandemic-related dearth of programming, but women’s sports, which has long been relegated to television’s sidelines, has been making impressive inroads with audiences, giving networks a reason to showcase women’s leagues on both linear and streaming. “If you put women’s sports on TV, which now you have to because of the pandemic and everybody’s making these deals, all of a sudden, ratings are going up,” said Amira Rose Davis, an assistant professor at Penn State University, during a panel at this year’s virtual SXSW conference. “I think this [lack of interest was flawed] and the idea [that interest] needs to be there to make investment is something that for so many years people have pointed to as ridiculous.” A long time coming Women’s sports have been capturing growing audiences for years. Some credit goes to the popularity of the U.S. Women’s National Team in the 2019 FIFA World Cup. The championship match-up between the USA and the Netherlands was the most-watched women’s match ever, generating an average live audience of 82.18 million, up by 56% over the previous final in 2015. (In the U.S. alone, the final on Fox peaked at 20 million viewers, outperforming the men’s 2018 World Cup by 22%.) But it took the Covid-19 pandemic and the evaporation of other kinds of sports programming to accelerate a trend that was already emerging. Last year was the first year that NWSL aired on a broadcast network, after previously being relegated to cable. A+E Networks previously had a three-year agreement with the league, first struck in 2017, airing games on Lifetime. That partnership came to an early end in 2019. Last fall, the league’s fall series featured five games airing on CBS, averaging 383,000 viewers—a small but not insubstantial figure, especially considering that every game was streaming on CBS All Access, now Paramount+ and the streamer counted subscription gains tied to the matches. That was the proof the company needed to calculate the value live matches could bring to the service. “We found pretty quickly that the [NWSL] audience exceeded our expectations,” Jeffrey Gerttula, the evp and gm of CBS Sports Digital, recently told Adweek. “There was an audience that was more willing to spend, was bigger, and that was more valuable than anticipated. We quickly saw that, and that just sort of sharpened and increased our appetite for the sport.” This year, nearly every game of the 2021 Challenge Cup will stream on Paramount+, and four matches will air CBS Sports Network. The championship on May 8 will get prime billing on the broadcast network. “We’re going to push for maximum exposure and maximum visibility of this entire initiative, because that’s our role as our partner,” Weinberg said. Small, but reliable growth It’s not just women’s soccer that’s experiencing growth. The WNBA and ESPN teamed up in 2020 for ESPN’s largest WNBA schedule ever, featuring 37 live regular-season games and the entirety of the 2020 Finals. Viewership of the finals in October were up 15% year over year and the league marked a 68% increase in regular-season viewership across ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC, with games averaging 440,000 viewers (Game 3 was up 34% to average 570,000.) And while it’s still small, the growth stands in contrast to the NBA, which has gotten prime billing for years on network television. This year, the NBA Finals averaged 7.5 million—its lowest rating on record, down 51%. The growth in women’s basketball is also attractive. CBS Sports also has a rights deal with the women’s basketball league, airing 40 telecasts across the 2020 season, and the league had a broadcast presence on ABC. The ratings gains on women’s professional basketball is translating to the collegiate level too. The women’s tournament on ESPN, still small, saw a 9% growth in viewers during Sunday’s telecast, making it the most-viewed NCAA women’s basketball championship game since 2014. The Sweet 16 was up by a resolute 67%, and the Final Four jumped up 14%. Similarly, the NCAA Men’s March Madness tournament, which gets wall-to-wall coverage, saw its championship game on Monday average 16.92 million viewers on CBS, down about 14% from the 2019 game. (The tournament itself was down 13% across CBS, TNT, TBS and truTV.) “I think that people are seeing more evidence that women athletes are elite, and the quality of the games that they play is as good as any comparable men’s event,” said Adam Deutsch, a managing director at Deloitte. “It probably started with the Women’s World Cup, some of the thrills over the years. Couple that with everything else going on in sports, the opening up of the sports betting landscape has people interested in more sports activities. It all kind of has that flywheel effect and gets people interested.” Even hockey is getting in on the action. An agreement between the National Women’s Hockey League and NBC Sports marked the first-ever women’s professional hockey games shown live on a major cable network in the U.S. NBC Sports Network aired the NWHL Isobel Cup Semifinals and Finals on March 26 and 27. As the NWHL rode the wave of momentum for female sports in the U.S., the NHL Stanley Cup Finals dropped 38% in 2020. “Our partnership with NBC Sports is monumental for the visibility of the NWHL,” NWHL commissioner Tyler Tumminia said in a statement. “Never before has women’s professional hockey had the opportunity to reach so many people on American television in the United States. As we have seen with the WNBA and NWSL this year, when women’s major league sports leagues are given a strong showcase, viewership is increased, and countless new fans connect with the teams and players.” Read Next: Streamers Eye Sports Rights as a Way to Stand Out With Subscribers