Women’s Sports are SO UP
In 2025, women’s sports popularity reached new heights. Arenas began to sell out, women’s sports advertisements flooded people’s feeds, and viewership numbers climbed to record-breaking levels. Now, just 1 year later, women’s sports have become completely mainstream, with Nielsen’s analysis reporting that 122.5 million Americans, or 52.8% of the total U.S. population, consider themselves fans of women’s sports.
The women’s sports fanbase is expected to continue to rise citing the success it has seen in the first half of 2026 alone. A Nielsen report found that women’s sports racked up over 28.6 billion viewing minutes since the start of the year, an 18% increase from this time last year.
Charlene Polite Corley, Nielsen’s Vice President of Inclusive Insights, commented on this increase, emphasizing that this rise of women’s sports is not a fad but “a cultural realignment where access to games, storytelling around athletes, and ongoing investment from brands are changing the economy and energy of global sports.”
The WNBA is a major leader in this movement, accounting for 3.8 billion of the total women’s sports viewing minutes documented in the first half of 2026. This is a 54% increase in viewership compared to the amount documented in the first half of 2025. As more people watch WNBA games, the overall value of the franchise increases, with the sponsor valuation increasing over 71% within this year. This jump in sponsor valuation can be seen as a trend throughout other professional women’s leagues, with an 81% increase for the NWSL and a 51% increase for the LPGA.
However, it isn’t just women’s sports that are growing in viewership. Men’s sports have seen an increase in their viewership as more women become interested in sports. Women are among the fastest-growing group of fans in men’s sports, making it unsurprising that 56% of all recent U.S. sports fans are women. In general, sports fandoms across the U.S. are growing, and women seem to be prominent leaders in this movement for both men’s and women’s sports.
