FOCUS-Priced low, growing fast: women's sports draw smart money

By Johann M Cherian

March 30 (Reuters) - Wealthy investors are increasingly turning to women's sports as a rare opportunity to tap into a fast-growing market at lower valuations, favoring strong returns over the high entry costs and limited upside of marquee men's franchises in the NFL or the UK's Premier League.

Once considered underdeveloped, women's sports are gaining traction as rising media rights, sponsorships and viewership create a mix of low valuations and high growth potential.

The U.S. women's sports market is expected to grow at 16% annually, roughly three times faster than men's sports, to generate about $2.5 billion in annual revenue for rights holders by 2030, according to consulting firm McKinsey.

The gap in growth, also fueled by the emergence of women superstars such as Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark, is drawing ultra-high-net-worth investors seeking stronger long-term returns.

"Valuations are growing very rapidly and there is still plenty of room to grow," said Jason Wright, partner at Ariel Investments and a former National Football League executive.

Ariel backs the National Women's Soccer League club (NWSL) Denver Summit, which debuted this year.

ENTRY COSTS RISE

Rising expansion fees and team valuations highlight demand as the league fee for a NWSL team has surged from the $2 million paid to launch Los Angeles' Angel City FC in 2020 to the $165 million put up by the owners of the new Atlanta franchise launching in 2028, according to consulting firm Navigate.

That valuation upside applies to existing franchises as well.

Digital sports media platform Sportico estimates that Angel City is now worth $335 million, up 34% from just over a year ago, when the club's controlling stake was sold to former Walt Disney CEO Bob Iger and his wife, journalist Willow Bay. That deal valued the team at $250 million - setting a global record for a women's sports franchise at the time.

And investors are increasingly underwriting that upside.

Tommy Nordam Jensen, chief executive at New York-based women's sports investment platform Pitch15, said that "well-executed investments in the sector could potentially deliver roughly 2–5x over five to 10 years as the market matures," the kind of returns rarely available in established men's leagues.

Media rights are also reinforcing that investment case, with the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) signing an 11-year broadcast and streaming deal worth about $200 million annually - more than triple its previous agreement, according to Navigate.

Similarly, the NWSL has seen a sharp rise as well. Its 2023 rights deal netted the league about $60 million a year, according to Navigate.

UPSIDE FROM VALUATION GAP

Yet, a large valuation gap persists.

Sportico estimates the average WNBA team is worth about $269 million, compared with about $5.5 billion for a National Basketball Association (NBA) franchise, even as the viewership of WNBA playoff games approach levels comparable to the NBA's regular season ones.

The WNBA's Golden State Valkyries is the most valuable women's sports franchise, worth about $500 million, according to Sportico, but that figure is still only a fraction of Dallas Cowboys' valuation of $12.8 billion.

"A lot of people talk about women's sports being ahead of valuations that are justifiable, yet at the same time, if viewership and fan attention are the biggest drivers of value, there is a mismatch in valuation that the market has not yet caught up with," Ariel's Wright said.

Also driving growth is corporate sponsorship as combined spending on the WNBA and NWSL shot up 32.7% year-on-year to a record $195 million in 2025, according to SponsorUnited, with financial companies such as JPMorgan Chase JPM.N, CashApp and Ally ALLY.N among the most visible endorsers.

The sports intelligence platform said this expansion was running more than three times faster than the men's leagues, driven by the impact of women superstars such as Clark and newer stars like Angel Reese and Paige Bueckers, some of whom have been signed by dozens of brands.

Even so, women's sports are expected to account for only about 2% of the U.S. sports market by 2030, McKinsey estimated, at a time when Ivo Voynov, head of sports finance at Citi Wealth, says that men's team valuations are largely "fully priced".

"The number of people globally who can write multi-billion dollar checks to acquire these (men's sports) assets is not expanding at the same rate as team valuations," Voynov said, underscoring the scale of the untapped potential in women's sports.