In the winter of 2020, Ellen Hyslop, co-founder of sports media company The Gist, started looking into the sports podcast space. Readers of The Gist’s newsletter were asking for an audio extension, Hyslop said, and the podcast industry was on the cusp of a growth phase. But when The Gist team pulled up the sports podcast charts, there was one trend that stood out.
“The top 10, top 20, top 30 podcasts—every single one of them were hosted by men,” Hyslop told Marketing Brew.
Almost five years later, the sports industry looks a little different, with increasing numbers of women in leadership positions and a surge in women’s sports viewership. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the sports podcast space is beginning to catch up.
Sports podcasts hosted by men and about men’s teams and leagues still rule the Apple Podcasts and Spotify charts, but there’s been a recent explosion of sports podcasts by, for, and about women, and interest from media companies, listeners, and advertisers only continues to push the category forward.
“People aren’t immediately thinking of that 28-year-old corporate girlie in New York as someone who would be listening to a sports podcast on their way into the office one day, but that’s really who we’re talking to,” Hyslop said. “Female fans care about all different types of sports, and there’s a market to speak to them.”
Starting lineup
The roster of women’s sports podcasts on the market has been quietly growing for the past several years. The Athletic first introduced Full Time with Meg Linehan, a women’s soccer podcast hosted by the veteran reporter, in 2020, the same year Hyslop and the team at The Gist got The Gist of It up and running. A year later, start-up consultancy and media platform Goals started its podcast, The Business Case for Women’s Sports. And ahead of the Women’s World Cup last summer, soccer stars Christen Press and Tobin Heath debuted their women’s soccer podcast, The Re—Cap Show.
Around the time of the Paris Olympics this summer, there were even more shows that came into the fold. IHeartMedia teamed up with agency Deep Blue Sports + Entertainment to create the Women’s Sports Audio Network audio platform. Vox Media signed Megan Rapinoe and Sue Bird’s A Touch More podcast to its network. Dear Media inked a deal with woman-hosted sports podcast Sunday Sports Club. Betches Media, which has introduced a sports vertical, is currently developing a vodcast to further build out its sports coverage, and is in talks with potential advertisers, Chief Content Officer Kate Ward told us.
“For years, whenever I’ve turned on pre-game or halftime reports, I have always been disappointed to see almost exclusively all-male roundtables and chat shows on my screens,” Ward wrote in an email. “It’s the reason we are psyched to be amplifying women’s voices in the space even further.”
IHeartMedia CMO Gayle Troberman said the programming team noticed increased interest in women’s sports content from both audiences and advertisers, prompting a rapid move into the space earlier this year. The company debuted its women’s sports network at Cannes, which includes the daily women’s sports podcast Good Game with Sarah Spain and women’s sports broadcast dispatches across 500 iHeart radio stations.
Pitch invasion
Audiences seem to like what they hear. The Gist of It, which covers both men’s and women’s sports, has grown its audience about 20% year over year without any paid marketing support since it started, Hyslop said, and more than 90% of its mainly millennial and Gen Z listener base identify as female or non-binary, she said.
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At The Athletic, the past year has been something of a turning point for its women’s sports podcasts. Full Time has always had a following, but when the show was revamped in May ahead of the Olympics, it led to a 28% increase in average episode downloads, according to Lauren Funke, the publication’s VP of advertising.
Another podcast, The Athletic Women’s Basketball Show, had its monthly downloads increase by 97% since March, Funke told us. That spike is largely due to women listeners, who now make up 66% of the show’s audience, up from 49% a year ago.
“The Caitlin Clark effect,” Funke called it.
The Athletic’s latest sports audio venture is Scoop City, an NFL podcast that went live in July hosted by sports journalist Dianna Russini and retired NFL quarterback Chase Daniel. Early data indicates the show has about double the amount of women listeners than the outlet’s average for a podcast, according to Funke.
Advertisers have come knocking as well. The Gist of It nailed down Aflac as a presenting partner, and Hyslop said the show regularly attracts inbound interest from advertisers. The same can be said for The Athletic, which has clocked an increase in net new advertisers looking to be associated with women’s basketball and soccer coverage for Q4, Funke said, and at iHeartMedia, which has been steadily fielding sponsorship inquiries since it got into the women’s sports podcast game, according to Troberman.
“In some categories, we had people fighting, down to who’s going to sign the papers and be in first,” Troberman said.
Crowded field
Vox Media has seen diverse brand interest in its sports content, including Rapinoe and Bird’s podcast, Lillian Xu, executive director for Vox Media’s podcast business, said. L’Oréal Paris became the show’s exclusive beauty sponsor before it even debuted, and Xu said her team is in talks with brands from other categories.
“Advertising partners are seeing the genuine fandom and the wide appeal of women’s sports,” Xu said. “It’s not just women, it’s plenty of men, too.”
Dear Media brought Sunday Sports Club, its second-ever sports podcast, on board in August, and as of this month, Dear Media was “closing deals as we speak,” President Paige Port said. Cookware brand Caraway and travel company Viator are active sponsors, and Port said she’s seeing interest from brands in categories like beverages and supplements.
Though there’s been a noticeable bump in women’s sports podcasts—and women’s sports podcast advertisers—media execs said the space isn’t nearing a ceiling…unless it’s the glass one.
“We’re going to continue to invest, there’s no question,” Funke said. “Our readers love it. It’s important for our business, because advertisers want to be around it. I do expect that we’re going to continue to see growth and momentum.”