The Evolution of Women's Sports

The Evolution of Women's Sports Key Moments in Women's Sports History The major professional sports leagues for women are still in their infancy. The WNBA and professional women's fastpitch have only been around for about 20 years. Professional women's soccer has an even shorter history. The Women's Professional Football 1974 League is formed The Women's Professional Basketball League is formed 1978 1991 The U.S. Women's Soccer team wins the first ever women's world championship, beating Norway 1996 The Women's National Basketball Association is formed 2000 The first women's football Super Bowl is played at Pasadena Stadium in Texas . . The Women's Premier League Rugby is formed 2009 2010 The Women's Spring Football League is formed 2012 The National Women's Soccer League is formed 2015 .. The National Women's Hockey League made headlines by announcing they would be the first professional league to pay women for playing hockey Disproportionate Representation and Compensation 40%% of all sports participants are female 4% Yet women's sports receive only of all sports media coverage While they make up more than half of the population at NCAA schools, women only have a 44%0 athletic participation rate Female athletes at the typical Division I-FBS (formerly Division I-A) school receive roughly 28% of the total money spent on athletics, 31% of the recruiting dollars, and 42% of the athletic scholarship dollars 28% 31% 42% athletics recruiting rship At the typical FBS school, for every dollar spent on women's sports, about two and a half dollars are spent on men's sports A recent study comparing coverage of ESPN's SportsCenter and Fox Sports 1's Fox Sports Live found that each program featured women's sports coverage less than 1% of the time The Expanding Popularity of Women's Athletics Participation Girls' participation in high school sports has increased every year for 25 consecutive years and reached more than 3.26 million in 2013-14, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) At high school and College levels, 42% of all athletes are female Girls' participation in sports has grown an average of 50% a year over the last 5 years Audiences At the college level, women's softball is drawing bigger audiences than men's baseball in some instances For example, the women's College World Series averaged almost 440,000 viewers than the men's College World Series more An average audience of ZJ.4 million fans in the United States watched the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup Fanbase Women make up an estimated 45% of the NFL's more than 150 million American fans Women have grown to represent more than a third of the NFL's average viewership "Sunday Night Football" ranked first among women ages 18 to 49 for the first time last season, and Fox said its female football viewing audience had hit a record high 45 million. Super Bowl XLVIII was the most-watched TV program for women this year, with female viewers Market Nearly a third of the athletic retailer Under Armour's in annual sales comes from women $3 BILLION 01 Nike's women's sales growth is Nike sales of its women's sports apparel outpacing its men's business and grew nearly 30% over the last year represented about 18% of the athletic wear firm totaling 5 billion in revenue last year $15.18 The women's activewear market totaled Half of the shoppers on the NBA's online store are $15.1 billion 50% in the 12 months that ended in August 2014, up 10% from the same period in the prior year women Tapping into the Growing Power of Women's Athletics 01 In May 2015, Dick's Sporting Goods rolled out its first advertising campaign targeted directly toward women Under Armour has recently launched its first worldwide ad campaign dedicated to women, tapping elite female athletes as head sponsors Foot Locker chief executive Kenneth C. Hicks has called women's sports apparel the company's "biggest oppor- tunity 83 Video game giant EA Sports said it will, for the first time ever, include women's national teams in its latest edition of one of the world's best-selling video game franchises, FIFA 16 For the first time this year, Nike started selling jerseys for the Women's World Cup-winning team in men's sizes, quashing a long-running double standard; men's team jerseys have sold in women's sizes for years The NFL has been investing in marketing campaigns aimed at women and sponsored studies on how to become more welcoming to female spectators Sources: http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/07/06/how-support-womens-sports http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/busi- ness/wp/2014/10/14/a-12-year-old-basketball-player-complained-about-there-being-no-girls-in-her-sports-catalog-the-problem OHIO -was-even-worse/ http://time.com/3949377/world-cup-women-global-equality/ http://espn.go.com/espnw/news-commentary/arti- cle/13215042/even-wake-record-setting-women-world-cup-myths-surround-women-sports http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/07/sports/soccer/wom- ens-world-cup-final-was-most-watched-soccer-game-in-united-states-history.html http://www.theet.com/sports/wvu/world-cup-popularity-a-reflec- tion-on-how-far-women-s/article_ddlff625-0191-573d-a4dc-dle6410d2c99.html http://www.politico.eu/article/world-cup-women-pay-gap-gender-equality/ http://time.com/3945762/world-cup-womens-sports/ http://www.pbs.org/pov/trueheartedvixens/timeline.php http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/06/17/opinion/sunday/sundayreview-titleix-timeline.html?_r-0#/#time12_264 http://www.wbhot.com/Timeline.html http://www.northnet.org/stlawrenceaauw/timelne6.htm http://www.rytimes.com/interactive/2012/06/17/opinion/sunday/sundayreview-titleix-timeline.html?_r-0#/#time12 264 http://www.ussoccer.com/stories/2014/03/17/14/03/us-soccer-president-sunil-gulati-announces-new-womens-league-for-2013 http://newsportsleagues.weebly.com/womens-spring-football-league-wsfi.html https://www.facebook.com/wplrugby http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nhl-puck-daddy/three-things-you-need-to-know-about-the-nwhl-draft-074515167.html http://www.cehd.umn.edu/tuckercenter/multimedia/mediacoverage.html http://www.nwlc.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/nwlcathletics_titleixfactsheet.pdf http://com.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/06/05/2167479515588761.full.pdf+html https://www.nsga.org/globalassets/dragonwing-girlgear-feature.pdf http://www.fifa.com/womensworldcup/news/y-2015/m-7/news-world-cup-final-smashes-tv-records-in-us-japan-2661775.html http://www.cnbc.com/2015/05/07/nike-dicks-get-real-in-new-round-of-womens-ads.html http://fortune.com/2014/10/22/nike-women-business/ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/indra-nooyi/post_5638_b_3920443.html http://www.thestreet.com/story/13080836/1/lady-foot-locker-will-disappear-over-the-next-few-years.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/07/06/the-sad-gender-economics-of-the-womens-world-cup/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/wom- en-are-pro-footballs-most-important-market-will-they-forgive-the-nfi/2014/09/12/d5ba8874-3a7f-1le4-9c9f-ebb47272e40e_stor y.html http://www.fifa.com/mm/document/footballdevelopment/women/02/52/26/49/womensfootballsurvey2014 e_english.pdf 1 80 4 UNIVERSITY http://onlinemasters.ohio.edu/