This Week's Women's Sports Recap
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PVF content series joins successful wave of league-owned media opportunities in women’s sports.
This weekend, the Pro Volleyball Federation (PVF) premiered its new Team Spotlight Series on YouTube. While women’s sports are winning more primetime coverage and network support than ever before, both emerging and established leagues are still successfully leveraging their own broadcasts to reach fans.
Let’s touch base with a few other women’s leagues to illustrate how owning and streaming content not only gives them a bump with networks, but also creates a major selling point for brand partnerships. Killin’ it.
🏒 The PWHL launches its PWHL Media House. The PWHL doesn’t just want to join the hockey conversation, it wants to be the hockey conversation. The league wants its media arm to generate discussion around women’s hockey, and it got things started by acquiring the Jocks in Jills podcast, which has already attracted brand sponsorship from SharkNinja, Canadian Tire, and Nobis.
Companies often focus directly on sponsoring leagues, but as these brands have shown, listeners tend to show love to podcast sponsors as well.
Trailblazer on the track: Meet Brehanna Daniels, NASCAR’s first Black female tire changer.
Growing up, Brehanna Daniels never imagined she’d be changing tires at 180 miles per hour.
Racing wasn’t even on her radar, let alone as an entire career. After all, how many young Black girls see images of themselves represented in a sport that is predominantly dominated by white men? And we know that it can be hard to fathom becoming what you can’t, or never have seen. But here she is, shattering expectations and rewriting the rulebook for Black women in NASCAR. The Norfolk State graduate is doing it all, one pit stop at a time.
As the first Black female NASCAR Tire Changer and Cup Series pit crew member, Daniels has carved out a space that didn’t exist before her arrival. Her journey and subsequent success in the sport is a blueprint for future generations of Black women who might never have considered racing as a viable path.
“Stepping onto pit road for the first time was a mix of emotions,” says Daniels. The pressure was real and the doubts persisted. But here she still stands, leading a space where people that looked like her were practically non-existent. But overall, her excitement trumped fear. “I was joining a space where not a lot of people look like me,” she says, with a mix of pride and determination that has become her trademark.
Barbie teams up with Peace Collective for exclusive PWHL collection featuring PWHL athletes Emma Maltais and Maggie Connors.
Mattel, Inc., leading global toy and family entertainment company behind the iconic Barbie® brand, announced today a collaboration with the PWHL (Professional Women’s Hockey League) featuring an exclusive collection celebrating the power of women in sport, designed by Canadian brand Peace Collective. Now available for pre-order, the campaign features professional hockey players Emma Maltais and Maggie Connors of the Toronto Sceptres who embrace the purpose driven collaboration and celebrate empowerment, inclusivity, and breaking barriers in sports and fashion.
“The evolution of Barbie embraces any changemaker, inclusive of those redefining the professional sports league in hockey,” states Jennifer Gileno, Head of Licensing at Mattel Canada. “This unique collaboration marks a significant moment for Barbie, a brand that shares PWHL’s vision for breaking barriers in any respective field, which is a marker of which this collaboration is built and something we’re deeply proud of.”
Women’s tournament posts second most-watched Sweet 16 on record.
The NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament is continuing its fast start.
According to ESPN PR, the women’s March Madness tournament has posted its second-most-watched Sweet 16 on record, behind only last year’s Caitlin Clark-fueled ratings bonanza. The regional semifinal round averaged 1.7 million viewers across ESPN’s family of networks.
ABC’s Saturday afternoon doubleheader headlined the round. No. 1 seed Texas’s win over No. 5 seed Tennessee led the day, averaging 2.9 million viewers across ABC, ESPN+, and Disney+. Per ESPN PR, the game was the third-most-watched Sweet 16 game on record and peaked at 3.6 million viewers.
The lead-in to that game also cracked the 2 million viewer threshold. TCU’s win over Notre Dame at 1 p.m. ET on ABC averaged 2.5 million viewers across the same platforms, good for the fourth-most-watched Sweet 16 game on record.
Moving over to ESPN, Saturday evening’s game between Oklahoma and UConn averaged 1.9 million viewers, making it one of the 10 most-watched Sweet 16 games on record. Rounding out the top games of the Sweet 16, South Carolina’s win over Maryland on Friday evening averaged 1.7 million viewers on ESPN, making it also a top-10 Sweet 16 game on record.
Team HOKA just got faster! Welcome sprint star JaMeesia Ford.
JaMeesia Ford has always been bold in her drive to outrun the competition.
When she was nine years old, the sprinter from Fayetteville, North Carolina, attended her older brother’s football practices, coached by her dad, and challenged the boys to race. In sprint after sprint, a young JaMeesia would bolt effortlessly across the grass, breaking away from athletes almost twice her size.
Though the setting has changed from a football field to elite track meets, JaMeesia’s unabashed desire to win has grown stronger with more victories on bigger stages. As a freshman at the University of South Carolina, JaMeesia emerged with two national titles (200 and 4×400 meters) at the 2024 NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships. Her winning time of 22.34 seconds in the indoor 200 meters is the fastest mark ever run by an athlete under 20 years old.
Now, at 20 years old, the six-time All-American is taking another major step in her athletic journey. In just her second collegiate season, JaMeesia has joined HOKA as our first sprinter signed to a name-image-likeness (NIL) partnership.