Christina Gough
Research expert covering sports and video gaming
Women's sport in the United States - statistics & facts
From increased attendances to more TV viewers and bigger contracts, women’s sport is experiencing massive growth. One of the trailblazers of this growth is the United States, where some of the most popular professional women’s sports leagues have been well established for decades. While the rest of the world is catching up, the United States is home to some of the most recognizable and marketable female athletes in the world.
Strides have also been made in classically male-dominated sports such as the NFL, where almost 30 percent of team vice presidents in 2023 were female. While no female has yet secured a head coach position of an NFL franchise, female coaches such as Jennifer King and Angela Baker have blazed the trail within the league as full-time coaches. With so many female role models both on and off the field, women's sport in the United States and further afield is on course to grow and grow.
From college to the WNBA - female stars of the court
College sport, while not strictly professional, is also particularly popular in the United States. Women's college basketball, the pinnacle of which is the March Madness tournament, has led to the rise to prominence of international stars such as Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese. The average TV audience of the NCCA Women’s Basketball Championship exceeded two million viewers in 2024, more than doubling the figure from a year before. This rise in popularity has also translated to the professional stage, where the revenue of the Women's National Basketball Association increased by over 200 percent in 2023 from the previous year. Indeed, in a 2024 survey in the United States gauging the level of interest in the WNBA, over one quarter of respondents stated that they were interested in the league, a figure which was as low as 11 percent in 2020.The USWNT is a global leader on the soccer field
Women's soccer has a storied history in the United States. The United States Women's National Team, often referred to as USWNT, has dominated the game for decades, winning twice as many FIFA Women's World Cup titles as any other nation. On a domestic level, the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL), the top tier of women's soccer in the United States, has also seen in increase in popularity in recent years. Average attendance in the NWSL exceeded 10,000 for the first time in 2023, up over 2,000 on average from the season before. With both the next FIFA Women's World Cup in 2027 and the next FIFA Men's World Cup in 2026 being held in the Americas, interest in women's soccer in the United States is on track to continue its upward trend.Women are increasingly being seen on the sidelines as well as on the field
While female representation on the sports field is important, so is having women in positions of power and responsibility in the sporting world in general. In the WNBA, the share of team CEOs or presidents who are female has increased significantly from barely 15 percent in 2012 to 75 percent in 2023. A similar trend can be seen on the side of the court, where the share of female head coaches in the WNBA reached a record high of 75 percent in the 2023 season. That year, the WNBA championships were won by the Las Vegas Aces, whose head coach Becky Hammon is herself a six-time WNBA All-Star as a player, as well as a two time WNBA champion as head coach.Strides have also been made in classically male-dominated sports such as the NFL, where almost 30 percent of team vice presidents in 2023 were female. While no female has yet secured a head coach position of an NFL franchise, female coaches such as Jennifer King and Angela Baker have blazed the trail within the league as full-time coaches. With so many female role models both on and off the field, women's sport in the United States and further afield is on course to grow and grow.
