With two World Cup wins, an Olympic bronze medal, and experience in multiple pro leagues around the world, Christen Press is one of the most prolific soccer players of the time. But fans would be hard-pressed to find digital evidence of her early career highlights from when she competed in Women’s Professional Soccer (WPS), the precursor to the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) that folded in 2012.

“If you go back and try to find highlights from my first years as a pro, you can’t,” Press told Marketing Brew. “You can find US Women’s National Team (USWNT) highlights always, but that’s what you’ll find. It was like that was my only job.”

Now, highlights of Press—or, really, any other pro women’s soccer player—are abundantly available, just one indication of just how much the landscape of women’s sports has shifted in the last few decades. More than 50 years after the passage of Title IX made it possible for more girls to succeed in sports in grade school, the talent pool of women athletes is deeper than ever, media outlets are showing women’s sporting events in prime time to record-breaking audiences, and major brands are funneling sponsorship dollars into the ecosystem.

Sport to sport, it’s not exactly clear what should be credited with kicking off the boom. But does it matter? Thirteen years after the founding of the NWSL, women’s professional soccer seems here to stay in more ways than one, with two of the biggest revenue drivers in sports—media rights and sponsorships—abundant enough to prop up two pro properties.

Ready for prime time

One of the biggest changes in the women’s soccer ecosystem in recent years has been media coverage of the sport. In the days of the WPS, and even more recently, fans often struggled to find games on TV aside from international tournaments like the World Cup and the Olympics every couple of years.

“When I started playing in the WPS and my first days of the NWSL, I was playing in front of a couple hundred people on bleachers in high schools and colleges,” Press remembered.

It wasn’t until 2022 when CBS Sports aired the NWSL Championship in prime time for the first time, but when it did, the game became the most-watched NWSL match in history, with 915,000 viewers, a 71% increase from 2021, per CBS. (The 2024 Championship beat that record, averaging 967,900 viewers, according to the NWSL.)

The deal for prime-time coverage in part came about thanks to Ally Financial, a years-long sponsor of the NWSL and many other women’s sports properties, which played a key role in conversations with the league and the network.

“You’ve got this vicious cycle that’s never going to be broken unless the brands jump in and kind of force systemic change,” Ally CMO Andrea Brimmer told Marketing Brew at the time. “It takes the brands sitting at the table to demonstrate that they’re willing to come in, that they’ve got the money to invest, but that they need the networks to think differently about the way that they’re selling media and the way that they are giving women’s sports timeslots and the platforms that they deserve.”

The NWSL’s current four-year media rights deal, signed in 2023, indicates a much different approach from networks and streamers, spanning coverage across CBS Sports, ESPN, Prime Video, and Scripps Sports; it’s reportedly worth $240 million. As of the mid-point of the current NWSL season, livestreams of matches were up 34% year over year, with 1.2 billion minutes viewed, according to the league. Women’s soccer fans can also watch pros play on Peacock, which holds the media rights to the Gainbridge Super League, a new pro women’s soccer league that kicks off its second season on August 23.

New media

While major media outlets play a big role in whether women’s soccer is widely available to audiences, the ecosystem has also been thriving thanks to athletes taking matters into their own hands, leveraging channels like social media and podcasts to increase visibility of the sport.

“Social media completely changed the landscape for women’s sports in a really powerful way, because before, you had all these legacy media channels that really acted as middlemen,” said Tobin Heath, an NWSL and USWNT icon who announced her retirement in July. “Once a year you’d get this terrible window, never prime time, and always it was through a lens of what the patriarchy wanted to see in women’s sports, which was obviously extremely narrow and really didn’t represent our sport’s culture at all.”

That frustration led Heath and Press, who are married, to found Re—Inc, a sports media company that publishes newsletters and podcasts meant to represent “gal culture,” which Heath described as an answer to “bro culture.” Their podcast, The Re—Cap Show, joined the Audacy network for distribution and global ad sales in July, part of a larger wave of growing interest in women’s sports podcasts.

Heath and Press aren’t the only soccer icons who have carved out their own media channels. Former USWNT co-captain Alex Morgan has Togethxr, the media and commerce company she started with Olympic snowboarder Chloe Kim, Olympic swimmer Simone Manuel, and basketball legend Sue Bird. Bird also founded production company A Touch More alongside her partner, Megan Rapinoe, another retired USWNT co-captain.

Through these platforms, the players can bypass legacy media companies and engage directly with fans on their own terms, which wasn’t always an option for athletes. Brandi Chastain, whose penalty kick delivered the USWNT the World Cup in 1999 and who went on to work with brands including Nike, Gatorade, and Bud Light, said she sometimes thinks about what her sponsorship roster could have looked like had she been playing in 2025.

“In terms of brands and branding, gosh, I think there’s a part of me that wishes that there were all these resources that existed,” she said.

Brand ball

As the audience for women’s soccer has grown, so too has its list of sponsors. This year, the NWSL kicked off its 13th season with 13 sponsors, including first-time brands E.l.f. Beauty and Alex Cooper’s Unwell Hydration. E.l.f.’s involvement represents a broader trend of beauty brands, which haven’t historically invested much in sports, leaning into sports sponsorship opportunities across leagues, including the NFL and WNBA. In August, E.l.f. further upped its investment in women’s soccer by signing NWSL players Melanie Barcenas, Abby Dahlkemper, Lo’eau LaBonta, and Jaedyn Shaw to its talent roster.

For brands, women’s sports are particularly compelling because the audience tends to encompass different consumers than men’s sports audiences, Super League President Amanda Vandervort told Marketing Brew. In pro basketball, for example, only 5% of Golden State Valkyries season-ticket holders also have Warriors season tickets, despite the teams sharing both an arena and a sport, a standout stat for founding partner JPMorganChase.

“There’s so many communities who haven’t had access to women’s pro soccer, and when you add that to the growing interest, the demographics and behaviors of our fans, and the opportunity for brands and sponsors to get in front of a whole new audience, it just makes business sense,” Vandervort said. “Now, we’re having real conversations about the return on the investment in women’s professional soccer.”

This year, the Super League announced Gainbridge had purchased the league’s naming rights, and it’s only seen an uptick in inbound interest since then, according to Vandervort. The league also has several endemic sponsors, including kit provider Capelli Sport and ball manufacturer Select.

In the NWSL, jersey sponsorships are breaking records at breakneck speed. Last year, Bay FC reportedly had the biggest back-of-jersey deal in the league with Trader Joe’s, and in February, Gotham FC and Dove reportedly broke the record again. Days later, the Portland Thorns and Ring were said to have agreed to the biggest deal in league history, exceeding $2.6 million.

“It’s not just about the dollars,” Matt Soloff, SVP, partnerships and business development at the NWSL, told us. “It’s about leaning into brands that want to lean into us at the highest level.”

Amazon, for instance, has a wide-ranging relationship with the NWSL that includes streaming rights to Friday night games and a playoff match on Prime Video, as well as an exclusive retail sponsorship for Amazon and the presenting sponsorship of the league’s Best XI Awards for Amazon Prime. The company also worked with the league and other media partners, including Togethxr, for a docuseries about the 2024 season.

It was the “rabid fanbase and the growth” of the league that made it stand out to a sponsor as big as Amazon, according to Deb Curtis, global director of marketing for Amazon Prime.

“The growth and the excitement around women’s sports, and obviously the NWSL, is incredibly energizing,” Curtis said. “Fandom fuels growth, and so we see our role as being able to go deeper. People know our brand, so how can our brand help to enhance that experience?”

Brand sponsorship dollars can also be invested back into the leagues, creating a virtuous cycle for women’s soccer.

For some players who have seen the industry shift in real time, it feels like vindication.

“What’s been proven is people love women’s sports,” Heath said. “That’s just the truth, and also, they love women’s athletes as people. Brands love women’s athletes. They’re more approachable. They’re better at marketing.”

This report was originally published by Marketing Brew.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Getty Images—Daniela Porcelli/ISI Photos

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• Fox and ESPN, the two biggest holdouts in the streaming wars, will finally launch their own services in August.
• But compared to previous streaming launches, these are pretty low-key affairs.
• There's a reason for that: Fox and Disney want the streamers to be successful — but not too successful.

Fox stayed out of the streaming wars for years. Now it's jumping in with Fox One, its $20-a-month service that launches August 21.

But if you're going to wait until years after everyone else to start streaming, you probably have pretty big ambitions. Right, Lachlan Murdoch?

Nope!

"Our aspirations for Fox One subscribers are modest," the Fox CEO told investors on Tuesday, adding that the company will be making a "measured investment" in the service.

Translation: Please don't make too much of this.

OK. What about Disney, which is finally launching its ESPN streamer for $30 a month in the next few weeks?

Disney holds its quarterly earnings call Wednesday morning, so we'll have to wait until then to officially compare hype levels. But my educated hunch is that CEO Bob Iger will also go out of his way not to over-promise the prospects for that service: When ESPN unveiled its years-in-the-making launch plans in May, it was at a very low-key event, devoid of almost all glitz.

The difference between these launches and the ones we saw at the beginning of the streaming wars, six or seven years ago, is quite striking. Back then, big media companies rolled out new services with a galaxy of high-wattage stars, and tripped all over themselves to explain how much they were spending to catch up with Netflix. New subscribers would pour in by the tens of millions a year, they promised. And yes, they'd lose a bunch of money along the way.

But if you've been paying attention to the streaming business over this time, the change is quite understandable.

Back in the early days of streaming, media companies thought Wall Street would reward them if they copied Netflix's "grow like crazy, figure out profits later" strategy. Instead, investors decided they didn't want growth at all costs, and pushed streamers to run their businesses like … businesses.

Which is partly why Murdoch reminded investors Tuesday that Fox One will be very cheap to launch, since there's nothing on the service that isn't already on existing Fox-owned channels.

But the other part of the messaging reflects the other reality at Disney and Fox: They would both like people to buy streaming services from them — but only if it doesn't cut into their old business of selling cable TV subscriptions.

That's because while cable TV is dying — (Would you like to buy a cable TV network? Make an offer!) — it still remains very profitable for the companies that sell it.

That's why both ESPN and Fox officials take great pains to explain that they don't think the services they're selling will convince a cable TV subscriber to cut the cord. Instead, they argue, this is for people who don't already have pay TV.

This isn't subtext. It's right out in public.

"We do not want to lose a traditional cable subscriber to FOX One, and we're doing everything we can to make sure, as much as humanly possible, that that's the way we market, and that's the way we plan the business," Murdoch told investors three months ago.

You can also see the needle-threading in the pricing for these services: In the past, new streamers launched at $10 a month or less, hoping to grab lots of market share. Now, Fox and Disney are coming in at double and triple that, at least in part so that they don't undercut the pricing of much bigger bundles sold through traditional cable.

So who might actually buy this stuff? We'll see. ESPN's service might appeal to college football fans, since the service has deals to show lots of games from marquee teams and leagues. NFL fans may be a little more frustrated, since ESPN will only have a slice of the season's games.

And as for Fox One: In theory, you might have people signing up to get Fox's weekly lineup of NFL games. But it seems most likely that the service is meant primarily to appeal to "people who like Fox News but either don't get cable or want to ditch cable and just get Fox News."

If it's the former group, Murdoch will be happy. But if it's from the second …

• Shannon Sharpe isn't returning to ESPN.
• The NFL Hall of Famer settled a lawsuit accusing him of rape in mid-July.
• Sharpe also hosts the "Club Shay Shay" and "Nightcap" podcasts, which are not part of ESPN.

ESPN is cutting ties with Shannon Sharpe after he settled a lawsuit earlier this month that accused him of rape, a person familiar with the matter confirmed to Business Insider.

The media personality and NFL Hall of Famer stepped away from ESPN in late April, when a lawsuit was filed against him by a woman referred to anonymously as "Jane Doe." The lawsuit sought $50 million in damages and alleged that Sharpe raped Doe, among other claims. Doe said in the suit that their relationship began as "rocky but consensual."

Representatives for Sharpe didn't immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

Sharpe denied the lawsuit's allegations, calling them "false and disruptive" in an April 24 statement. He said the "relationship in question was 100% consensual" and agreed to temporarily step back from ESPN. Sharpe had said he planned to return to ESPN for the NFL preseason, which begins Thursday night. The Athletic first reported that he wouldn't return to ESPN.

Doe's lawyer announced on July 18 that the case had been settled. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

Sharpe joined ESPN in September 2023 and became a regular on ESPN's "First Take," headlined by Stephen A. Smith. Before that, Sharpe spent seven years at Fox Sports, where he cohosted the "Undisputed" sports debate show with Skip Bayless, Smith's former costar.

Sharpe isn't leaving media entirely.

He still hosts the "Club Shay Shay" and "Nightcap" podcasts, each of which posted new episodes just hours before the news of his ESPN departure broke. Those podcasts are on The Volume network, founded by Fox Sports personality Colin Cowherd.

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Most days, Anita Alvarez starts training at 6 a.m. She performs twists and lifts across the pool, holding her breath underwater for minutes at a time.

While it paid off in the pool — she returned home to Los Angeles in the summer of last year with her first Olympic medal, a silver, in artistic swimming, formerly synchronized swimming — it didn't pay her bills.

Earlier in Alvarez's 12-year swimming career, she worked at a sporting goods store to supplement the $250 monthly stipend she said she received from Team USA.

Alvarez told Business Insider her stipend had since increased to $1,900 a month. But rather than adding to that with coaching gigs, teaching private lessons, or prize money as she's done in the past, she's joined the US Air Force's World Class Athlete Program. The program funds Olympic athletes' training in exchange for three years of military service after their Olympic careers.

While the phrase "professional athlete" often evokes thoughts of multimillion-dollar contracts, red-carpet appearances, and lavish living, this type of stardom is often reserved for the upper echelon of male athletes in the MLB, NBA, NFL, and NHL.

Many full-time athletes outside these leagues — and many of those within them — still struggle with finances. Careers in sports are often short, and some athletes come from families with little experience dealing with large sums of money.

"It was stressful because you want to be so focused and dialed in on the Olympic training that we're doing, and that's not just the time we're at the pool," Alvarez, 28, said. She added, "But then, knowing that I had to leave after eight hours in the pool, I'm physically, mentally exhausted, and then I have to get out and rush to shower to run to make it to work on time."

Four current and former professional athletes shared how they'd faced these uncertainties by prioritizing financial literacy, investing, and starting businesses of their own.

A short window to make money

A 2020 study published by the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health found that the average length of "maximum achievement until retirement" in terms of sports performance was 4.9 years for athletes in individual sports and seven years for those on teams.

"Our career span and lifespan in the NFL is so short that by the time you've spent that money, it's super hard to get back," Sheldon Day, a defensive tackle for the Washington Commanders who's preparing to enter his ninth year in the NFL, told BI. "Most people don't understand the lifespan, and then they think the money's going to always be there."

A 2022 analysis of player data by The Sports Daily found that on average, an NFL career lasted just 3.3 years.

Athletes like Alvarez have a much longer window to earn, but the opportunities appear to be fewer. Alvarez, who's worked with brands including Skims and Tresemmé, said she usually sees brand deals and sponsorships pick up leading into the Olympics, but when the games end, the companies move on to whatever's next.

Of course, the athletes aren't just training every time there's an Olympics. "It's not every four years," she said. "It's every single year that we're here training."

A survey released in December by Parity, a sports marketing and sponsorship platform for professional female athletes, indicates Alvarez's experience of working while training isn't unique: Seventy-four percent of the 500 female athletes surveyed said that in the previous year, they had a job outside of being a pro.

Planning for retirement while still in the game

Angela Ruggiero was a star on the ice, medaling in four Olympics, including a gold medal in the 1998 Winter Games. Still, she knew hockey wouldn't be enough to financially support herself, especially in retirement.

"It was tricky, but I think I always knew I was going to have to get a job being a female athlete and not making a ton of money as a pro," Ruggiero, 45, told BI.

Ruggiero said that during her last Olympic cycle, from 2008 to 2011, she earned a base pay before bonuses of $2,000 a month from Team USA, in addition to endorsements from brands such as Coca-Cola and Nike.

"I was 31 and wasn't saving money, whereas my peers who had had regular jobs were ahead of me financially, which is kind of crazy — I had a gold medal and four Olympics under my belt," she said. "But that's never why I did it. I never did it for the money. I did it because I loved the sport."

It's a common experience among professional female athletes. Seventy percent of respondents in the Parity survey — which had representation from 55 sports — said it was "very likely" they'd need a new source of income when they retire from competition.

For Ruggiero, part of the solution was investing. Later in her career, she asked Coca-Cola, one of her sponsors, to give her equity in the company, she said. When they gave her a check instead, she took a piece of it and bought stock in the company.

The former NBA player Baron Davis, who is reported to have earned more than $140 million throughout his career, playing for 13 seasons across six teams, also had the forethought to invest his earnings. His first investment was with the then startup Vitaminwater, but it came with a condition.

"The only ask was, 'I want to be on your marketing team or an advisor on your marketing team as a creative, so I can learn how to replicate a brand and its success,'" Davis, 46, said.

"And that shaped my career to say, 'I can be my own agent. I can do my own deals. I can pitch to brands. I know what I'm capable of both on and off camera,'" he added.

After those experiences, Davis said he felt better equipped to become an entrepreneur after he last played in the NBA in 2012. He created Baron Davis Enterprises, a holding company of his investments including content studios and a membership platform for people who work in sports, business, and entertainment.

Similarly, Ruggiero used her sports background as a launchpad for her second career. After spending eight years with the International Olympic Committee, she cofounded Sports Innovation Lab, a data and analytics company focused on improving advertising, sponsorships, and fan experiences.

"Sports Innovation Lab came from my experiences as a board member, a practitioner, someone that had gone to business school and studied disruptive innovation under Clay Christensen, and I'm looking at my industry going, 'We could be doing better if we had the insights,'" she said.

Still, these career changes don't come without challenges. Davis said athletes could experience pushback in their second careers because they're athletes.

"You have the ability to get into meetings or get into places based on your fame, your history, or your recognition," he said, adding that athletes are often asked to still prove themselves as entrepreneurs, investors, and C-suite executives.

Helping the next generation of athletes

Athletes are uniquely positioned to help others within their professions.

Day, 30, watched as an NFL teammate spent money on cars, jewelry, and nights out at clubs, seemingly not considering that one day the paychecks would stop. After witnessing that teammate struggle financially while still in the NFL, he decided to do something about it.

Alongside former NFL player Richard Sherman and a health and sports scientist named Tom Zheng, Day founded The Players Company, which seeks to help athletes with personal finance through education, networking, and community events.

In 2024, the company partnered with Mogul Club, a real estate platform, to help players invest in real estate — something Day himself tapped into early in his pro career. "I jumped right in on the single-family real estate side, trying to give back to the city of Indianapolis where I'm from," he said.

Day, who's earned $7 million so far during his NFL career, per the sports financial system Spotrac, has since incorporated commercial real estate into his portfolio, in addition to building homes in lower-income neighborhoods.

Whether an athlete is handling millions of dollars or working second jobs, earning money is only half the battle. Knowing what to do with it is a separate challenge, and athletes ultimately need to figure out what they're saving for, Andrea Brimmer, a former varsity soccer player at Michigan State University, told BI.

"You think about money in terms of how it can empower the things that you love or the people that you love the most in life, and it gives you a very different purpose in earning money," said Brimmer, who's now the chief marketing officer at the online bank Ally Financial.

Ruggiero said money management should be emphasized more while athletes are still playing, not after they retire.

"What we're told as athletes is: Eye on the prize. Win the gold medal. Win the championship," she said. "You're given all these amazing tools for the prize, the sports prize, which is great, but it doesn't always serve you."

"Even in the NCAA, if you're a collegiate athlete and you're going to go pro the next year," she continued, "could you at least take a class over balancing your checkbook?"

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Warner Bros. Discovery will split its business into two publicly traded companies, with one focused on its streaming and studios business and the other on its television network businesses, including CNN and Discovery.

The US media giant said the move would unlock value for shareholders as well as create opportunities for both businesses, breaking up a group created just three years ago from the merger of Warner Media and Discovery.

Warner Bros. Discovery last year revealed its intent to split its business in two, a plan first reported by the Financial Times in July last year. The company intends to complete the split by the middle of next year.

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