One thing highly effective is unfolding in girls’s sports activities, and it’s being pushed by the followers. They’re not asking for extra flashy campaigns or superficial endorsements. They’re calling for one thing deeper: real, athlete-led engagement that displays the values they consider in. In an period of fixed noise, what they’re really in search of is belief—within the athletes, within the manufacturers, and within the tales being instructed.
This newest U.S. Girls’s Sports activities Report from Parity dives deep into the fandom, notion, and industrial panorama of girls’s sports activities and divulges one central fact: Belief is the defining foreign money of this motion.
The belief issue is rising quick
For years, skilled girls athletes have carried the torch of authenticity. They’ve spoken out on social points, constructed communities on-line, and linked with followers via their private tales and values. Immediately, that authenticity is paying dividends—not simply in follower counts, however in client belief.
Our newest information reveals that 68% of all U.S. sports activities followers—not simply girls’s sports activities followers—say they belief skilled girls athletes. That quantity jumps to 74% amongst males who watch girls’s sports activities, and 84% amongst day by day or weekly viewers. Maybe most stunning: Even amongst American sports activities followers who say they by no means watch girls’s sports activities, belief is surging. A whopping 58% of those “never-watchers” belief girls athletes, up six factors from final yr.
This issues. As a result of in a fragmented media atmosphere the place client consideration is scarce, belief is what cuts via the noise. Belief makes followers extra seemingly to concentrate to your message. Belief makes them extra seemingly to purchase.
When a girl athlete promotes a product, followers consider she genuinely helps it. That’s not only a feel-good narrative—it’s a efficiency indicator for any model making an attempt to construct fairness in 2025.
Followers need manufacturers that get it
Sponsorship in girls’s sports activities isn’t nearly slapping a emblem on a jersey or airing a pre-roll advert. In response to our findings, followers are in search of manufacturers to point out up in ways in which matter—to be a part of the story, not a gross sales pitch.
What does that appear to be in follow?
It means partnering immediately with athletes and empowering them to inform tales. It means doing all your homework to seek out the proper athlete match. It means investing in content material that feels actual, not overly produced. It means prioritizing causes that athletes and followers care about and utilizing your platform to help them.
In different phrases, it means shifting past transactional sponsorship towards transformational partnership.
And sure, it additionally means backing up your model values with measurable motion. In an period the place followers are more and more savvy, performative allyship doesn’t lower it.
The fan base is surging and shifting
Past belief, the 2025 report confirms an evolution in fandom that many within the business have felt coming.
Viewership is climbing, however the actual story is who’s tuning in. Youthful audiences, multicultural followers, and even self-described informal viewers are participating greater than ever. And so they’re doing greater than watching—they’re shopping for the merch, sharing highlights and content material, and displaying up in particular person.
Fandom can also be turning into extra localized and constant. As new groups proceed to debut and leagues increase, regional pleasure is taking maintain. For manufacturers, this opens the door to attach not simply at scale, however meaningfully inside communities—via the athletes and groups their followers care about most.
The aggressive panorama is getting smarter
In a maturing market, not all manufacturers are shifting on the identical tempo. Leaders in attire, well being and wonder, and meals and beverage are already elevating the bar. They’re treating girls’s sports activities not as a aspect venture however as a core model pillar. They’re allocating actual {dollars}, innovating round athlete collaborations, and monitoring influence in real-time. Different classes that ladies’s sports activities followers are most fascinated with seeing step up: Journey amongst girls watchers, and expertise amongst males who watch.
Let’s be clear: This has by no means been nearly doing the proper factor. It’s about good, strategic enterprise. Manufacturers that commit early to girls’s sports activities stand to win the hearts—and wallets—of followers who’re paying shut consideration to who’s displaying up.
However with rising client expectations, the margin for error is slim. When you’re not displaying up authentically, followers will discover. And so they’ll transfer on.
What this implies for manufacturers
So what do followers really need from manufacturers in girls’s sports activities?
- They need belief—earned via constant, credible athlete partnerships.
- They need authenticity—actual tales from actual athletes, not advert communicate.
- They need motion—help that drives visibility, funding, and alter.
- They need presence—manufacturers that present up regionally, passionately, and with function.
- And so they need dedication—not only one marketing campaign, however a long-term imaginative and prescient.
At Parity, we work with lots of {of professional} girls athletes, and we see this on daily basis. When manufacturers present up with respect, integrity, and shared function, the influence is exponential. Followers take discover. Athletes have interaction extra deeply. And everybody wins.
The second is right here
In case your model isn’t already investing in girls’s sports activities, the window remains to be open. The fan base is right here. The athletes are prepared. The belief is excessive.
The query is: Will you meet the second?
As a result of in 2025, belief is not only a price. It’s a strategic basis. And in girls’s sports activities, it would simply be your aggressive edge.
Leela Srinivasan is CEO of Parity.
