In recent times there’s been an exponential progress and urge for food for girls considering watching and taking part in sports activities throughout the spectrum — whether or not in Components 1, soccer or WNBA and basketball.
A current Nielsen Sports activities report discovered that ladies’s soccer is ready to be within the prime 5 of all international sports activities by 2030, with greater than 800 million followers and 60 p.c of the followers being girls. Moreover, a 2024 Nielsen sports activities research reported that 41 p.c of Components 1 followers are girls — with 16- to 24-year-old girls being the fastest-growing demographic.
However traditionally, girls by no means had a correct seat on the desk or any actual say in how they’re represented. With this new marketplace for sports activities engagement, groups and leagues have largely been reliant on an previous and outdated mannequin for approaching working with girls athletes and followers.
Enter the 400 Membership, a girls’s tradition collective and international community targeted on bringing style, magnificence, sports activities and extra collectively. Based by Cherry Beagles in 2024, the London-based firm has gone on to lift 2.1 million kilos and work with the largest manufacturers throughout the sports activities and tradition area — together with TikTok, IMG, WTA, Nike, Wimbledon, Components 1 groups and extra.
The platform’s membership formally launches on July 30; the wait record on the corporate’s web site opens Friday for most of the people. It already counts Olympic athletes Dina Asher-Smith and Keely Hodgkinson, tastemakers, editors, stylists, multihyphenate creatives and extra as a part of its rising group.
Perks based mostly on tiered subscriptions from free to varied ranges of paid embody entry to VIP women-focused occasions at Grand Prix weekends and Wimbledon; gifting from main manufacturers akin to Uncommon Magnificence, Charlotte Tilbury and Topicals; a community of the who’s who throughout the cultural area, and curated merchandise from main manufacturers.
On the company facet, the 400 Membership works instantly with women-owned manufacturers, sponsors, leagues and rights holders to maintain girls on the coronary heart of main sporting occasions and helps to dealer offers for girls sport icons. The corporate stated that the aim is to make sure that girls are now not checked out as a distinct segment demographic however considered as a critical industrial precedence.
Right here, Beagles chats with WWD about how the 400 Membership is creating affect for girls throughout the sports activities world, the gaps she sees inside sports activities advertising, girls’s cultural affect throughout the sector, the 400 Membership’s enlargement into different international markets and extra.
Cherry Beagles, founder and chief govt officer of the 400 Membership.
Courtesy Picture
WWD: What’s the 400 Membership?
Cherry Beagles: The 400 Membership is a first-of-its-kind cultural consultancy and international collective working on the intersection of sport, style, model and girls’s group. We’re rewriting the industrial and inventive playbook for a way girls expertise sport — not simply as followers however as members, decision-makers and cultural leaders.
We construct campaigns that talk to girls’s precise life, not stereotypes. And we dealer partnerships between legacy establishments and essentially the most culturally credible women-founded manufacturers on this planet.
To the patron, we’re a front-row cross into sport’s most stunning, well-curated areas. To corporations, we’re a progress engine — changing new audiences, constructing cultural cachet and giving your model relevance in a market you’ve beforehand missed. This mannequin didn’t exist, so we constructed it. And now, we’re opening the doorways. The wait record for 400’s membership is stay and so is our international WhatsApp group.
WWD: Why did you determine to launch the 400 Membership?
C.B.: Nothing like this existed. I didn’t see myself in sports activities — and neither did my associates round me. Not as a result of we didn’t love the vitality or the athletes, however as a result of the best way it was packaged, offered and sponsored had by no means advanced. The trade had spent a long time advertising to males and when it got here to girls, the efforts felt like afterthoughts — comfortable, second-tier and disconnected from actual girls’s tradition.
The 400 Membership’s work with the Tottenham Hotspur membership.
I launched the 400 Membership from my kitchen desk, powered by intuition and frustration — however largely imaginative and prescient. Inside one 12 months, we hit a 2.1 million pound valuation, earned a spot on Forbes 30 Underneath 30 and delivered work for Nike, TikTok and Components 1 groups. Whenever you construct one thing girls really need to be a part of, the trade has no alternative however to observe.
WWD: What do you see as the primary gaps in sports activities advertising? How is the 400 Membership wanting to alter that?
C.B.: There are two core gaps. Sports activities advertising nonetheless assumes the viewers is male and already loyal. All the construction — from how groups promote to how manufacturers purchase media — is constructed across the legacy fan. That leaves a whole era of ladies out of the dialog, regardless of being those driving tradition, spending and model fairness throughout each different sector.
The second is that ladies’s engagement has been dealt with like a homogeneous demographic, not a tradition. You’ll be able to’t simply add a pink emblem and count on girls to care. Girls — particularly 18 to 30 — aren’t passive viewers. They’re tastemakers. They usually’re in search of greater than merch.
They need experiences that replicate their way of life, group, aesthetic and identification. 400 Membership adjustments the mannequin completely. We don’t simply discuss to girls — we construct with them. We don’t slot them into sports activities; we redefine what sport may be by means of a lady’s lens. Nobody else is doing this in a scalable, premium and culturally exact approach. It’s not inclusion; it’s innovation.
WWD: How have you ever seen girls drastically altering the market in how manufacturers, sports activities leagues and groups function now?
C.B.: Girls are now not the viewers manufacturers “have to win over.” They’re the second. From packed stadiums at Girls’s Soccer League matches to women-led Components 1 fandom on TikTok, girls are reshaping the metrics of success — who watches, what sells and the way tradition strikes.
What’s modified is that ladies aren’t simply exhibiting up. We’re setting the tone. Manufacturers at the moment are being compelled to evolve: How do you converse to a fan who didn’t develop up obsessive about sport however nonetheless desires in? How do you present up in stadiums with out compromising your aesthetic or alienating your loyal clients?
That’s the place the 400 Membership is available in — we’re the bridge between elite sport and women-led tradition. Our community contains athletes, model founders, editors, stylists, designers and digital creatives — girls who deliver industrial worth and cultural credibility. And now, we’re giving on a regular basis girls entry to that very same world by means of membership and the 400 Membership group.
WWD: What are the advantages of becoming a member of the 400 Membership? What do manufacturers and trade leaders acquire?
C.B.: For members, they get entry to essentially the most thrilling corners of sport — curated, elevated and redefined for girls. From VIP invitations to match day suites to presents from Uncommon Magnificence and Topicals and limited-edition collaborations with tradition manufacturers, 400 Membership turns sport into a way of life.
Additionally they be part of a world group of ladies throughout sport, enterprise, music and style by way of our new on-line collective — the place actual dialog, alternative and connection occur each week.
For manufacturers and trade leaders, 400 Membership gives one thing no conventional company can — direct entry to the cultural drivers shaping the subsequent period of sport. This implies a 250-plus robust roster of athletes, creatives and group builders, data-backed perception into how girls interact with sport — and why — and industrial partnerships that really transfer the needle, akin to D. Louise x Chelsea FC. Working with us means exhibiting up in a different way and being remembered for it.
WWD: What are the completely different tiers of the 400 Membership and what does membership price/embody?
C.B.: Membership formally launches on the finish of July and the waitlist is now open. There’ll be a number of entry tiers, ranging from a digital group tier — the place members obtain invites to occasions, early entry to model drops and unique gifting. Premium tiers supply behind-the-scenes experiences with athletes, personal dinners and unique model collab merch.
All members will obtain entry to our international on-line platform, VIP occasion invitations at key sporting and cultural moments, perks from one of the best women-owned manufacturers on this planet and connections with essentially the most influential girls throughout sport and tradition. We’re giving members and new followers entry to an area that beforehand solely existed behind closed doorways.
WWD: Who’re the main corporations you’re employed with?
C.B.: We’ve labored with Chelsea FC, Arsenal, Tottenham, MLB Europe, WTA, IMG, Components 1 groups and extra. Our model companions embody Nike, TikTok, Giorgio Armani and Sky Sports activities in addition to cult women-led manufacturers gifting at our occasions like Topicals, Summer time Fridays, Hunza G, Discotheque, D. Louise, Charlotte Tilbury and Uncommon Magnificence.
WWD: What are the 400 Membership’s future plans? How are you increasing into different markets?
C.B.: We’re already seeing international demand. Our enlargement into the U.S. begins subsequent 12 months — with activations and partnerships deliberate in New York and Los Angeles. We’re constructing city-specific collectives, launching model drops and internet hosting occasions throughout key sports activities moments within the calendar — all by means of the 400 Membership lens.
The aim is straightforward: to create a world infrastructure the place girls can transfer by means of sport the best way they do by means of style, model, music and girls’s tradition.
