NEW AUDIENCES: How women’s sport is becoming one of sport’s biggest growth drivers

{JSON.stringify(article.attachments[0], null, 2)} --> The mainstreaming of women’s sport is predicted as a major growth driver of the future of the sport’s economy, requiring sustained investment and structural support rather than being viewed as a fleeting trend.

In its 2026 Sports for People and Planet report, the World Economic Forum (WEF) identified four major growth drivers that are reshaping the future of the global sports economy.

The first three include sports tourism, sport as an asset class and the rebalancing of sports growth towards emerging economies.

The fourth, the mainstreaming of women’s sport, is perhaps the most striking.

In 2025, women’s professional sport revenues were projected to reach $2.35-billion, more than triple the 2022 figure.

Moreover, the past few years have been full of lasting images of women in sport that have reshaped their visibility.

Recently, Amy Hunt dominated British headlines after becoming the first athlete, male or female, to win four gold medals at a single European Championships.

Earlier this year, South Africa’s Gerda Steyn claimed a seventh Two Oceans title before beating her own Comrades Marathon record.

In tennis, an average of 1.9 million viewers watched the Wimbledon final between Linda Noskova and Karolina Muchova, delivering ESPN’s most-watched women’s championship match of the tournament.

The growth of women’s sport was also marked by new franchises, bigger television audiences and greater advertising impact.

The Women’s T20 World Cup this year officially became the biggest edition in the competition’s history, with 245,815 fans attending across 25 match days, breaking the previous tournament record by more than 100,000.

Furthermore, it was the most watched Women’s T20 World Cup to date in the United Kingdom, with more than 15 million viewer hours recorded across Sky channels. The final, which saw Australia thrash England by seven wickets, was watched by 678,000 people across the Sky network with spectators filling 90% of Lord’s Cricket Stadium.

While this signals a major shift, barriers still remain, especially as the uncertainty surrounding the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations (Wafcon) and sparse crowds that followed sit in stark contrast to the above anecdotes.

The WEF argued that women’s sport has evolved from a niche category into a major economic opportunity.