March Madness is here again! You may remember, last year’s women’s college basketball final between undefeated South Carolina and Caitlin Clark’s Iowa had higher TV ratings than the men’s championship game – the first time that had ever happened. An average of 18.7 million viewers tuned in for the game on ABC and ESPN. The men’s title game, between UConn and Purdue, drew 14.8 million on TBS and TNT.
That game made some investors think about women’s sports in a different light. The money gap between men’s and women’s sports is still massive. The WNBA increased its media rights revenue sixfold in its new TV deal, which begins next season, given the newfound popularity of the sport. And still, its deal is only worth $2.2 billion over the next 11 years. For comparison, the NBA’s agreement over the same timeframe is worth nearly $75 billion.
Few expect the ratings for this year’s women’s finale to approach last year’s without Clark’s presence. But women’s college basketball ratings are actually up this year on ESPN – 3% higher than last year and 41% higher than the year before. The 87 women’s games broadcast on ABC, ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNU averaged 280,000 viewers – the highest rating since the 2008-09 season.
That’s obviously a far cry from 18.7 million. But the present delta between women’s and men’s sports, in terms of attention and media dollars, compared to the growth potential is what makes people like Kara Nortman so bullish.
Nortman is the co-founder and managing partner of Monarch Collective, the largest pool of capital exclusively dedicated to women’s sports investment. Last week, Monarch announced it had expanded its fund by $100 million to $250 million.
Nortman said the women’s sports market grew 30% last year in commercial revenue to about $1.3 billion – a number confirmed by Deloitte. That’s a tiny fraction of the men’s sports market, which she pegged between $500 billion and $750 billion.
“The market is still quite small,” Nortman told me in an interview. “It’s a very early market. It’s venture in terms of the market dynamics, but I’d say we take a more kind of growth equity or private equity-like approach in terms of investing in the most mature parts of it.”
The fund invests in “mature sports where there are media revenue trends.” In other words, most of the fund’s money goes toward basketball and soccer.
Monarch owns minority stakes in three NWSL teams (Boston, San Diego, and Angel City, whose controlling stake was acquired by Disney CEO Bob Iger and his wife Willow Bay last year). The fund is planning on seven to nine total investments with “very few in a given year,” Nortman said. Monarch is hard capped at $250 million, so it won’t be taking on more money.
“We want to always be big enough to really show up and support the needs, but small enough to collaborate and be side by side with control owners and other people,” said Nortman.
The early signs are encouraging. While Boston’s franchise fee to join the NWSL was $53 million in September 2023, Denver’s fee paid this year is $110 million, according to Reuters.
“That’s 2x on just a franchise fee for a limited number of assets right now,” said Nortman, who is confident team valuations will grow just as they have in the major men’s sports.
The main leaning indicator for Nortman is increasing media rights.
“If you look at the top five men’s leagues, in the last 10 years, they’ve all grown 3x to 6x at a more mature state,” said Nortman. “The flip side is I think we should always expect we can’t expect things to always go up and to the right.”
If last year’s NCAA championship game showed the potential of women’s sports, this year’s championship has a new goal – to prove the women’s game is on the same lucrative path as men’s sports … just earlier in the journey.
