Women’s sports craze is transforming the chattering class too

“Everybody’s watching it — and if you don’t watch it, you’re going to get left behind,” said TikTok star Coach Jackie J , of women’s professional sports.

And, by many measures, she’s right . But while much of the conversation around the growth of women’s sports in 2024 has focused on increases in TV viewership and game attendance, there is another medium where the category thrives even more: social media.

Coach Jackie is just one of several content creators who produce prolific, in-depth women’s sports coverage in social-first formats, and who are winning massive audiences with their work. Collectively, this group — which includes other creators like Ari Chambers , Logan Hackett , Aliyah Funschelle , Katherine Ellis , and Aliya Kae — boasts millions of followers, tens of millions of likes and hundreds of millions of views.

Their online success has caught the attention of major players in the sports media ecosystem and is earning them access to offline space historically reserved for traditional beat reporters.

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Some of these women are trained sports journalists with a deep well of professional knowledge. Others are simply superfans with a natural-born knack for posting (many are Gen Zers). Regardless of background, their content shares an important quality: it’s comprehensive.

Most cover dozens of sports properties, including lesser-known ones like the Women’s National Football Conference , and post multiple times a day, often in direct-to-camera, personality-driven formats. They go beyond box scores to report on everything from league expansion prospects and trade rumors to pregame fit checks and inter-team dramas. Given the relative infancy of women’s sports’ place in popular culture, there’s an educational bent to much of their content, too.

“For every video, my main goal is to pass along as much knowledge about women’s sports as I can,” said TikTok creator Aliya Kae. Her “Back to Basics” series on the WNBA is currently among her most-viewed.

Another goal of Kae and her peers? To turn scrollers who may have a passing interest in women’s sports into legitimate fans. And if platform engagement metrics are any indication of fandom, they’re on the right track.

According to TikTok, the number of posts using the hashtag #womenssports jumped 170% between 2023 and 2024 to 34,200. Meanwhile, growth under the hashtag #womeninsports has been even more impressive; there are currently 1,200,000 posts using it, an increase of 2400% from last year.

TikTok has been mentioned several times so far for a reason. It’s the center of the content universe today and is largely populated by Gen Zers, who are increasingly interested in sports — women’s or otherwise. Plus, creators love its algorithm: “I think every creator feels like TikTok is the best place to reach the most eyes organically and consistently,” said Katherine Ellis, producer of “Out of His League,” a short-form show highlighting the gameday routines of women involved in various aspects of professional sports.

That said, industry-watchers have additional theories as to why women’s sports content has found such a supportive home in TikTok and across social media more broadly.

Matt Hochberg, founder of Hochberg Sports Marketing, points to women’s unique tone-setting power. “Women are just very good at dictating trends and creating compelling digital content around them,” he said. “This is a new opportunity to do that at scale.”

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While the organic success of these content creators reflects a legitimate interest in women’s athletics, it also reflects a gap in legacy media coverage.

Women’s sports represented just 15% of all sports media in 2023. That figure is up significantly from a few years prior, but very little of this growth is attributable to linear TV (it’s coming almost exclusively from digital and social mediums). On the rare occasions that big networks do devote substantial airtime to women’s sports, analysts and hosts have been known to make embarrassing remarks about female athletes.

“There’s so much white space for content that centers women in sports conversations,” said Caroline Fitzgerald, founder of women’s sports consultancy GOALS. “Until traditional media outlets really internalize the demand for this kind of coverage, we’ll continue to see social-first creators lead the way.”

And for now, most creators are happy to do just that.

Those interviewed by Awful Announcing spoke fervently about the importance of their work and the care they take to ensure that it’s not seen as a niche or special interest. “I never call explicit attention to the fact that I’m covering women’s sports in a video,” said Aliyah Funschelle. “I want my audience to simply tune in because it’s a professional sport and it’s happening.”

Funschelle added that she hopes this mindset “moves up the ranks” — and, in some ways, it’s finally starting to.

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Earlier this year, ESPN signed 10 women creators to attend and share first-person content around its marquee events, including the NCAA Women’s Final Four. CBS and NBC also launched similar initiatives, with the latter receiving high praise for the online coverage produced by the team of creators it recently sent to the Paris Olympics.

If these positive outcomes continue, content creators may very well become an integral part of the professional sports broadcast experience, instead of a novelty. But at the moment, leagues and teams, rather than traditional broadcast outfits, are embracing new media formats most comprehensively — and many women’s sports content creators are reaping the benefits.

The WNBA’s New York Liberty unveiled “Influencer Row” at the Barclays Center this season, a designated area where credentialed creators could enjoy games and capture courtside content. Funschelle is a regular participant, and also frequently hosts in-game events for Liberty fans. Meanwhile, Logan Hackett is often tapped to attend matches and create explainer videos for leagues like the NWSL and LPGA. Other female creators have been courted to serve in even more specific roles, including as special correspondents for NFL teams and product designers for major athletic brands .

According to Katherine Ellis, this kind of experimentation isn’t poised to slow down any time soon.

“It’s so obvious how much content creators are helping both women’s and men’s sports teams grow,” she said. “In a year from now, I think we’re going to see tons of new full-time positions pop up at organizations that cater to those with untraditional backgrounds in the social world.”

That the mainstream-ification of content creators as credible sources and analysts is coinciding with the mainstream-ification of women’s sports feels important. People generally get very close to those they follow online, so this state of affairs will likely lead to bigger, deeper, more long-lasting fandoms.

“We really are new-age color commentators,” said Coach Jackie J, “and people are tuning in.”

Ellyn Briggs is a writer, reporter and researcher based in Columbus, Ohio. Her work and commentary are regularly featured by dozens of outlets, including NBC News, Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Business Insider and Fast Company.

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