Sports anchor Elle Duncan was working for ESPN a few years ago when she heard then-college basketball star Aliyah Boston say that ESPN’s investment in women’s sports over 30-plus years has been transformative for female athletes, but not transformative enough. Boston wasn’t faulting ESPN; her point was that women’s teams and leagues need to be successful on more than one sports network to reach anything close to parity with the licensing money and sponsorship dollars that flow into men’s sports.
Duncan thought about Boston’s comment when she considered a move to the startup USA Sports operation that’s part of Versant Media, the cable company that was spun off in January from NBCUniversal. Versant has made women’s sports a cornerstone of its strategy to reignite growth at the company that’s home to linear cable channels including USA Network, CNBC, MS Now, Golf Channel, E! and Oxygen.
Versant has committed tens of millions of dollars to media rights deals to carry the WNBA, League One Volleyball, the LPGA and an array of women’s collegiate sports. The company’s decision to bet big in this area as part of its corporate launch strategy amounts to a huge test of whether the boom in women’s sports has been a passing trend or an inflection point for the sector. Versant and USA Sports’ performance over the next few years will be a handy way to measure progress for the leagues in TV viewership and advertising revenue.
