Women's sports network Athletes Unlimited plans its next moves

Athletes Unlimited, a network of women's sports leagues that uses fantasy-style scoring, successfully completed its first season of softball last month.

Why it matters: While most leagues scrambled to create one-off bubble tournaments, Athletes Unlimited didn't have to change too much about its model, which was already designed for short, single-site seasons.

• "Our vision was always to host each season in a single market and build storytelling and other elements around that," co-founder and CEO Jon Patricof tells me.
• "Not having in-person fans certainly changed things, but ticketing revenue was never a huge part of the equation for us anyway."
• "If you put medical/testing aside, the pandemic changed call it 10% of our model; whereas for most other leagues it changed 90% of their model."

What's next: Athletes Unlimited will take what it did with softball this summer and try to apply that model to two other sports next year — possibly with fans in the stands this time.

• Volleyball: February 2021 (Nashville)
• Lacrosse: July 2021 (TBD)

The big picture: There are clear avenues for growth in women's sports, and the pandemic has helped revealed them.

• WNBA ratings are up.
• NWSL ratings are way up.
• The NWHL is maturing in promising ways.
• And now, softball, volleyball and lacrosse have a new professional home.