New league boom

Investment in emerging leagues is driving women's sports to new heights.

Why it matters: Professional leagues drive visibility and investment further down into youth programs that haven't always been accessible to young girls.

• Hockey: Seven months into its launch, the Professional Women's Hockey League (PWHL) is now focusing on finding brand partners to help expand access to the sport. PWHL SVP of business operations Amy Scheer told Axios that the league is working with Scotia Bank to invest more in making hockey accessible to marginalized communities.
• Volleyball: League One Volleyball, a professional women's volleyball league launching in November, has secured distribution rights with ESPN's digital platforms. League One Volleyball has built the largest club youth volleyball business in the country, which it hopes will drive eyeballs and fandom to its professional push, said CEO and co-founder Katlyn Gao.
• Flag football: "This sport is one of the fastest-growing women's sports worldwide right now. We're more than 20 million players ... in more than 200 countries, and it happened in just the past five years," Mexican flag football player Diana Flores told Deep Blue's Laura Correnti at the Women's Sports House in Cannes.
• Racing: McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown wants to double the percentage of staffers from underrepresented communities, the majority being women, from roughly 20% to 40% by the end of the decade, he told Axios on Wednesday. McLaren signed Bianca Bustamante as its first female driver to be a part of its driver development program in 2023.
• Rugby: Women's Elite Rugby (WER), a new professional women's rugby 15s league in the U.S., is raising seed funding after just closing an initial round, executive adviser Phil Camm told Axios' Kerry Flynn. It's being built on the back of the Women's Premier League (WPL), an amateur rugby league created in 2009 that operates as a nonprofit.
• Track: Alexis Ohanian's venture capital firm 776 will host a women's only track event in September called the 776 Invitational, Ohanian announced in April at Axios and Deep Blue's TN50: The Business of Women's Sports Summit. 776 is committing to the biggest purse ever for an all-female track event.

Zoom out: Their growth comes on the heels of recent commercial milestones for more established leagues.

• National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) commissioner Jessica Berman noted that the league's historic new $240 million rights deal comes as women's soccer team valuations continue to soar. Those valuations "build confidence" among brands to also put money behind the game, she said.

The bottom line: "Sports is more than a game. It's the way for boys and girls to accomplish their goals on and off the field... It's a way to build girls as professionals — more than just athletes," Flores said.

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