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.

Go deeper.

At least 20 teams are set to play their inaugural season in 2024, from expansion teams like National Women's Soccer League's Bay FC to a host of brand-new teams in the USL Super League, which kicks off its first season on August 17, according to an analysis from Axios' Ashley Mahoney and Simran Parwani.

Between the lines: Women's sports fans have higher engagement rates than men's sports fans, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers research.

• You're three times more likely to attend a women's game if you follow a female athlete, and you're nearly three times more likely to purchase apparel if you attend a game, Axios' Justin L. Mack reported, citing PwC.

Yes, but: Despite significant growth and investment, women's teams still face challenges — from teams folding to leagues struggling to find their footing.

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Sports media executives are pushing to invest more in women's sports coverage, as a way to better serve and grow their audiences.

• X: The platform is in conversations with sports leagues about producing more docuseries on the platform, CEO Linda Yaccarino told Axios at the Women's Sports House. Gotham FC and U.S. Women's National Team forward Midge Purce, on Axios' stage, teased a new reality docuseries about women's soccer that will live on X. (Full interview.)
• Yahoo: The internet giant has tapped a slew of female Olympians, such as Allyson Felix, Kerri Walsh Jennings, Shawn Johnson East, Missy Franklin and Katie Hoff, to be correspondents for the 2024 games. It plans to increase investments in women's sports fantasy products. (Full interview,)
• Time Inc.: From 2014 to 2024, 17 Time magazine covers featured a female athlete compared to 5 covers in the decade prior, per Time Inc. CEO Jess Sibley. Time Studios produced a documentary on the U.S. Women's World Cup Team for Netflix that was nominated for a Sports Emmy. (Full interview.)
• Sports Illustrated: Sports Illustrated is planning to invest significantly in bolstering its coverage of women's sports, editor-in-chief Steve Cannella told Axios on stage in Cannes. The iconic magazine wants to dive deeper into under-covered women's sports, such as hockey and softball. (Full interview.)
• The Athletic: The Athletic has roughly doubled its coverage of women's sports from 2022 to 2023, per New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien. The publication had 4 full-time journalists covering women's sports in 2022, compared to 10 today. (Full interview.)
• Disney/ESPN: "We've doubled down on the investment we're making in college sports," said Disney/ESPN Advertising President Rita Ferro. In January ESPN inked a new, eight-year agreement to air NCAA championships, including domestic rights for 21 women's championship games and 19 men's games. (Full interview).

What to watch: The WNBA expects to work with Disney in its new media rights agreement and is seeking more brand deals, the league's SVP and chief growth officer Colie Edison told Axios. (Full interview).

The women's sports industry is predicted to break the $1 billion barrier for the first time in total revenue this year — a 300% increase from 2021, writes Axios' Analis Bailey.

Why it matters: The main driver of cash coming into women's sports is commercial sponsorships, followed by media rights and matchday revenues (ticket sales), per Deloitte.

• For women's sports, which have historically been undervalued by networks in terms of media rights, sponsorships have proven critical.
• "We have over 100 advertisers across 50 categories putting money into women's sports, not because it's the right thing to do, but because it's good for business," said Disney/ESPN Advertising president Rita Ferro (full interview).

Case in point: Nielsen's Sports business found that the rights to the women's Super League in Europe were undervalued by $16 billion, Nielsen chief product officer Deirdre Thomas told Axios at the Women's Sports House (full interview).

Driving the news: Brands are endorsing more college women athletes than ever before, thanks to new name, image, and likeness (NIL) rights that have revolutionized commercial opportunities for students.

• Of the top 100 athletes ranked by total NIL deals in 2023, 52 supported women and 48 supported men, per SponsorUnited.
• "I think brands have an incredible responsibility but also an opportunity to help grow the game and grow women's sports," UCLA Bruins guard Kiki Rice told Axios at the Women's Sports House (full interview).

What to watch: "The Money Game," an upcoming docuseries co-produced by Axios Entertainment, Campfire Studios and Shaquille O'Neal, tracks the revolutionary impact of NIL policies on college sports.

• The show debuts this fall on Amazon Prime.

What's next: Axios rounded up some of the biggest women's sporting events through the rest of the year and into 2025, including the WNBA Commissioner's Cup in June and Tour de France Femmes in August.

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For the first time in Olympic history, The Paris Games this summer will have an equal number of men and women athletes.

Why it matters: Some of the most highly-anticipated events this year feature female athletes from the U.S., such as gymnastics gold medalist Simone Biles, track and field star Sha'Carri Richardson and reigning Olympic swimming champion Katie Ledecky.

By the numbers: NBC, which has exclusive rights to air the games through 2032, has already sold more than $1.2 billion in advertising around the games and expects to bring in more money this year than any other Olympic Games in history.

• "Female athletes in commercials during the last Olympics had a 14% higher brand recognition rate compared to male athletes," said Alison Levin, president of advertising and partnerships at NBCUniversal, at the Women's Sports House (full interview).

Flau'jae Johnson's long-awaited collaboration with Lil Wayne will finally drop next Friday.

Why it matters: The LSU women's basketball star pulls double duty as a performing artist, and the collaboration track will be part of her aptly titled EP, "Best of Both Worlds," Axios' Chelsea Brasted writes.

• The project came about after WNBA legend Sue Bird challenged Lil Wayne to reach out to the young rapper and basketball star, Johnson told me in an interview at the Axios Women's Sports House.

The big picture: Since being part of the team that won LSU's first women's basketball national championship, "I've been living the dream," she said.

Zoom in: Growing up in Savannah, Georgia, Johnson was inspired to be a performing artist by her father, a rapper who went by the name Camoflauge. He was shot and killed outside a recording studio in 2003, several months before Johnson was born.

• "I actually just kind of kept working on it and got good at it," she said. "And it was something that I felt like was in my blood, honestly."
• That early effort turned into an appearance on "America's Got Talent" when she was just 14 and eventually a distribution deal with ROC Nation.

The fine print: That deal leaves a lot of control in Johnson's hands, she said.

• "I could still own my own masters, still have creative control and kind of be my own boss," she said.

What's next: A music video for the collaboration "is definitely going to be LSU," Johnson teased.

• "When you go to a college, you become a part of the whole," she said. "I'm dying a Tiger, I'll tell you that. I really wanted to make [the video] LSU-themed and just give something for Louisiana to hold onto."

Watch the full interview.