With the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup in India, the UEFA Women’s Euro in Switzerland, and the Women’s Rugby World Cup in England all due to occur in the space of a few months, 2025 is set to be the biggest year yet for women’s sport!

Not only is women’s sport closing the gap with men’s sport, but it is carving out its own unique and thriving space within the global sporting economy. This sector is brimming with opportunities in 2025 and beyond for brands, investors, and stakeholders to contribute to and benefit from the continued growth and success of women’s sport.

1. Growth in Sponsorship and Media Rights Agreements

Sponsorship

Women’s sport is an increasingly attractive sponsorship proposition as it offers companies a valuable opportunity to connect with a wider, more diverse audience while fostering a progressive brand image. Key beneficiaries to date have been women’s basketball, tennis and football, but other sports are also getting in on the action. In 2025, we therefore expect to see sponsorship opportunities increase in relation to volume, value and brand diversity (both for sporting organisations and individual female athletes) across a number of different sports:

• Volume - while in 2023 the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup attracted a good number of sponsors, 2024 saw a great improvement, with tournament broadcaster Disney Star unveiling 14 major sponsors for the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup 2024, including global brands like Hyundai, Mondelez, and Booking.com. The 2025 ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup looks set to offer even greater opportunities. Meanwhile, in rugby, while the full roster of sponsors is yet to be announced, organisers have already secured global sponsorship with Gilbert Rugby and Aggreko for the 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup . 
• Value - according to Deloitte, the combined revenue of Women’s Super League (WSL) clubs is projected to reach £68 million in the 2024/25 season, up from £20 million in 2020/21. This growth is attributed to high-profile sponsorship deals with brands like Visa, Barclays, and Nike, as well as increased media rights and fan engagement. While football might be the most significant, we expect to see sponsorship value increase across other women’s sports too.
• Brand diversity - as the popularity of women’s sport continues to grow, the diversity of brands investing in women’s sports is expanding, with beauty and lifestyle companies increasingly recognising the potential of this space. Examples include Sephora, which has signed on as a multi-year partner of the new 3x3 women’s basketball league, ‘Unrivaled’, Charlotte Tilbury’s global sporting partnership with the F1 Academy, Paula’s Choice partnering with US rugby player Ilona Maher, and Maybelline partnering with tennis player Naomi Osaka.

Media Rights

The unbundling of media rights is expected to become an even more significant trend in 2025, as broadcasters and rightsholders look to optimise their revenue streams and negotiating positions. By selling individual game rights, highlights packages, and exclusive behind-the-scenes content separately, rightsholders can create new opportunities for broadcasters to engage with different audiences and maximise visibility for women’s sports. 

Recent examples of this trend include the WSL, which has benefited from a significant boost in media coverage, with both Sky Sports and BBC offering dedicated slots and prime-time broadcasting, and the UEFA Women’s Champions League, backed by a landmark global rights deal with DAZN, now enjoys streaming access across 230+ countries, resulting in a 56% increase in viewership year-over-year. Furthermore, the Women’s Indian Premier League (cricket), launched in 2023, secured broadcasting rights valued at USD $116 million for its first five seasons. Rugby has also made strides, with the 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup promising extensive live broadcasts across leading global networks and innovative streaming options aimed at maximising reach.

2. Professionalisation of Women’s Sport

The growing professionalisation of women’s sport is also set to be a feature of 2025, driven by governance reforms, structural changes and regulation, as well as financial investment. Football is at the forefront of these changes, with the Women’s Professional Leagues Limited (WPLL) (which has an all-female executive leadership team) recently taking over responsibility for the WSL and the Barclays Women’s Championship from The FA. This structural shift, underpinned by investments from the Premier League between 2022 and 2025, is expected to empower the WPLL to drive operational and governance reforms that will significantly enhance the women’s game in the years to come. 

Other sports are also implementing changes and making investments designed to facilitate the professionalisation of their sports:

• Rugby: In anticipation of the 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup in England, World Rugby’s ‘Impact Beyond 25’ Programme promotes structural reforms at club, league and national level through the creation of clear and accountable leadership structures, ensuring women are represented in decision-making positions within rugby’s governing bodies. To improve player development, the programme also prioritises investment in coaching, including training and certifying more coaches to work with female athletes. 
• Cricket: In early 2024, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB)  announced a new structure for women’s domestic cricket that will run from 2025-2028. The new structure consists of a three-tiered competition, with the current eight women’s Regional teams set to become ‘Tier 1 Clubs’, which will participate in the ECB’s T20 and 50-over competitions from 2025 onwards (with no relegation of the Tier 1 Clubs or promotion of non-Tier 1 Clubs during this period). As part of this announcement, ECB has also confirmed that it will invest a further £4m - £5m per year into the women’s game from 2025-2028, increasing the annual investment into professional domestic women’s cricket to around £16m per year. 
• Netball: In 2025, we will see the reintroduction of the fully professional Netball Super League (NSL) following a tender process to select eight clubs for inclusion in the league. We can expect to see clubs playing in bigger venues and arenas, as well as improvements to the broadcast and running of matches. The following changes are also being implemented in order to support the professionalisation of those competing in the NSL: (i) a move to centralised contracts, which will standardise player agreements across the league, ensuring fair and transparent terms for all players, (ii) a player salary increase of at least 60% together with the introduction of a salary cap and banding structure designed to create a more equitable distribution of financial resources across teams, and (iii) the introduction of formalised player welfare structures, including enhanced mental health support, career development opportunities, and access to well-being resources.

Pregnancy and maternity regulation are also a core feature of creating professional sporting environments, and an area in which we expect to see further strides in 2025. Of particular note is the recent launch of FIFPRO’s Postpartum Return to Play Guide, which includes a guide for regulatory changes intended to create minimum standards that can be introduced and complied with by footballing organisations around the world, so that each and every player can have basic pre-and post-partum protections when deciding to start a family. It is hoped that this will trigger further improvements to pregnancy and maternity provision in both football and other sports.

3. Investment in women’s sport

Investment in women’s sport is set to continue growing over the course of 2025. Indeed, Deloitte projects that global revenues for elite women’s sports are set to exceed USD $1 billion this year, driven by greater professionalism, audience growth and improved monetisation strategies, and investment in the UK is being actively encouraged by the UK Government through the recently launched Women’s Sport Investment Accelerator Scheme. This scheme is designed to attract more private investment in women’s sport in the UK by connecting elite women’s leagues, competitions and teams across different sports (including the WSL and England Women’s cricket) with investors and industry experts to help them attract and secure investment and sponsorship. 

We expect to see investment coming from a variety of different sources, including from private equity (e.g. the recent announcement of $100 million in funding for League One Volleyball led by female-founded private equity firm, Atwater Capital), institutional investment (e.g. the WTA’s recent multi-year partnership with the Saudi Public Investment fund), venture capital, elite athletes (e.g. tennis player Coco Gauff’s recent investment in the new women’s ‘Unrivaled 3x3 basketball league and Naomi Osaka and Ons Jabeur’s investments in National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) team, NC Courage), as well as  from governments and sports governing bodies themselves (such as UEFA’s recent pledge to invest EUR 1 billion in women’s football over the next six years). 

In particular, we will be watching for news of investment into women’s cricket this year (following the 2024 announcement by the ECB that they had opened up process to secure private investment into the eight teams competing in The Hundred), and further acquisitions of women’s football clubs, which is on the up following high profile investments by Michele Kang (owner of Olympique Lyon Féminin, the Washington Spirit and the London City Lionesses) and Mercury/13 (which is looking for further opportunities to acquire women’s football clubs after its recent acquisition of FC Como Women), as well as the takeover of Angel City FC for USD $250 million in September 2024 (which made the club the world’s most expensive women’s sport team). We are also expecting to see investment rise in other areas of women’s sport such as health and performance technology (following, for example, Michelle Kang’s USD $50 million global investment in improving the health of elite female athletes through Kynsica) and infrastructure investment (such as the building of a £10 million state-of-the-art training facility for Manchester City’s women’s team, which is set to open this year).