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The explosive growth in women’s sports is only just beginning, says one of the industry’s earliest investors.
“I think the market is going to grow the way tech grew in the early days,” Monarch Collective co-founder Kara Nortman said on the Power Players with Brian Sozzi podcast (listen below; watch above).
“We’re a $3 billion market today,” she said. “It could be — we wouldn’t put this in a slide deck — it could be $20, $30, $40, $50 billion … So I think the market size will grow faster than expected, and just like Amazon (AMZN) and Google (GOOG, GOOGL) and Anthropic (ANTH.PVT) and OpenAI (OPAI.PVT), they [the top sports] will take a majority of that share.”
Per Deloitte, global revenues in women’s elite sports are projected to reach at least $3 billion in 2026 — a 340% increase since 2022.
Commercial revenue — sponsorships, partnerships, and merchandise — is expected to be the largest driver at $1.4 billion, or 45% of total revenue, up from $1.1 billion in 2025. This signals that brands are no longer treating women’s sports as an afterthought but as a first-tier marketing investment.
Matchday revenue is rising from $748 million last year to a projected $911 million in 2026. The number reflects packed stadiums and sold-out venues that skeptics said would never materialize.
Broadcast revenue is also surging, with Deloitte forecasting $765 million in 2026, up from $551 million in 2025. Media companies are realizing that women’s sports audiences are real, loyal, and growing faster than almost anything else in the entertainment landscape.
Soccer and basketball are powering the machine, with each sport expected to account for 35% of global revenue in women’s sports.
Nortman’s background includes a successful seven-year tenure at media conglomerate IAC, where she co-headed mergers and acquisitions and served on the board of the incubator that launched dating app Tinder.
She then leveraged her business acumen to co-found the Angel City Football Club (National Women’s Soccer League) in 2020, scaling it alongside actress Natalie Portman. Nortman also co-founded Monarch Collective, a venture capital firm that invests exclusively in women’s sports.
Former Disney (DIS) CEO Bob Iger and his wife, Willow Bay, acquired a controlling stake in Nortman’s Angel City FC in 2024. The transaction valued the club at an enterprise value of $250 million, making it the most valuable women’s professional sports franchise in the world.
