Kate Johnson

Well, this stumbling upon is what we in marketing call discoverability.

And for sports, it's the magic that fuels existing fans and captures new ones, pulling them in.

But while it's easier than ever to search for sports news on Instagram, TikTok or Google, the information that fans stumble upon, or rather discover, well, it's served up to us by algorithms.

They use historical data, fan interactions and what's trending, which mainly skews to men's sports.

Despite incredible talent, heated rivalries, and growing popularity, women's sports remain largely invisible in our daily content feeds.

And this has real-world implications.

I've spent nearly two decades in global sports and entertainment marketing, at IMG, at Visa, and now at Google, and I've seen firsthand how and why this happens.

So I want to unpack this with you all.

I want you to think about these technology platforms as massive digital libraries and the algorithms as the librarians.

They're great at organizing, indexing, and cataloging information, but here's the important bit.

They can only make recommendations from what's on the shelves, which historically, for many decades and only until very recently, has been 19 stories about men's sports for every one story about women's sports.

19 to 1.

So if I ask any of these technology platforms who has scored the most goals for their country in international football, who do you think I get?

Most of you are debating, is it Cristiano Ronaldo?

Maybe Messi?

Well, as of recently, Cristiano Ronaldo has scored 141 goals for Portugal.

But factually speaking, this answer is wrong.

And spoiler alert, it's not Messi either.

The correct answer to this gender ambiguous query is Christine Sinclair of Canada with 190 goals.

That's right.