Kate Johnson

Athletes, fans who are working as content creators behind the scenes, and yes, even you and me.

Brands and media rights holders who understand the value of women's sports audiences, they're leaning in and they're reimagining traditional models around sports rights.

Take Visa.

They became the first ever standalone sponsor of UEFA women's football.

They worked with UEFA to basically unbundle the women's sponsorship rights from what was traditionally sold as a bundle with the men's.

Another interesting example this year came from streaming platform Netflix, who secured the exclusive rights in the US and Canada for the next two FIFA Women's World Cups.

I'm proud to say that at Google, we're tackling the bias challenge from both sides.

We're getting smarter at responding to your gender-ambiguous queries.

while at the same time working with content teams like Arsenal, Liverpool, women's clubs, making sure that across India women's cricket, the WNBA, the National Women's Soccer League, we're creating more stories for the algorithmic librarian to catalog and recommend.

Our search products are getting better at women's sports discoverability, and at the same time, we're working with media partners at ESPN, The Athletic, even British Vogue, increasing the coverage of women's sports.

Athletes and fans are also playing a critical role in reimagining new models.

They're building their own audiences with social media, creating brands that live far beyond the field of play.

Take US rugby player Alona Mar.

She blew up on social media during the Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024 Olympics with her hilarious behind-the-scenes glimpses of athlete life in the Olympic Village.

She became her own media channel, connecting with audiences and making herself and women's rugby more visible and more relatable than traditional media ever could.

Canadian creator and fan, Logan Hackett, aka Sports with Logs, is another awesome example.

She breaks down complex plays, rules, and controversies, making women's sports easier to understand and more accessible to new fans.

More recently, I've been paying attention to how AI is poised to accelerate all of this, while AI slop is a real thing.

In the right hands, tools like Gemini and ChatGPT can enable anyone to create thoughtful, production-level quality content and distribute it at scale.

Take podcast host Sean Callinan, whose Sports Geek Rapid Rundown podcast uses AI to curate the business news of the day into daily episodes on a variety of topics all in his own AI-generated voice.