Women’s sport has made significant strides over the past decade, yet one challenge remains stubbornly pervasive: getting bums on seats. Our new research in partnership with Appinio covered eight sporting competitions in the US and UK, and revealed just how crucial fame is to overcome this problem.

As an integrated agency for brands in sport, there’s one question we’ve been asked repeatedly over the past year: ‘How do we make women’s sport unmissable?’ .

For me, the beauty of sport lies in how an athlete’s personality can be expressed through their performance. When you know more about them as people, their on-field actions and decisions have more context and meaning, and you’re more likely to tune in to watch them play.

This thought was the genesis of our research. If athletes themselves make sport unmissable, surely the relative lack of famous female athletes is a barrier. Our findings not only validated this hypothesis, but showed fame is more important in women’s sport than in men’s. 

Fame recruits fans 

Firstly, fame plays a more pronounced role in attracting fans to women’s sport. Fans are significantly less likely to start following a competition due to the influence of friends and family than in men’s sports. However, they are 51% more likely to start following due to buzz about an individual athlete.

Take the WSL: it has been growing steadily for years, but it’s the buzz around famous Lionesses like Lauren James or Mary Earps that drove a surge in new fans.

Fame sells tickets

The presence of famous athletes is also significantly more important in driving ticket sales in women’s sport, whereas in men’s competitions team loyalties and team rivalries are more important. Fascinatingly, when we looked at the WNBA, we saw that athlete fame is the single most important driver of intent to attend, outranking even ticket price.

The fame gap

So, fame is clearly vital in growing women’s sport. But there’s a problem: female athletes aren’t as famous, even among fans of their own sport.

We found a 15% gap between men’s and women’s sport in unprompted awareness of the top 3 scorers from each competition, among fans of those competitions. We then compared the Instagram followings of top male and female athletes and found a staggering 96% gap that speaks volumes about the visibility of female athletes.

Our combined Fame Gap - a blend of these two results - sits at a daunting 72%.

The fame trap: A vicious cycle

This highlights what we called the Fame Trap: a catch-22 situation where the thing that would most help women’s sport grow is exactly what it lacks. Sponsors, media outlets, and fans focus their attention and resources on already-famous male athletes, perpetuating the gap. Female athletes often miss out on the spotlight, leading to fewer sponsorships and a narrower fan base. So commercial growth is limited, but the solution is more famous female athletes.

It’s not that women’s sports lack star power. Just look at Megan Rapinoe, Alexia Putellas, and Serena Williams. But these are outliers in a system that doesn't consistently promote female athletes to the same level of fame as their male counterparts.

The digital advantage

Interestingly, women’s sport does have an edge: its fans are more digitally engaged. Unlike men’s audiences that primarily consume via live broadcasts, fans of women’s sports are significantly more likely to follow athletes on social media, participate in online communities, and engage with content across digital platforms. This gives women’s sport a unique opportunity to lean into social-first strategies.

The power of personality

We also found that fans of women’s sport want more than just athletic excellence from their athletes. They place greater value on the “whole person”. They favour charismatic athletes that stand for something, and are twice as likely to like an athlete due to appearance in non-sport media, or due to knowledge of their personal lives, than fan’s of men’s sport.

The solution: invest in fame

At the heart of the Fame Gap is a fundamental insight of what drives success in women’s sport. The audiences, values, and digital habits are different. Replicating marketing strategies from the men’s game won’t suffice.

It also suggests tackling inequality head-on isn’t the best approach either. Many marketing campaigns in the past have specifically addressed the unfairness of how women’s sport is perceived and/or funded. However, what The Fame Gap shows is those inequalities aren’t a motivating reason for fans to follow the competition or attend a game, but that superstar athletes are. This will be even more true as women’s sport seeks increasingly mainstream audiences.

The solution lies in building female athlete fame. Creating connections with fans through social media, leveraging their personalities, and amplifying their values beyond the sport itself.

It’s time to invest in female athletes as role models, advocates, and influencers in their own right.

To find out more about the Fame Gap please click here.