When Azzi Fudd went No. 1 to the Dallas Wings in the WNBA Draft on April 13, it came with a massive payday compared to what the WNBA’s top pick made just a year ago.
Fudd will earn $500,000 in her first season as part of the new salary structure under the collective bargaining agreement ratified by the league and the players’ union last month. That’s seven times more than Paige Bueckers, Fudd’s Wings teammate and the 2025 No. 1 pick, made as a rookie, and about as much as Sue Bird made in a decade of playing in the WNBA. When Bird was selected first in the 2002 draft, her rookie salary came out to less than $60,000. As another comparison point, the top two picks alone in this year’s draft will make more than the first 12 picks combined last year.
It’s safe to say that the 2026 season – the 30th in the WNBA’s history – is a watershed moment for the league and player earnings, after years of players having to join overseas leagues in the offseason or take on other jobs to make ends meet. The dawning of this new era comes just as the women’s elite global sports market is set to reach at least $3 billion in revenue in 2026, according to a new Deloitte Global prediction report. That figure is up 340% since 2022 thanks to increasing investments from leagues and teams, sponsors, broadcasters and media, fans and more.
This level of commercial growth across the ecosystem has happened as women’s sports have become more popular, of course. But there is also one quieter but highly significant factor contributing to the movement, and that’s the growing collection and proliferation of women’s sports data. It’s the piece that makes these Deloitte annual market predictions – and their skyrocketing values – possible:
“Women’s sports are no longer in the shadows; they are taking the spotlight. To ensure sustainable growth, it is essential to establish the core foundations that will support long-term success,” the report reads. “Building the foundations of an organization and commercializing it in a few months can be challenging. It takes time to collect and analyze the right data, understand its impact, and implement effective solutions.”
Long-running men’s professional sports leagues have established data infrastructures for understanding player health and performance, consumer behaviors and fan engagement, media coverage and financial investment. WNBA Head of Growth Strategy Caiti Donovan has said the NBA, for example, is in “sustain” mode because of this foundation. Meanwhile, the WNBA is in the midst of a “double- and triple-digit growth” phase, and yet its central database only goes back about five years.
As a result, Donovan and the WNBA have been moving as quickly as possible to put the right systems and tools in place that capture the data and insights they need to understand how people are engaging with their product and to drive revenue. The more data a league like the WNBA has, the stronger it can make its case for larger investments from partners such as sponsors, broadcast media and expansion teams. It’s no surprise then that the price tags in each of those areas have increased in recent years, including a new media rights deal kicking off this season that is valued at $2.2 billion and $250 million expansion fees for each of the three new teams joining the league in the coming years (compared to the $50 million expansion fee the Golden State Valkyries paid just three years ago).
The task of data collection and analysis is much steeper for women’s sports leagues with fewer years in existence and resources than the WNBA (and for underfunded women’s NCAA programs now that name, image and likeness rights offer compensation opportunities). Fortunately, as leagues across the landscape continue to show strong growth numbers and returns on investment, we’re also seeing more organizations producing studies filled with valuable business insights on women’s sports, such as Deloitte, McKinsey, Wasserman’s The Collective and Parity. These studies often highlight data points for women’s sports as a whole, uplifting the investment case for upstart leagues and sports outside the mainstream. Parity, for example, released a study last year showing that women’s sports fans are more likely to engage with and buy from brands that sponsor female athletes, information that only helps justify more sponsorship investment.
A similar motivation for more research and data in women’s sports storytelling is what drives our approach at The Milliat. In the past month, we participated in two New York City university women’s sports conferences — NYU Tisch Institute for Global Sport and the Women’s Sports Collective’s fourth annual Women’s History Month Celebration and Columbia Business School’s 2026 Women’s Sports Summit — that reinforced our directive to build a stronger women’s sports community through shared experiences and stories, which gain strength and visibility when paired with data.
Recent investigative stories in women's sports journalism have shown how effective reporting work can be in pushing leagues and governing bodies to take action to improve the game. Similar to the leagues themselves, journalists covering women’s sports have historically had fewer resources and less access to data, making their jobs more difficult and their reporting work critical to gathering insights.
We aim to build on this legacy with research-backed, sourced and data-driven storytelling that keeps girls and women participating in sports, brings their communities together, incentivizes more investment and industry growth.
Here Comes Flag Football
Flag football, the fastest growing youth sport in the United States, took center stage two weekends ago in the first college women’s flag football tournament.
Eight teams from around the country competed in the two-day, 7-on-7 Fiesta Bowl Flag Football Classic on Arizona State’s campus and showed why the sport, especially among girls and women, is skyrocketing in popularity. The event sold more than 2,000 tickets, and the semifinal and championship games on April 19 aired live on ESPNU.
While women’s flag football is not yet an official NCAA sport, that could change very soon. It is one of four sports on the NCAA’s Emerging Sports for Women program — in addition to rugby, equestrian and triathlon — and reportedly, based on the number of Division I universities already with teams, is on track to reach official status and begin play in the spring of 2028.
This explosion has started at the grassroots level, with 2.5 million girls playing organized youth and high school football in the last year alone. From 2015-2024, the number of girls aged 6-12 participating in flag football has increased by 283%, according to USA Football. Starting in 2028, the sport will make its debut at the Los Angeles Olympics.
Photography by: @flicks_by_kt
Trishelle Tucay is a flag football rising star hoping to make the USA women’s Olympic roster. Tucay started playing flag football in seventh grade, drawn to it after watching her older brothers play tackle football and her school officially introduced the sport. Now, she competes on the Apex Predators, an elite club team, and the highly competitive USA U17 Junior National Team, setting an example for the path other young girls can take to reach the top of a sport rife with opportunity.
A Women’s Sports-Inspired Brand: FORTA Cosmetics
The market for athleisure and beauty products has only gotten more crowded in recent years, with new brands entering the mix and competing to capture the growing demand. That didn’t stop Indiana Fever guard Lexie Hull and venture capitalist Sarah Guller, former Stanford roommates, from acting on a void they saw in the marketplace.
Last month, the college friends launched FORTA Cosmetics, a beauty brand whose products are designed for athletes and people with active lifestyles. The first sale item on their website is a setting spray built to last through long workdays and workouts — even a WNBA game.
Check out an excerpt from our recent Q&A with Hull and Guller, which will appear in full in The Milliat’s first print magazine edition.
Q. At what point did a conversation between two people become a decision to start a company?
Lexie and I have had this idea for years. We ended up applying to L’Oréal’s new brand accelerator with just an idea and no product prototypes, no branding, nothing. Even with just our idea for FORTA, we ended up getting chosen as finalists. L’Oréal flew us out to Paris to pitch the idea live to a committee of some of the biggest names in beauty — that’s when we realized we had something real. We went from “this would be cool” to actually mapping out what the product would be, who it was for, and why it needed to exist. Once we realized we were both independently thinking about the same problem (and couldn’t stop coming back to it), it felt less like a silly project and more like something real we had to pursue.
Q. For a student who wants to work at the intersection of sports, business, and consumer brands — what is the one thing they need to understand that a case study won't reveal?
That proximity matters more than theory. You can study brands all day, but until you’re actually close to the consumer — seeing how people make choices, what they care about, what they ignore — you won’t fully understand it. The best learning comes from being in it, not analyzing it from the outside. We’ve learned so much more by rolling up our sleeves and getting our hands dirty than we ever did in the classroom.
A Day In History
Wednesday, April 19 1967
Kathrine Switzer began the day of her first Boston Marathon in 1967 like most other runners — with nerves and a determination to finish the race. Once Switzer and her group made it to the start line, any hope she had of running a normal race quickly dissipated.
As the first woman to run the Boston Marathon, she became a target for other runners, spectators and media on the course, with reactions ranging from friendly surprise to outright hostility. At one point mid-race, a marathon official tried to tear off her bib and pull her off the course.
Switzer overcame her detractors and crossed the finish line, fearing that if she didn’t, she would set back women’s progress in running and sports among those who believed women weren’t capable. Five years after Switzer’s courageous feat, in 1972, the Boston Marathon officially permitted women to compete in the race.