James, Bueckers lead rookie-heavy Wings past Mercury, 98–89
JJ Quinerly contributed a career-high 17 points for the Wings (6-13), who have now won five of their last seven games. Fellow rookie starter Luisa Geiselsöder added four points, while second-year center Li Yueru went 10 of 12 from the free-throw line and finished with 12 points and 11 rebounds.
James hit five 3-pointers and also tallied six rebounds and six assists.
Kahleah Copper led the Mercury (12-6) with 33 points, marking the 11th 30-point game of her career. Satou Sabally added 20 points and Monique Akoa Makani chipped in 14. Phoenix has now dropped two straight after a six-game winning streak.
ARLINGTON, TEXAS - JULY 03: Satou Sabally #0 of the Phoenix Mercury goes up for a shot against Luisa Geiselsoder #18 of the Dallas Wings in the first half at College Park Center on July 03, 2025 in Arlington, Texas. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and or using this photograph, User is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement.
/ Getty Images
Dallas came out hot, making 10 of 13 shots—including three 3-pointers—and going a perfect 9 for 9 from the line to take a 32-20 lead after the first quarter. James scored 13 points in the second quarter alone, surpassing her previous career high of 17 before halftime. The Wings closed their best half of the season with a 61-43 lead, shooting 61% from the field, 7 of 13 from beyond the arc, and 14 of 15 from the line.
Phoenix shot just 37% in the first half and went 3 for 14 from 3-point range, though they stayed in the game by hitting 14 of 16 free throws.
Copper sparked a third-quarter rally with two 3-pointers and eight points in under a minute. Alyssa Thomas, who finished with nine points, 10 assists and seven rebounds, added a layup to cut the deficit to 67-63 midway through the period. But James responded with a three-point play, and Dallas rebuilt its lead to 82-71 heading into the fourth.
The Wings extended their advantage to as many as 18 points at 92-74 in the final quarter.
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Yahoo
10 minutes ago
- Yahoo
WNBA Applauds Indiana Fever Star After Blowout Over Aces
WNBA Applauds Indiana Fever Star After Blowout Over Aces originally appeared on Athlon Sports. WNBA All-Star guard Caitlin Clark continues to miss games for the Indiana Fever due to a strained groin. But they have been doing all right without her, and in fact, in some of the fans' opinion, they have been surging. Advertisement They won their eighth game in their last 12 outings on Thursday when they defeated the Las Vegas Aces, 81-54. They forced 19 turnovers and held Las Vegas to 26.2% field-goal shooting, while Aliyah Boston continued her fine play of late with 20 points. Guard Kelsey Mitchell led Indiana in scoring with 25 points on 9-of-18 shooting from the field and 4-of-6 from 3-point range. She also added six assists and two steals to help her team break a 16-game losing streak to the Aces. Mitchell made the All-Star team in 2023 and 2024 and is averaging 19.3 points a game on 45.4% overall shooting and 37.1% from 3-point range this season. She has stepped up her game lately with Clark out, and this was her fifth straight contest with at least 20 points, not including Tuesday's Commissioner's Cup final. Advertisement Indiana Fever guard Kelsey Mitchell shoots against the Connecticut Sun at Mohegan Sun Rutherford-Imagn Images Indiana now has a 9-8 record, and it is clearly surging even without Clark. Even better, it has just started a five-game homestand, which will give the team an opportunity to fatten up its record going into the All-Star break. After their homestand ends, the Fever will play road games against the Connecticut Sun and New York Liberty before the All-Star game takes place. This year, it will be held at Gainbridge Fieldhouse, the Fever's home arena. Related: Aliyah Boston Earns Praise From WNBA During Indiana Fever Game This story was originally reported by Athlon Sports on Jul 4, 2025, where it first appeared.
Indianapolis Star
18 minutes ago
- Indianapolis Star
WNBA was totally unprepared for Caitlin Clark: 'That's unfortunate but that's what happened'
INDIANAPOLIS -- The day after Caitlin Clark declared for the 2024 WNBA draft, USA Today sports columnist Christine Brennan made a phone call to a top official in the league. "Do you know how big this is?" Brennan asked. That official said Clark's arrival was the biggest thing to happen to the WNBA since Maya Moore came into the league. What? Wait. What? Brennan was shocked. Moore, a Hall of Famer, was called the "greatest winner in the history of women's basketball" by Sports Illustrated in 2017. She was a talented, beloved superstar in the league, and she deserved all the attention. But outside the league, Moore went virtually unnoticed. Clark? She was going to capture the attention of an entire nation. Brennan had been covering Clark and the WNBA for years, and she could see it coming. This official clearly had no idea. "That interaction tells you everything about the utter lack of preparation, or even understanding, by the league of what was coming," said Brennan, whose book "On Her Game: Caitlin Clark and the Revolution in Women's Sports," comes out July 8. "And that's unfortunate. But that's what happened." Clark's entrance to pro women's basketball would be nothing like Moore's. Clark would be bigger, more monumental, more earth shattering and game changing than anything that had happened in modern day women's sports. The so-called Clark Effect would be monstrous, potent, and it would be real. "How did the WNBA not see this coming?" said Brennan. "One of the reasons for having so badly mismanaged Caitlin Clark's arrival in the WNBA is because, did they truly not believe this could happen to the WNBA? Were they so relegated to second class citizenship by the male-dominated mainstream sports media that they just never believed this would be possible?" The league would quickly see that this Clark phenomenon was very possible. Re-live Caitlin Clark's spectacular rookie season with our collector's book It was May 9, 2024, in downtown Indianapolis, the first preseason game for the Indiana Fever with Clark debuting as a rookie in the league. As fans descended on Gainbridge Fieldhouse, Clark had traffic backed up on Alabama Street for more than three blocks heading south into the parking garage across from the fieldhouse. It was 6 p.m. on a Thursday and a crew of workers directing cars had their jobs cut out for them. Tony Dunkin was used to crowds jamming up the lane he works on Level 1 of the garage for the Pacers and other events, but he had never seen anything like this for a Fever game and definitely not for a preseason WNBA game. The cars were packed in, maneuvering around orange cones, clamoring to get their vehicles into a parking spot so they could get themselves into a seat. "This is what a Pacers game usually does," Dunkin said, "not the Fever. I call it the Caitlin effect." Security staff working at a Delaware Street entrance into the fieldhouse for Clark's first preseason game with the Fever were shocked. There were fans waiting outside two hours before the doors opened to pour into the arena. Waiting for a preseason WNBA game. In 2023, the year before, the Fever averaged 4,067 fans a game. "14,000 of them tonight," said Beverly Franklin. "Now, if they can just have a crowd like this for every game, that would be awesome." Clark said the same thing just a few hours later, after she stuffed the stat sheet as the Fever beat the Atlanta Dream 83-80 in the team's only preseason home game. She said the same thing to the crowd of 14,000, who had roared with every mention of her name during the game and rose to their feet with every shot she took. "You all were amazing. Thanks for coming out for a preseason game," Clark said as she was interviewed on court after racking up 12 points, eight rebounds and six assists. "I hope you'll keep coming back." Coming back. They did. The Clark Effect would reverberate throughout the league, an effect that a season and a half later has turned, to put it mildly, complicated. Brennan says it didn't have to be complicated, if only the league had taken some initiative to prepare other players in the WNBA for what was coming with Clark. "The league failed the players," Dr. Harry Edwards, an American sociologist and civil rights activist, says in the book. "The WNBA not only missed an opportunity to prepare players for this moment, they set the traps along the path that the league was going to travel." Edwards told Brennan the WNBA needed to understand and prepare for the "disappointment and anger" some Black players, in particular, would be experiencing due to Clark's ballyhooed arrival. "This was predictable," he said. "It's human nature for people not to be happy for you when you're new and successful, especially if it's in an arena where they have toiled all their lives and not come close to the kind of reward or applause that (Clark) is receiving." Through the years, before Clark ever laid a hand on a ball on a pro basketball court, the WNBA has stood for equality, often being described, according to Brennan, as "a Black, gay league." The most recent statistics reveal that 63.8% of WNBA players are Black, while 19.1% are white, according to a 2023 report on the WNBA by The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida. While that study didn't include sexual identity, "a substantial portion of the league identifies as LGBTQ+," writes Brennan. The league "often has been under attack because a third of the players in the WNBA are identified as being part of the LGBTQ+ community," commentator and writer Jemele Hill said at the 2024 Association for Women in Sports Media conference. "And into this world landed Caitlin Clark, a white, straight, 22-year-old woman who had not played a second in the WNBA," Brennan writes, "but already was a national phenomenon and about to become the face of the league." Clark is a player who can be a bit of a hothead. She has racked up her own share of technical fouls and is not a player to back down, clapping in the faces of opponents and sometimes having to be calmed down on the bench. She is also a player who has endured an endless surge of rough play and technicals committed against her. As that has played out in the WNBA since Clark arrived, there have been racial undertones that cannot be denied when it comes to the coverage and the treatment Clark has received, Ellen Staurowsky, a professor of sports media in the Park School of Communications at Ithaca College in New York, told IndyStar in September "Research has shown that A'ja Wilson, one of the best WNBA players in history and she's getting half the coverage of Sabrina Ionescu," said Staurowsky. "There's no doubt and there's no question that there is a racial dynamic in all of this. And that cannot be discounted." There is a very concrete way the league could have prepared players for what was to come, said Edwards, who has counseled players and leagues for decades. The WNBA should have established "a series of seminars" in the preseason for every team in the league, he says in the book. "There are people out there who could have gone in and given those talks to each franchise," says Edwards, "experts and specialists from a sports sociological perspective with the understanding and grasp of the situation." They could have told each team, Edwards says, "Hey, we have Caitlin Clark coming in and the media has grabbed ahold of this, the public has grabbed ahold of this, but let me tell you something, you sitting right here in this room, you set the stage for this." Brianna Scurry, the first Black superstar in women's soccer and the goalkeeper for the 1999 U.S. women's soccer team, readily endorses Edwards' idea for having programming to prepare the players for this unprecedented time. "That would've been absolutely brilliant to have something like that even if the players didn't themselves want to see things holistically, they would have at least been able to see someone talking about it and saying, 'OK, I may be angry about all this and feeling like we've been here this whole time, however I can find this silver lining in here," Scurry says in the book. "But because the WNBA, unfortunately, didn't do that the players didn't even understand how big that tsunami was that was coming for them in a good way, and they were just woefully unprepared for it." Brennan wants to make clear that when she says the players needed to be prepared for the moment "it's not because these players, Black and white, the veteran players, Black and white, it's not because they're damsels in distress. No, of course not," she says. "They're strong athletes, most of them have college degrees. They are wonderful, accomplished young women. But nothing like this has ever happened before in the WNBA," Brennan said. "And frankly, you can make a strong case, nothing quite like this has ever happened, not only in women's team sports, but in all of team sports, men and women, where one league is lifted up to this extent by one person." In December, IndyStar reached out to Dr. Ryan Brewer, a renowned valuation guru in the field of finance, asking him to put a price tag on Caitlin Clark -- what she meant financially to the WNBA, her city and the country in her rookie season with the Fever. The numbers were so shocking that Brewer was sure he must have made some mistake. He ran the numbers again. Then again. And every single time, he got the same result. "The numbers are so staggering," said Brewer, associate professor of finance at Indiana University Columbus. "They don't even seem real." By Brewer's calculation, Clark was responsible for 26.5% of the WNBA's leaguewide activity for the 2024 season, including attendance, merchandise sales and television. One of every six tickets sold at a WNBA arena could be attributed to Clark. Total TV viewership due to Clark was up 300% and 45% of total broadcast value came from Fever games. The league's merchandise sales catapulted 500%, with Clark ranking No. 1 followed by the Chicago Sky's Angel Reese, another rookie. The Fever's regular-season game attendance averaged more than 17,000 fans, the first time a WNBA team has drawn more than 300,000 fans in a season. Clark's regular-season games were watched by 1.2 million viewers on average, which was 199% more than non-Clark WNBA games. But, perhaps, the most astonishing number of all is Clark's economic impact on the city of Indianapolis, which Brewer says is upwards of $36 million. "Now, let's take a breath for a minute and think about this," Brewer told IndyStar in December. "That's for one year. We're talking about one player." What all those numbers mean, he said, is that the entire league is benefitting from the arrival of Clark. "Caitlin Clark's presence, while polarizing for some people, is really a watershed moment for the league, and I just hope that all these amazing Black players are taking full advantage of the fact that the spotlight is on what they're doing now," Scurry says in the book. "I understand there's a lot of frustration and there's some anger because the league has been around for 27 years before she came. "But my goodness, it's having this moment right now. And please, please, please as players in the league, do not let this opportunity pass you by to get yours." Unfortunately, the disconnect between Clark and other players in the league was highlighted this week when Clark was voted as the ninth-best guard in the WNBA by fellow players, said Brennan. "Here we are again. Because Caitlin was ranked first in fan voting overall," Brennan said. "That's a disconnect that is going to be problematic for the WNBA and its economics and its financial future moving forward. That's just a fact. It's such a disconnect between what the fans think and what the players think, that is a problem for the WNBA that should be addressed." With the league's collective bargaining agreement open, "Clark is the most important person to them. This is the conundrum, right?" Brennan says. "Because they need her desperately in order to get more money because she is the economic rocket ship that's going to get them more money. I've never seen anything quite like this, and it's just absolutely fascinating." Brennan, who covered Title IX, has had a front row seat to the controversy, the fights for equality and the upward rise of women sports, including the explosion of the WNBA with Clark at the center. "And I never thought I would see this in my lifetime," Brennan says. "So to be able to chronicle it (in this book) I hope people enjoy the magic of Caitlin Clark and also enjoy the reporting on so many issues that are so important surrounding Caitlin Clark. "I hope as a journalist, I've captured this moment, this time, this athlete. This is a remarkable moment in women's sports, in sports overall, and in our culture. Caitlin Clark isn't just one of the country's most popular athletes, she's one of the country's most popular people. She is that big. And it's an honor to write this."
Yahoo
22 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Women's sports are booming. Why now?
According to new data from RBC, women's team valuations are expected to increase from $2.6 billion US in 2023 and 2024, to $4.3 billion in 2027. (Illustration by Sophie Baron/CBC Sports - image credit) In July 2020, about five months into the global pandemic, 144 WNBA players gathered in Bradenton, Fla., to play a 22-game condensed season in empty arenas. Inside the "Wubble," a campus-style isolation zone at IMG Academy created as a work-around to social distancing guidelines, athletes took daily COVID tests, shared villas with teammates, and traded in family time for nearly three months of elite basketball. Advertisement On the court, Arike Ogunbowale of the Dallas Wings led the league in scoring with 22.8 points per game, Las Vegas Ace centre A'ja Wilson was named MVP, and the Seattle Storm swept the Aces 3-0 in the championship series. However, what happened off the court proved just as significant in the league's emergence. When the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement surged following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer on May 25, 2020, WNBA players were among the first professional athletes to make a public stand, filling social media platforms with their messages of support for Floyd. And when Atlanta Dream owner Kelly Loeffler, a Republican senator, objected to their message, the players pushed back, publicly supporting her opponent in the November election, which she ultimately lost. A few months later, she sold her stake in the franchise. Advertisement WATCH | Why women's sports have become big business: The WNBA players were suddenly front and centre, and with major program gaps brought on by the pandemic, WNBA games and social justice initiatives were broadcast on major sports broadcast channels such as ESPN, ESPN2, ABC, CBS Sports Network, and even platforms like Facebook and Twitter. With both the NBA and WNBA playing in empty arenas, where the echo of squeaking sneakers bounced off the walls, there seemed a more fair comparison to be made between the two leagues. "We were looking at a court with no fans around it, the game was central to it," Ann Pegoraro, chair of Sport Management at the University of Guelph said. "They saw them [the NBA and WNBA] as equal, and I think that put them on some equal footing." New York Liberty star Sabrina Ionescu takes a free throw in an empty arena during the WNBA's pandemic "Wubble" season in 2020. (Getty Images) The equation had changed, and not just for women's basketball. The rise across all women's sports has been steadily gaining momentum in recent years. From soccer, to hockey, to volleyball, women's sports are experiencing a record-shattering surge like never before. Advertisement Since then, two new pro leagues have launched in Canada, emerging superstars like Caitlin Clarke have captured global audiences, and money has flowed. Lots of money. The lifeblood of any professional sport, male or female, and until now, something the women's pro leagues have struggled to attract. "No moment in history has been what it is now with women's basketball, women's soccer, women's hockey, women's cricket, and there's the data now around the world, it has just never been there before," said Diana Matheson, founder of the Northern Super League (NSL). Three years after the Wubble summer, WNBA viewership grew by 170 per cent, indicative that the times really are changing. Natasha Cloud marches to the MLK Memorial to support Black Lives Matter and to mark the liberation of slavery on June 19, 2020 in Washington, D.C. (Getty Images) Attractive investment option When asked if launching the first women's pro soccer league in Canada would have been possible 10, even five years ago, Matheson, a former senior women's national team star, responded without hesitation, "No." Advertisement "To be honest, Canada is a very conservative country when it comes to investing in ourselves. It seems to be something I've learned a lot about doing this," she said. "And it's not just women's sport, it's across the board." Prior to April 2025, Canada was one of just two countries — Haiti is the other — which competed in the 2023 Women's World Cup which didn't have its own professional women's league. Fans celebrate after the Vancouver Rise score against the Calgary Wild during the Northern Super League's historic first game in Vancouver on April 16. (Ethan Cairns/The Canadian Press) So when the NSL, launched its inaugural season this April and 14,000 fans were in Vancouver's BC Place stadium, it was historic. The eight-team league is owned by Matheson's company Project 8 Sports, Inc. and is already set to add its ninth franchise team next season. Advertisement "It's been three years since we started Project 8. We could see what was happening in women's sport already at that time and what was going to happen," she said. "The acceleration of that growth during those three years, I think, surprised everyone." There has been a 53 per cent increase in attendance at women's soccer games in the U.S. since 2019, heavily influenced by the Women's World Cup and equal pay movement pushed forward by U.S. senior women's soccer team. It was common to hear that women's sport doesn't make money, that no one watches women's sport. It wasn't treated like a business. - Diana Matheson "I didn't have any of the numbers that tell the sponsors that actually, our fan base in women's sport engages more with women's support sponsors, they're more loyal, they have a higher spend," she said. "It was common to hear that women's sport doesn't make money, that no one watches women's sport. It wasn't treated like a business." Just over a year ahead of the NSL's launch, the Professional Women's Hockey League (PWHL) began its inaugural season. Advertisement When the Canadian Women's Hockey League (CWHL) folded in 2019, more then 200 pro hockey players across North America and Europe came together to push for better wages, health care, and overall support as athletes. For four years, players competed in what was called the Dream Gap Tour, making monthly trips to North American cities to compete in community rinks in practice jerseys, awaiting better opportunities. When the PWHL formed in 2023, a player's association was created in tandem, and a binding collective bargaining agreement (CBA) was put in place ahead of the league's first game. Billie Jean King and Jayna Hefford take part in the ceremonial puck drop with Blayre Turnbull of Toronto (40) and Micah Zandee-Hart (28) of New York before the first PWHL game on Jan. 1, 2024. (Getty Images) "The true investment in our league and in our players is something that is huge," said Erin Ambrose, who plays for the Montreal Victoire. "No women's league has ever had a CBA before the first puck [drop]. To have that happen I think is setting a new precedent for female sports." Advertisement Ambrose said she never thought having a three-year contract with benefits, like a housing stipend, would be possible. "It's still very much surreal," she said. The PWHL found quick success, attracting a million fans to both regular and playoff games in its second season, according to the league. The demand for Toronto Scepters tickets was so high in its inaugural season that the team moved from the 2,600-seat Mattamy Centre to Coca Cola Coliseum, which seats more than 8,000 fans, in 2025. Matheson said that while the NSL was already in the works before the PWHL, it helped to propel the NSL forward. The PWHL has played to increasingly larger crowds since beginning play in 2024. (Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press) According to new data from RBC, which highlights the growing appeal of women's sports as a profitable investment opportunity in 2025, women's team valuations are expected to increase from $2.6 billion US in 2023 and 2024, to $4.3 billion in 2027. Advertisement In simple terms: women sporting franchises are being purchased for significantly less money than they end up earning, indicating their ripe opportunity for growth in the current sports ecosystem. San Diego Wave FC, a team in the NWSL founded in 2021 just sold for 5,550 per cent return-on-investment for its founding owners. Meanwhile, the WNBA's expansion Golden State Valkyries were recently valued at $500 million, the most of any team, and 10 times what the owners paid just two years previous to join the league. League One Volleyball, the indoor women's league which began its inaugural season in January and is backed by high-profile investors including actress Amy Schumer and NBA champion Jason Tatum, secured $60 million in funding in 2024. So, what's driving the growth? Advertisement High-value sponsorship deals, audience metrics, and team performances, to name a few. "We're seeing smart and different investors getting into women's sport. We're seeing Alexis, Ohanian and Serena Williams knowing where to put their money," said Pegoraro. "Anybody who plays in the stock market, anybody who bets, they want that big return. Women's sports is the place they can get it now, and it's pretty well guaranteed." Pegoraro adds that "now is the time to get in," and references a few of the savvy business moguls pouring money into the booming industry. Disney CEO Bob Iger and his wife, Willow Bay, purchased a stake in the heavily celebrity-backed Angel City FC, the L.A-based NWSL team now considered the most valuable women's soccer team globally at $280 million. Advertisement In 2022, American billionaire Michele Kang went on a spending spree, buying the NWSL's Washington Spirit for $35 million, the independent U.K. soccer club, London City Lionesses in 2023, as well as a majority stake in the French club Olympique Lyonnais Féminin in 2024. "She made her money and she knows what she's doing, she's getting a return on her investment," Pegoraro said. "Men's leagues are at maturation league levels. They don't have any growth potential left. Sure, financially they still seem to grow, but their fan bases are pretty locked. They're not seeing exponential growth, whereas women, year over year, we're seeing exponential growth." Marketing toward women When the Toronto Tempo, Canada's first WNBA team, was revealed as an expansion team set to join the league in 2026, Sephora Canada was swift to jump on board as a major sponsor. Advertisement Allison Litzinger, Sephora's senior vice-president of marketing, said that having more women in leadership roles impacts where big brands invest their money. "It influences not only what we invest in, but how and why we show up," she said. "More diverse perspectives bring greater awareness to areas that have long been undervalued. This allows us to make choices that are both culturally relevant and business-savvy." In a 2024 report by sports data platform Relo Metrics, the WNBA generated a record $136 million in sponsor media value in 2024 from major brands like Nike, Gatorade, and Bumble, a woman-founded dating app. As Litzinger points out, women's sports is no longer a "niche" place for brands to invest. [Women's sports is] a less saturated space with passionate, engaged fans, and it creates real opportunity for brands to show up with authenticity and impact. - Allison Litzinger, Sephora VP Meanwhile, in Canada, women are responsible for 75 to 80 per cent of consumer spending through purchasing power or influence, according to Business Development Canada. Advertisement And according to Lisa Ferkul, the chief revenue officer for the Toronto Tempo, the WNBA's fan base is 54 per cent women in Canada, data which influences which brands the team chooses to partner with and how they tailor their marketing strategies. "That decision-making power comes from the fact that women are more engaged," Ferkul said. "If you look at the purchasing funnel, fans of women's sports are actually more aware of sponsors that support their favourite team, thus making them more likely to consider them for their next purchase need, and more likely to buy from them." After women's sports generated an astronomical $1 billion in 2024, a recent report from Deloitte projects that the women's sports industry will be worth $2.35 billion this year. "At its core, equity is just good business. Brands are always looking for white space — untapped areas where they can grow, differentiate, and build stronger connections," Litzinger said. "Women's sports offer exactly that. It's a less saturated space with passionate, engaged fans, and it creates real opportunity for brands to show up with authenticity and impact." Advertisement Litzinger says that for brands that regularly engage with women consumers, sponsoring women in sport is a natural alignment. "It enables us to be present where consumers are increasingly more focused and to elevate visibility in meaningful ways," she says. Top players in the league are also seeing bigger deals than ever before, like Clarke's eight-year, $28-million contract with Nike, or L.A. Sparks forward Cameron Brink, who is expected to be making a high six-figure income through endorsements. According to Ferkul, women athletes are more accessible to fans, creating a ripe business opportunity to sponsor them. Advertisement "Fans can get closer at the tournaments. They're more accessible to sponsors and to the media, and that creates a special bond and connection. That makes them more attractive to all those stakeholders," she said. With the Toronto Tempo just under one year out from its inaugural season, Ferkul only sees a bright future for women's sports and their continued financial growth. "It's really a movement. Billie Jean King says that. Our owner, Larry Tannenbaum, says that. And I will use it, because we're starting to prove that investing in women's sports is good business," she said. "I think it's just a matter of time when brands will be spending their marketing dollars equally on women as they do on men." Chloe Primenaro, an 18-year-old PWHL-hopeful who played for Team Canada at this year's world championship, is waking up to a new dawn for women's hockey. (Melissa Majchrzak/The Associated Press) What's next? Chloe Primenaro, an 18-year-old PWHL-hopeful who plays for the University of Minnesota, is waking up to a new dawn for women's hockey. Advertisement When Primenaro enters the draft in three years time, she'll have a level of opportunity that her role model, Montreal Victoire centre Marie-Philip Poulin, could have only dreamed. "I remember, always from a young age, wanting to play with Team Canada and to go to the Olympics, and now with the PWHL, obviously, that's a goal of mine," Primenaro said. "Just knowing that there's something awaiting after college is awesome." With strong investors and player support in place, the only obstacle standing between Primenaro and a professional sports career should be the one male athletes face: fighting tooth and nail against the world's greatest athletes for a roster spot. Like anything, there's still room for growth: Ambrose hopes to see player wages improve at a yearly increase of more than three per cent in the PWHL. Matheson says that all teams should have access to top-notch facilities located in city centres in order to build up the success of women's leagues. Advertisement But looking back on pre-pandemic times, when Clarke had not yet burst onto the scene, when women's sports news was buried deep into the daily news shuffle, and when gender parity at the Olympics wasn't yet possible, the progress is undeniable. What happened in the Wubble in 2020 could have been just a blip in time, a fleeting, unprecedented moment that left as quickly as it came, like mask mandates and standing six feet part from one another. But from the mouths of athletes, to team owners, to league-launchers, one thing is for sure: women's sports are not just having a moment, they're starting a movement.
