Financing Friday: Canadian Tire funding women’s sports

The headlines rippled through Canada earlier this week with this bump up from The Female Quotient:

This didn’t happen by accident. It was a target set in 2023. Now that this sponsor has achieved the first goal they are now looking to boost access to watching women’s sports.

There persists a gender gap in funding and pay for professional athletes. Funders use excuses like women’s sports aren’t profitable or entertaining.

Canadian Tire points to how starved sports fans are to be able to watch women in sport with

“75% of Canadians say they are fans of women’s sport, however 62% of fans say they do not know where to find the sport they want to watch.”

Canadian Tire Achieves 50 50

This focus on broadcasting and promotion will create a flywheel effect. Greater viewership means more ad revenue for broadcasters and more value for league and team sponsors. This makes more funds available to recruit and train athletes and pay them well. This increases the competition and pace of games, which feeds the excitement about watching them. That makes getting the broadcasting rights more valuable. And on and on it goes, a positive feedback loop of awesomeness.

I’m excited to see where we are this time next year in being able to watch more professional women’s sports.