Q&A With Haley Rosen: Building The “ESPN Of Women’s Sports”
This article was originally published on Elbow Bump — Hochberg Sports Marketing’s blog — on June 29, 2020.
We’re excited to share our conversation with Haley Rosen, founder of Just Women’s Sports. JWS is a media outlet dedicated to strictly covering and assisting in the growth of women’s sports. As Rosen and the JWS team aren’t shy to tell you, “only four percent of sports coverage is dedicated to women’s sports.”
Rosen had an impressive tenure at the University of Stanford, starring on the women’s soccer team in which she earned All-Pac-12-First-Team honors in 2015 and graduated with a BA and an MA.
After a brief professional athletic career overseas and in the States, Rosen was forced to retire earlier than she would have liked to due injuries and took a job at a startup.
As she dove into the Bay Area’s tech scene, she became frustrated with the lack of women’s sports coverage despite the growth of the space. “On every team I was on, we were selling out stadiums, attendance was up, investment was up, viewership was up — there was just so much positive momentum in the space.” Rosen said.
“And when I entered the “real-world,” there really wasn’t any way to follow women’s sports. And we’ve all heard the number by now: Four percent of sports coverage is dedicated to women’s sports, but that was the first time that I really came face to face with that and felt it. I’ve been a part of this world my whole life, and I wanted to follow along and follow the teams I played with or just see how the girls were doing — and I just really couldn’t do that. That didn’t make any sense to me.”
Our conversation with Rosen came at an interesting time. Yesterday, June 27, marked the return of professional U.S. team sports from the coronavirus pandemic. The National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) launched its Challenge Cup in Utah — a one-month tournament in lieu of its traditional seven-month season.
Rosen shared her candid thoughts on what it is like to navigate a new company in the age of coronavirus, the growth opportunities for women’s sports, and more. Enjoy our conversation with Haley Rosen.
On the business of JWS
Elbow Bump: You’re a first-time founder who launched a company right before a global pandemic hit. What has the experience been like for you thus far?
Haley Rosen: Oh, it’s been crazy. We launched in January. We’ve been building and we’ve had a lot of initial success. Our month-over-month growth is great and I think that really points to people wanting women’s sports and wanting to follow their favorite athletes.
That being said, I have fallen on my face multiple times. Getting some things off the ground have been really hard. This all started out as an idea and you make mistakes. I’ve really had to learn that mistakes are going to happen and you have to just shake it off. You can’t treat them like death.
Early on in the process, every mistake just led to a ton of self-doubt. And I’d think, ‘Am I really the person to do this?’ But it’s literally like sports. You have to just move onto the next one. Just make the next play, you know?
EB: You’re probably jumping from one project to another these days, but do you have any sort of day-to-day you can walk us through?
HR: Chaos (laughs). My day-to-day has been very different every day. We started as a newsletter so early on my day-to-day was very involved — I was writing the newsletter, formatting it, and thinking about distribution, etc., etc.
And then we focused on our website. So we were designing the website, working with our web developer to get it up and running, and finding writers to write more consistent content. And then it was a focus on social.
Everything that we spin up — it’s a roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty sort of thing. In Q1 and Q2, our goal was to lay the foundation. One of our biggest thesis’s is that people don’t really know anything about this space — like they do about men’s sports. For example, if I say, ‘oh, the pitcher for the Dodgers,’ you know I’m talking about the MLB and you know who the Dodgers are. You might not know the pitcher, but you know the world I’m talking about.
That just doesn’t exist on the women’s sports side. We’d say, ‘Shana Matthews of the Washington Spirit’ and people answer with, ‘who? Is that like softball?’ And no, it’s soccer. There’s a soccer team in Washington. There’s the NWSL, come on. So we realized we’ve had to do a lot of world-building and just lay the foundation: Here are the characters. Here are the storylines, the teams, the leagues, the rivalries, etc. That’s really been our goal for the last six months.
Our goal for Q3 and Q4 is to really focus on getting into audio. Obviously with sports on hold and the pandemic, our plans have shifted. Right now, my day-to-day is really working to launch this podcast that we have coming up with Kelly O’Hara. We’re doing a soccer podcast around the NWSL Challenge Cup. And we’re really just trying to keep pushing on that medium.
EB: You mention the upcoming podcast with Kelley O’Hara — she’s one of the faces of soccer in the U.S. What was the process like to get her to join the JWS team?
HR: The soccer and sports worlds are super small. Just through people who I know who I played soccer with, I got in touch with Kelley. An original thought behind doing the show is that I love podcasts. For women’s sports specifically, I think podcasts are great because we need consistent engaging content. Video is the gold standard of content, but it’s super expensive. We’ve seen people invest in amazing video content, but the consistency is key. For these reasons, I really like audio for women’s sports.
There are so many of these women where this would make so much sense. Take Alex Morgan, or Hilary Knight, or Breanna Stewart — you know the names, you know they’re total ballers and they’re legends in their sports — but you don’t know their stories. And I even realized that for myself as a super avid women’s sports fan.
As fans, we love hearing stories. And these women have such interesting experiences, not only because they are elite athletes who have won world championships, or gold medals, or World Cups, but they’ve navigated a very different space than athletes in men’s sports and there’s been challenges they’ve faced that others haven’t.
And that’s why we wanted to work with Kelley. We want athletes talking to athletes and we want authentic conversations. I’ve gotten to know Kelley throughout the process and she’s super inquisitive and super smart. She’s really thoughtful and just everything you want in a host. I don’t think we could have got connected to a better person for this project.
We recorded a couple of episodes already and I really think this is such a special show. I don’t think we’ve seen female athletes have the opportunity to be portrayed this way and have the opportunity to speak so honestly about their journeys. I’m excited.
EB: Can you share any details of the partnership with Kelley? Is she receiving compensation and/or equity in JWS?
HR: Yeah, for sure. This was all super intentional — we want to invest in the space. Kelley has equity in her podcast and equity in the company. She’s one of our athlete partners.
We’ve seen attempts around covering women’s sports that just haven’t worked. Partly because some of it just didn’t feel authentic to the space. So, what better way to create authentic sports coverage than to have the athletes cover themselves? And if they’re going to be spending the time and energy into coverage, into interviews, and just getting involved like this, they should absolutely be rewarded on the other side.
So, it was important for me to have Kelley financially rewarded and pay her a salary for being a podcast host for us. In general, female athletes deserve to be paid for their time like any other athlete.
On the growth of women’s sports
EB: Switching gears a bit — the NWSL’s return to play on Saturday, June 27 (this interview was conducted prior to June 27) will mark the first professional U.S. team sport to return to action from the coronavirus pandemic. How significant do you think this opportunity is for the NWSL — potentially getting in front of new fans who may just be craving live sports but haven’t tuned into the NWSL before?
HR: I’m hesitant to make any predictions around this because I would have told you something, say, a week ago and then (on June 23) the Orlando Pride were forced to withdraw from the tournament (due to a number of players and staff testing positive for COVID-19). The situation is just super fluid.
On one side of it, NWSL coverage has been completely ignored. The media has been talking about the first league to return, and just did not mention the NWSL. That sort of coverage just underlines the need to have a platform like Just Women’s Sports because when ESPN, Bleacher Report, etc. put out coverage, they’re not thinking about women’s sports at all. It’s not malicious, but they just don’t think about it and it’s just not a part of their lives. But there has to be a space for it.
So on one hand, I do wonder whether this can even move the needle. But on a positive note, I do think the opportunity is huge because even if they’re not talking about it now, when the games start they will be talking about it because there are no other sports and they might be forced to give it coverage. I’ve also been speaking to other platforms that are excited about this.
During the World Cup, for example, we saw how many people tuned in and loved it. This is a chance for the NWSL to do the same thing. To get in front of a new audience and get people talking about the league. And the league is awesome. If people watch these women play, they’re going to stick around and they’re going to want to watch more.
EB: We’ve seen tremendous growth in women’s sports in recent years, from viewership and attendance records to an increase in salaries for the athletes. Overall, do you think the trajectory of women’s sports is still trending in a positive direction?
HR: One-hundred percent. Women’s sports are exploding. The number of women playing sports, the number of people watching the sports, the brand investment in women’s sports — it’s all exploding. But it’s not something that happens overnight.
It’s not like there’s going to be a World Cup and then the next thing you know everyone is watching and talking about women’s sports and it’s all over mainstream media. That’s now how it’s going to work. But it’s just the slow chipping away at it. It’s just getting in front of more people, gaining more fans, and gaining more momentum.
Which is why consistent coverage is so critical to this movement. For me, it’s inevitable that women’s sports are going to become mainstream. It’s just a matter of time.
EB: If you were the commissioner of the NWSL, or the commissioner of the WNBA, are there any actionable initiatives you would champion to push the leagues forward?
HR: There’s just so much that needs to happen in the space. This is a bit of a selfish answer, but for me, it starts with consistent available and engaging media coverage. That’s what we’re chipping away at with Just Women’s Sports. If the mainstream sports media outlets aren’t covering us, that’s fine. Let’s work together to create the coverage that this space deserves. It’s just so important.
Each league, of course, needs to do what’s best for them. But we’re just focusing on consistent coverage and we want to get in front of as many people as possible. It’s so critical for the development of women’s sports.
EB: On that note, have you ever looked into any official league partnerships?
HR: I would love — absolutely love — to do that. We haven’t had the opportunity to have those conversations. We definitely have friendly relationships with the leagues, but haven’t discussed that.
A big vision for us is to stream the games — I would love that. If we have the audience coming to our platforms for the coverage, why not have the games? We already have the right people coming to our site, coming to our social and to our newsletter, so I think working directly with the leagues is definitely in our future.
EB: There are so many opportunities for media outlets now — streaming games as we discussed, even media outlets creating their own Esports teams. Where do you see Just Women’s Sports in five or ten years down the line?
HR: The women’s sports space is complete white space. Everything you see on the men’s sports side will exist on the women’s sports side and we want to be doing it. Basically, we want to be the ESPN of women’s sports. But younger, faster, more progressive, and more digital.
