Women are driving a new era of sports growth as female viewership numbers continue to increase
The number of women watching sport is growing – and the statistics are there to back it up.
From the ashes of Heated Rivalry and Formula 1: Drive to Survive rise female sport fans, who are loyal and ready for sporting fun.
They not only aid consumer statistics and records, but also expand the realms of diversity, virality, and financial stability.
Here, Sports News Blitz writer Katie Butler unpacks the growth of female viewership within sport.
How the Lionesses are paving the way for future generations
In 2025, the Lionesses made history within women’s sport by reigning victorious in the UEFA Women’s Euros.
And female fans were right there alongside them.
Indeed, Women’s Sport Trust (WST) found that women made up 44% of the UEFA Women’s Euro audience – the highest on record for the competition.
The final boasted even higher numbers, with 48% of viewers being women.
The WST Visibility Report additionally found that the two most-watched UK broadcast moments of 2025 across all television programming, as of October 2025 when the report was published, were Lionesses matches.
The Women’s Euro final against Spain drew in an audience of 16.22 million while the semi-final against Italy reached 9.88 million.
Those games, alongside other key competitions within female sport such as the Rugby World Cup, The Hundred, and the Netball Super League, attracted younger and older audiences through digital and broadcast platforms, respectively.
The report conducted by WST also found that broadcast audiences for global women’s tournaments skewed older than for the male equivalents.
Approximately 60% of the Women’s Euro broadcast audience were 55+, whereas for the men in 2024 it was 49%.
Streaming, in particular, helped to reach younger audiences, with 15.5 million streams during the Women’s Euro being across BBC iPlayer and BBC Sport platforms, with 20% of viewers aged 16-35.
While the Lionesses attain major audience numbers in the UK, female football more broadly does as well.
Future generations will therefore grow up with role models in women’s sport and the knowledge that they can dream big.
Participation for young female fans within sport is growing too – by showing them that women can, they believe, and by believing, they have the courage to do it themselves.
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How female F1 fans are helping with advertisers and sponsors
Formula One CEO Stefano Domenicali said that in 2017, women made up 8% of F1’s fanbase.
In 2025, a survey conducted by F1 found that this number had risen – 42% of F1’s total base were now women.
F1 Academy, an all-female single-seater championship, found that TikTok and the hit Netflix series Drive to Survive are mostly to thank for that rise, with 43% of UK Drive to Survive viewers being women.
Additionally, F1 Academy found that the huge female viewership increase is not only on broadcasts.
The viewership shift is reflected in trackside attendance.
Back in 2019, women made up 20% of Grand Prix attendees – in the space of four years, the percentage has grown to almost a third.
The biggest growth area amongst female fans is between the ages of 18 and 34, which is an age and gender demographic that is appealing for advertisers and sponsors.
Sponsors like LVMH, who will reportedly invest $1 billion in F1, take advantage of this demographic by catering to them and shifting their marketing accordingly.
Companies have also begun to send influencers to F1 races, such as in Miami and Las Vegas, most of whom are women creating content in lifestyle, fashion, and beauty.
For its part, F1 Academy is bringing more sponsors to the sport which cater specifically to women.
For example, Charlotte Tilbury brings female-focused content creators to races, which sync with the F1 calendar, and even has her own car on the F1 Academy grid.
These sponsors and advertisers ultimately bring more revenue to the sport, allowing F1 to make the sport greater.
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How the NHL leans into female fandom and pop culture
According to research by the NHL, 37% of hockey fans are women, with the league experiencing a 26% growth in the demographic since 2016.
Female viewership of NHL games on US networks such as ESPN and TNT has likewise seen a 61% increase in recent seasons.
This growth helps justify major deals like Canadian broadcaster Rogers’ 12-year, $7.7 billion media rights and broadcasting contract with the NHL.
Alongside that, the increased female viewership brings in advertisers wanting to diversify their audience.
All of this might explain the 21% increase in NHL sponsorship revenue for the 2022/23 season, which has only been growing since, as found by SportsPro.
The growing audience also means that more merchandise and tickets are being sold, a positive development for the league as well as the teams in it.
One factor behind the growth in female hockey fans is the rise in popularity of ice hockey romance books and HBO series Heated Rivalry.
By all accounts, the NHL has taken advantage of this.
The Ottawa Senators sold jerseys bearing the names of Heated Rivalry lead characters, Hollander and Rozanov, at CA$325 a sweater, with proceeds going towards Ottawa Pride Hockey.
The Pittsburgh Penguins, meanwhile, held a ‘Fourth Wing’ night, with book Fourth Wing being famous on BookTok, a sub-section of TikTok specialising in book-related content.
Clearly, there has been a realisation that the audiences of ice hockey romance books and TV series can be adapted into fans of the sport itself.
And with that comes changing demographics and new avenues for revenue and sponsorship.
What can we take from all this?
It is clear to see that, across all sports, female viewership is growing at a fast pace.
Sport is now taking advantage of the positives that shift brings – financially or in terms of awareness and branding.
Put simply, in what are often male-dominated sports, women are shining a light on their own presence.
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