Episode 24 - Marketing Women's Sports and the New Fan Economy

Transcript is computer generated and may contain errors.

Cold open / intro

Alex: Number one, Vancouver. It’s very obvious who you’re going to take.

Caitlin: KK Harvey comes up in the draft and you just, you can’t say no. It doesn’t matter what you need. Hi, I’m Caitlin.

Alex: Hi, I’m Alex.

Caitlin: This is Raising the Game, a women’s sports podcast covering prime-time performers, the business behind the leagues and the athletes, and what the growth of women’s sports means for the next generation of women’s athletes.

Alex: Episode 24, we have a fun topic tonight.

Caitlin: We have a lot of fun topics tonight. Always fun topics here. Marketing in women’s sports.

Caitlin: Yeah, specifically this kind of came to fruition as an idea for us as we have started to watch the World Cup, the Men’s World Cup, being hosted here in the States. It started this past week and got us thinking about a couple different things that we want to talk about as it relates to women’s sports.

Alex: Of course. We’ll hit the PWHL draft, which is on Wednesday, the day that you’ll be listening to this. We’ve got a WNBA roundup and we’re going to talk US Women’s National Team versus Brazil, chaotic game.

Caitlin: Yeah, that one feels a little strange since that happened almost a week ago now.

Alex: Yeah, after we recorded. And just right after we recorded before we released last week’s episode, but definitely have thoughts, definitely have feelings.

Alex: Yeah, we got to talk about it. All right, let’s dig into favorite things.

Favorite things

Caitlin: Okay, so I have two this past week. One for me was seeing Serena Williams back on a tennis court. I had a very significant stretch of time, like late high school all through college, where I was obsessed with watching tennis. Never played, but this was when Serena was kind of in her prime and I remember getting up in college at like 3 a.m. to watch Australian Open finals. And to see her back, the way that her family was so excited, and we had talked last week about how one of the main reasons she wanted to come back was so her kids could see her play. As a mom, I was like, this is amazing.

And then my other favorite thing was we wrapped up the first grade girls rec soccer season this past weekend. Girls did great, had a great final game. I have to give a shout out, a former player of mine actually came and watched my daughter play, which is really impactful. I think it speaks to the relationships you can build with athletes when you coach, and also just that love of supporting girls and women in sport. I want to thank her and thank the whole team for a really fun season.

Alex: It was great. I think one of the quotes I heard from one of the girls was “Will you coach us next time?” and so I think that speaks just to the impact that you’ve had on these first graders’ lives. That was really cool.

Caitlin: I got a lot of hugs at the end of the last game, which was quite cute. I’ll miss them this week.

Alex: Yeah. All right, let’s dig into these headlines.

Headlines

Alex: US Women’s National Team wins one-nil over Brazil in chaotic friendly in Fortaleza.

Caitlin: Sophia Wilson, again, creating a scoring opportunity that we were able to convert, classified as an own goal, but frankly just an incredible individual effort by her. Eight red cards was probably the headline there. But for me, coming out of that game, Duginia, midfielder/forward for Brazil, it was announced by the Brazilian Soccer Federation that she tore her ACL. This is just a huge bummer. As a fan of the game, she was playing so well for the Wave. And also the timing. Are you back for the World Cup? Like you’re not 100%. So I’ll probably comment on it a little more later, but that was really heartbreaking to see just as a fan and knowing how her season was off to such a great start for San Diego, creating so much for them.

Alex: Absolutely. Gotham FC announced a new purpose-built training facility in Whippany, New Jersey.

Caitlin: This continues the trend we’ve been seeing of purpose-built women’s training facilities. So 27,000 square feet, 3,000 square foot gym. They’ve got three full-size soccer pitches, one of which is heated, which is nice in New York as you get into the fall and early season months. So that is awesome to see a ton of investment going into that club.

Alex: Four phases of PWHL expansion are complete, entry draft upcoming on Wednesday in Detroit.

Caitlin: Man, again, all the drama. There were tampering allegations last week, which I don’t know what sport doesn’t really have that going on. Just so many different threads to pull here, but really excited for the draft on Wednesday.

Alex: In the WNBA, New York Liberty clinched a Commissioner’s Cup final spot with their seventh win in a row, while the Lynx fall just short of toppling last year’s champions, Las Vegas Aces in the West.

Caitlin: We’re going to talk about that game in our W segment, but I also just have to shout out the performances this past weekend were off the charts. You had eight players who scored 30 points or more. Starting with the Fever, Aaliyah Boston and Caitlin Clark both broke the 30-point mark against Chicago. They both had double-doubles. Meanwhile, you had Sydney Taylor coming off the bench for Chicago, played 20 minutes, scored 30 points for them. You had Paige Beckers drop 31 against Phoenix, 24 of those in the first half. She was just unconscious. That was a game where she also rolled her ankle in the first half and played limited minutes in the second as a result. You had A’ja drop 32 against Portland. Honorable mention in that game to Chelsea Gray. She scored 29, just short of my 30-point benchmark, but nine of 13 from three. That’s crazy. And then to round out those games, you had Kelsey Plum and Ka Copper going head to head, Las Vegas versus the Los Angeles Sparks, both breaking off 40-point pieces. 43 for Kelsey Plum, 41 for Ka Copper. I believe it’s the first time that a player from each opposing team has scored 40 in the WNBA against one another. Just some incredible individual performances over the weekend.

Alex: We’ll have Kelsey Plum come up later too.

Caitlin: A’ja as well.

Alex: Serena Williams and Victoria Mboko win first match but withdraw after Mboko suffers knee injury during singles.

Caitlin: Bummer, they won quite convincingly, actually. That was fun to see. I hope Vicky’s okay. She was a rising talent, really doing well. I haven’t seen an update on that injury, but you don’t have to wait long to watch Serena play. She’s playing at the Berlin Tennis Open, partnering this time with Karolina Pliskova. Hopefully we’ll get to see her a little bit more.

Alex: Yeah, it’s awesome. I didn’t realize she was doing more. I thought this was like a one-off.

Caitlin: Oh no. There is all the speculation that she’s gonna play at Wimbledon.

Alex: Yeah, I did hear that now. Which is at the end of the month. Wimbledon announces it’s raising this year’s overall payout by 20% to £64.2 million. Is that pounds?

Caitlin: Yes, that’s pounds. This is interesting because it comes on the heels of the French Open and the protests the players made about the percentage of revenues they were getting. This number, obviously 20% exceeds the players’ goal of 16%. So anything above that, I think they’re feeling good about it. Wimbledon begins on June 29th.

Alex: Kelsey Plum joins Adidas as brand sponsor, joining Sabrina Ionescu and Aaliyah Boston, as well as retired WNBA icon Candace Parker.

Caitlin: There’s actually quite a few different brand deals and sponsorships going on, but Kelsey with the tear she’s on in the W right now, there was some allusion to this partnership during the Unrivaled season. She got in trouble for wearing Adidas shoes during Unrivaled before it was official, but now it’s been made official.

Marketing in women’s sports: the new fan economy

Alex: All right. Let’s dig into this topic we’ve got this week: marketing and women’s sports, kind of calling this the new fan economy.

Caitlin: So the impetus for this, like I said in our kickoff, is that the Men’s World Cup is going on right now and you’ve got soccer everywhere. In the past, domestic leagues here in the States would typically just kind of take a backseat. We’re literally on a pause in the season right now because of the Men’s World Cup. But what’s different is the NWSL has done the math and they’ve said, let’s not let this be a disruption. Let’s actually lean into this and embrace it, because you’re talking about fans from all over the world coming into the States and potentially getting exposed to the NWSL in ways that they wouldn’t otherwise. We have a ton of international players who play here. So can you draw some of that fan base towards your league?

To set the table a little bit: the NWSL is really thinking about the Men’s World Cup as a market opportunity. They’re calling it the “Summer of Soccer” initiative. They have a tour bus basically bouncing around to different locations, likely following the US men’s team, but then also stopping at NWSL flagpole events. There’s the Challenge Cup at the end of June, which pits the regular season champion from last year against the tournament champion. You’ve got Gotham versus Kansas City. You’ve got Gotham playing Citi Field in New York against Washington Spirit in July. Lots of opportunity for them to lean into this fan base.

And what I was thinking about as I was working through this content: just to give a quick stat on scale, 1.42 billion people tuned in to watch the kickoff game to this World Cup between Mexico and South Africa.

Alex: With a B.

Caitlin: An eighth of the world’s population tuned in to watch that match. Soccer has a lot of fans. The NWSL is saying, at least we can peel off 1%, right?

Alex: Would be huge.

Caitlin: And so they’re saying, those fans love the beautiful game. And what their argument is now, and what the NWSL is banking on now, is that it’s not a question of product quality anymore, which was a question in leagues past. Now it’s about exposure. Where can I go watch this game? Because clearly people love it.

I do want to read a quote from Rachel Epstein. She’s the relatively newly minted NWSL Chief Marketing Officer, and she’s sort of behind this “Summer of Soccer” initiative. She says, quote: “This initiative is about meeting fans where they are, elevating our players and clubs and creating new entry points into the league during one of the biggest soccer moments the country has ever hosted.”

I think something else that’s interesting is not only are they leaning into the World Cup, but in general they understand that their fan base demographic is different than it used to be. They’re really leaning into that Gen Z FOMO idea. Their tagline for the season is “Imagine Missing This.” And if you’ve seen commercials, it’s like Sophia Wilson or Trinity Rodman being like, where were you when this was happening? And you kind of create that sense of, oh, I want to be a part of that.

Alex: Yeah, I think what’s really interesting is that you have two types of fans coming through. One is the huge soccer fan from around the world who maybe doesn’t have a chance to watch the NWSL. And the second is the fan who doesn’t normally watch soccer at all but is watching it because their country is participating. And that second fan is like, can I find another piece of this? I decided I want to get into the game. And hopefully it’s the NWSL that they find, which is what the NWSL is gunning for here.

Caitlin: Right, right. And that brings us to our next part of this segment, which is: what is the typical women’s sports fan right now? And where are the segments in that population that maybe the women’s sports leagues haven’t tapped into yet?

So there’s been some research done recently from Sports Innovation Lab. They call it the Fan Project. They’re essentially looking at what are the differences between men’s and women’s sports fans. And they found a few things we’ve actually talked about here on the pod.

One: women’s sports fans tend to be fans of women’s sports, not necessarily team-loyal. They will tune in to any women’s sporting event. It can cross sports, teams, athletes, countries. Two: women who are sports fans are much more likely to buy merchandise and buy the season ticket. They’re much more monetarily invested in these leagues and players. We had a stat a few episodes ago that they’re something like 30% more likely to buy the merch when it’s presented on social media.

And then the third thing, which is newer for us from the Fan Project, is this concept they call the “fluid fan.” A fan that doesn’t consume sports only on TV, but engages through digital media or social media, with emphasis on storytelling, community access, and direct-to-consumer commerce. Why is that common in women’s sports? Because we haven’t had a standard place on regular broadcast television. Women’s sports fans have actually become very savvy at figuring out where to go consume their sport. We are only just now starting to open that aperture.

Alex: Yeah. Kind of we’ll get into that in just a second.

Caitlin: To put a point on that: women’s sports fans didn’t choose to be fluid fans. They had to, out of necessity. And I think that’s actually what creates a uniqueness about that fan base.

The other thing that’s interesting is that women’s sports fans are often new sports fans. Net new sports. They’re that person who went to a World Cup match because their country is playing, don’t really know anything about soccer, but now they’re like, I want more of this. That is probably what happened across a lot of these leagues. I saw a statistic that over 80% of season ticket holders for one of the PWHL teams have never bought a hockey game ticket before.

Alex: Could you imagine if the NHL could do that in their stats? That would be insane.

Caitlin: So it’s really important. And it’s a very interesting contrast to men’s sports fans, where a lot of those loyalties and allegiances are ingrained from family, where you grew up, your friends. Whereas we’re seeing a lot of women’s sports fans are just fans of anything they can get their hands on. I think one of the interesting quotes from the Wasserman Collective Faces report, the VP said: “You don’t hear someone say, I’m a men’s sports fan, but women’s sports fans do say that it’s their core identity.” And I just think that’s really interesting, how you have loyalty to a team versus loyalty to the whole community.

Caitlin: Yeah, and I think there’s an interesting concept there of those fans almost wanting to evangelize the entirety of the league or multiple leagues. Think about what we’re doing here. We’re talking about all the leagues because they’re all important. We want all of them to grow and be successful. You don’t see Minnesota Vikings fans supporting Green Bay Packers.

Alex: Not at all.

Caitlin: And now there are rivalries in these women’s leagues. It’s not that there’s not rivalries. It’s just that there’s a different investment in the level of success wanted by fans of the women’s leagues.

Alex: I think next we’ll talk a little bit about that growth. I wanted to throw out a few quotes here. First one: 50% of female sports fans have become fans within the last five years, compared to 39% for male sports fans. Between 2022 and 2024, revenue from women’s sports grew 4.5 times faster than revenue for men’s sports. And then the other one I thought was interesting: televised games from the WNBA, NCAA women’s basketball, and the NWSL reached approximately 370 million viewer hours in 2024, up 430% from 2021.

Caitlin: I think the important thing to note is you’re seeing all of that growth in revenue, viewership, however you want to slice it, on the backs of this fluid fan and the new-to-sports fan. So going back to how we opened, the NWSL’s marketing play with the World Cup: they’re doing this with a really niche and unique group of fans. When we say a 430% increase in viewer hours, that’s a structural shift. It’s not just that we gained new fans. It’s also the access. We are getting the broadcast deals. We are getting more opportunity to watch. The WNBA this year has an unprecedented number of games on national television. The PWHL seems to be angling for that national broadcast deal here in the States. The NWSL signed their huge broadcast deal a couple years back. Now that people can see it, they are watching. People will watch this if you put it on TV.

Caitlin: Then that brings us to our last part of this segment, which is a little about the gap in accessibility that women’s sports fans have had to navigate.

Alex: I think of it like this: you open up your phone, you want to see a men’s sports score, you hit the ESPN app, and your scores pop right up. What do you do when you want to find your NWSL scores? You can maybe try pulling up ESPN. You’re gonna have to dig for a while if it’s even there. It’s just not as accessible.

Caitlin: Yeah. And if we don’t specifically gender the search, you will get men’s results back only. If you go into Google because you want to see the basketball scores, you’ll get the NBA. It will default to the NBA. If we’re midseason WNBA and the NBA is over, you might get a two-month-old score.

There’s data to back this up. A 30-year study done between USC and Purdue University found that in 2021, 95% of television coverage was directed at men’s sports. This includes shows like SportsCenter where they’re talking about all sports. This has gone up slightly in the last five years. We’re now at about 15% for women’s sports, 85% for men’s. But there’s still this gap.

I dare our listeners right now: go into the ESPN app and see what scores come up. There are a bunch of WNBA games that would have happened. The NBA Finals are over, congrats to the Knicks, but you’ll see what I mean.

Alex: Google acknowledged in 2023 that its systems struggled with gender-ambiguous sports queries and had to do a lot of work to manually fix these. And we see gender bias towards men and race bias towards white people happen all the time in computer science. It’s happening now with women’s sports.

Caitlin: Exactly. So you go try to find those scores, you get nothing, you get a redirect. But when you go on social media: insane engagement. Women’s sports content dominated social media engagement charts in 2025, with eight of the top ten most engaged sports properties on socials belonging to WNBA teams. We also saw this with Unrivaled. They did a fantastic job with their social media.

What we’re seeing is that tying the fluid fan together: they’ve tried to solve the problem of that gap. You’re seeing more engagement in digital and social media than in the generic ways that men’s sports is delivered to us. What does this all mean? When you have low coverage, that translates into lower measurable audience, which translates into lower investment, which translates into less coverage. What we consistently see is that when there is coverage, people do watch. It’s a fallacy to believe that people do not want to watch women’s sports.

Alex: Maybe nobody was watching women’s sports because it wasn’t being shown. That’s how this vicious circle kind of works.

Caitlin: Exactly. So closing this out: the NWSL is really trying to reach a fan who maybe didn’t come from sports at all. They’re there for the culture, the values, the storytelling, but you’ve got to convert that curiosity, and they have to be able to find the game in order for that to happen.

Alex: Absolutely. We could go really in depth on this. You could do a whole hour and a half long podcast on it. But it’s super interesting what goes into especially all these studies that are coming out lately.

Caitlin: Yeah, and you think back to our episode on the Deloitte Game Changers report. They’re projecting women’s sports is going to be a three billion dollar industry. That happens because of the moves that these CMOs and whoever are taking to bring in more fans, to sign the broadcast deals, et cetera.

PWHL coaching updates and entry draft preview

Alex: All right. Let’s dig into the PWHL. We have a draft coming up the day this releases, but first we’re gonna talk about a couple of the coaching updates and then we’ll dig into draft order and who we think is gonna go.

Caitlin: We’re down to one vacancy. Seattle named Christine Bumstead to their head coaching position. She was an assistant coach for the Torrent, which is pretty cool. They have only been around for a season. But I liked this, I liked the pipeline. She knows the organization. She knows some of the players that are remaining. And they can start to shape and craft that team versus bringing in somebody from the outside. Although this is probably less disruptive this time around because the teams are all getting basically shaken up.

Boston, we already talked about last week. Francois Mato. Toronto, we did confirm Pascal Realme, brother of Manon Realme, the GM of the Detroit PWHL team, as head coach.

Alex: Who doesn’t really watch the league.

Caitlin: Yeah, I wasn’t stoked about some of the stuff I read. He doesn’t really know the players. He hasn’t watched the league.

Alex: I wish I could get a job like: I know technology, I don’t know this technology, but I know technology. So it works for me.

Caitlin: He is a former NHL player. He played for nine seasons and has coached some lower league Canadian teams.

Alex: The Iowa Wild, the Minnesota Wild affiliate.

Caitlin: Yeah. And then Vegas, we confirmed today that Kim Weiss, who was the assistant coach for the Colorado Eagles, an AHL hockey team, will coach the PWHL Las Vegas team next season.

Alex: Yeah. And then in Vancouver, still open. There are some rumors swirling. These are purely rumors, nothing confirmed, but GM Cara Gardner Maury may consider a dual role and be both GM and head coach.

Caitlin: So join Troy Ryan of PWHL San Jose in that.

Alex: Exactly. All right, that is our coaching update.

Caitlin: Let’s talk draft.

Alex: We got the draft order about four hours before we started recording this. They gave it to us 48 hours before the actual draft starts.

Caitlin: Hey, at least we got it. I don’t know what we were going to talk about in this segment otherwise.

Alex: A lot of guessing. All right. So we’ll just go in order here. Pick one, Vancouver. Pick two, Seattle. Pick three is Detroit, but the news that’s out there is that Vegas will get this pick in return for Hillary Knight. Then we have four San Jose, five Las Vegas, so they get two picks there. Number six, Hamilton. Number seven, New York. Number eight, Toronto. Number nine, Minnesota. Number ten, Boston. Number eleven, Ottawa. And number twelve, Montreal.

Caitlin: I have a couple of comments on this order. And then we’re going to go through and do our predictions.

One, just a reminder to our audience: Vancouver got that first slot because they won the golden draft points. Once teams are eliminated from playoff contention, they have the remaining games to accumulate as many points as possible. It’s an anti-tanking mechanism for the league that I think is really cool.

I also want to understand: did Seattle get grandfathered ahead of the expansion teams because they were an expansion team last year?

Alex: They would have gone Vancouver, Seattle on gold plan points, but then they decided to put all four expansion teams ahead of New York and Toronto.

Caitlin: It’s a risky move. There’s a lot of people on social media saying that last year when the other expansions happened, so many teams got gutted. And now you’re going to put them at four, five, and six in the draft. Seems like a little bit too much.

Caitlin: Yeah. Now, Hamilton and Detroit are stacked. They don’t deserve to get a top five pick. Not Detroit, because Vegas could get the Detroit pick. They’re going to get two top picks. Hamilton is going to get a good player they don’t necessarily need as badly.

Looking at what these teams have coming out of phase four, I would say Minnesota and Montreal are in great spots. They have good balance across their offense and defense and decent retention of some players. Whereas Boston, you all only have two defenders. They protected Megan Keller and Haley Winn and that is all they have defensively. Ottawa is struggling a little bit there too.

Alex: Let’s go through and give our draft predictions. I want to shout out Kyle Cushman, underscore PWHL, on Instagram. He had a great graphic of current rosters after all of these phases leading into the draft. It made it really easy to go through the draft order and decide where we think everyone’s going to land.

Caitlin: Bless you, Kyle. If you hadn’t done that, we would not be doing this right now because we did this like an hour before we taped tonight.

Alex: All right. Number one, Vancouver. It’s very obvious who you’re going to take.

Caitlin: KK Harvey comes up in the draft and you just, you can’t say no. It doesn’t matter what you need. Carolyn Harvey, defense out of Wisconsin. It doesn’t matter who you are, what team you are, this is who you’re taking in this draft.

Caitlin: The Patty Kazmaier Award winner this past season, she was the MVP at the Olympics. And Vancouver’s forward-heavy currently, so it makes sense.

Alex: Moving to Seattle. We do think that they might take Layla Edwards. This is a little different than what I’ve seen, with some projections saying Abby Murphy will go second.

Caitlin: Seattle is light on defenders. They lost some defensive foundation there. And Layla Edwards is just so flexible in what she can play.

Alex: Yep. All right. Vegas, this is the number three pick from Detroit that they are likely to get in that trade deal: Abby Murphy out of Minnesota.

Caitlin: Somehow this honestly feels like the best match. They needed some firepower up front. They were really defense-heavy through their expansion process thus far.

Caitlin: San Jose is next. We’re going with Tessa Janicki, center from Penn State. She’s one of the best players still available. San Jose kind of has a roster situation that needs some flair and flavor.

Alex: Yeah. Then we put Vegas’s second pick, their own pick at five: Pearson Sims out of Wisconsin, another wing player, just bolstering the firepower.

Caitlin: And then Hamilton. They had a pretty good expansion process. We’re going Nellie Leighton, defender out of the University of Minnesota. She plays for the Finnish national team. They have a lot of really strong forwards and scoring forwards, and I think getting a defender who is versatile like Leighton will be beneficial.

Alex: Then we get down to New York. Based on their roster and who’s best available at the time, we’re saying Lacey Eden, winger out of Wisconsin as well. Notice the pattern here. Wisconsin, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Penn State, Wisconsin, Minnesota.

Caitlin: There’s a lot of WCHA representation here. For Toronto, moving to Toronto next, we thought they needed some offense. So we’re going Izzy Wonder, center out of Princeton, Canadian international.

Alex: And for Minnesota, I really hope I’m pronouncing this right: Eliza Halepainen. She is a left winger out of the Swedish women’s hockey league, Finland national team as well for the Olympics. I think this was just another best-available type thing for Minnesota as we’re relatively balanced with what we’ve got currently.

Caitlin: Yeah. And you’ll notice Eliza is the first non-collegiate player we’re putting out here. We’re less familiar with those players, so it was hard to slot them in. It could be that there are some other international players who might go a little bit higher.

Caitlin: Going to Boston now. Best available defender. Boston has no defenders. Emma Peschel of Ohio State, another team that was in the NCAA championship. Could be good for them.

Alex: Ottawa, again looking at probably best available defender at this point: Sidney Morrow out of Minnesota.

Alex: We also did not put a goalie on this list. It’ll be interesting if there’s one goalie out there that could potentially go in the first round.

Caitlin: Yes, there is. And Detroit is the team that has no goaltender as of right now. But alas, they don’t get a pick in the first round.

Alex: They’re really hoping we’re correct on this first round.

Caitlin: And then rounding us out, Montreal: they really could take whoever’s best available. They have good balance. Sarah Swiderski, right-handed defender out of Ohio State, might be a good match there. They did lose some defensive presence with Aaron Ambrose going to Vegas.

Alex: I wonder if you could see them take a goalie to understudy under Davey End. Could really make Detroit mad.

Caitlin: I could see almost any of these teams taking a goalie. I don’t know how good she is. Maybe Toronto, with Reagan Kirk. We’ll see.

Alex: Yeah, we’ll see how it goes. Maybe we’ll score our own draft card here after Wednesday night.

Some players that we are just watching to see where they go, if they go. Megan Augusta: three-time Olympic gold medalist, two-time world champion, the fourth-leading scorer in NCAA history. She has not played since the 2018 Olympics. Everyone, I’m going to tell you: out of the first 12 names we read, they all have a 2000-something birth year. Megan Augusta: 1987. Thirty-nine years old. It is a good year for it.

Caitlin: What more can we say?

Alex: She’s gunning for it and I’m hoping she gets a spot.

Caitlin: And then the other one we have on our watch list is Laura Fortino. She’s Italian, born in 1991. She’s a former Canadian national team and CWHL star who then skipped the early rounds of the PWHL to go represent Italy in the Milan games. So she’s a defender, could go in the mix.

Alex: Yeah, we’ll see what happens. Draft is Wednesday night. I believe it’s 4 p.m. Central.

Caitlin: We will also learn the winners of the awards as well.

Alex: Yes, that is true. All right, switching gears to the WNBA.

WNBA: Lynx-Aces game and MVP contenders

Caitlin: All right. We have a couple of things we want to focus on in this segment. We have to talk about the number one team at the time playing the number two team at the time.

Alex: It’s not our fault. Sorry. They were number one.

Caitlin: But that was an absolute banger of a basketball game. We’re going to talk about that. Then we felt like after Alex’s bold prediction of Olivia Miles, who is right now a shoe-in for Rookie of the Year, but his bold prediction was could she also be in the running for MVP, we felt like we needed to round out our potential MVP contenders.

Alex: I will say she is definitely in the MVP talks.

Caitlin: There’s more than just us saying that.

Alex: All right. So the Lynx played the Aces on Saturday night. This was sort of a game we had circled on the calendar. We had talked last week about how the Lynx hadn’t really had a ton of big tests, but they had some coming up. They went out and decimated the Wings during the week, and then I think the Aces had a strong game against Portland. It kind of been just on this collision course of best-on-best. Well, the Lynx lost. The game ended 100 to 97. It was not close the whole time. I believe the Aces were up at certain points by 15 or so points.

Caitlin: I just want to give the Aces their flowers. They are really good when they’re gelling. When they’re on and things are going well, no one can beat them. They have too many weapons. You’ve got A’ja Wilson, Chelsea Gray, Jackie Young, Jewel Lloyd, Nellisa Smith. Kennedy Carter coming off the bench. One of the most elite sixth women in the league. And then you’ve got Hall of Fame head coach Becky Hammon. Like she’s coached at the highest level in the NBA and the WNBA. They were so tough on defense. Chelsea Gray came out just on a heater, dropping threes right away in the first quarter. They are good.

Alex: They absolutely destroyed us on second-chance points. Like it wasn’t even close.

Caitlin: Yes, that was embarrassing. I think the Lynx had a lot of missed opportunities. They gave up a lot of second-chance points. You’ve got to rebound. You’ve got to make your free throws. That’s something that right now for the Lynx, we have to do better at the free throw line. Then down the stretch there were some missed layups, some possessions that just weren’t really good. When you’re playing a team like the Aces, you can’t have that.

Now, the fact that we did not play our best game by a long shot, and kind of had to grind it out to get to a position of having a shot to tie it, and the Aces frankly seemed to play pretty well…

Alex: It seemed like everything was going in for them. Like it felt good for them.

Caitlin: My bold statement is that the Lynx are still the best team in the league. I think you look at the Lynx and you say, hey, if they had made a couple more free throws, this was a matter of a couple of buckets. And we like to remind people we still don’t have Nafisa Collier, last year’s runner-up for MVP.

Alex: A strong candidate.

Caitlin: Strong candidate. A’ja looked great. One of my favorite parts of the game was Olivia Miles driving all over A’ja Wilson. I think Kennedy Carter, even on the bench, had a few reactions. There’s a video out there on Instagram of her being like, “What?” “Oh Lord.”

Caitlin: My two other things: Courtney Williams would shoot over A’ja at a few points, I was like, girl, why are you shooting that? And then she’d make it. And then Natasha Howard, she fouled out about five minutes left to go in the fourth, but she just willed that team through the first half. Olivia Miles kind of found her groove in the second, but Natasha really willed the team through with effort, chasing balls down.

Alex: Yeah. I think mine kind of picks up where Natasha Howard left off. It felt like Olivia Miles in that last five minutes, in that last two minutes or so that she played, was trying to will the team to win. She absolutely was in control there. She took the last shot, a three-pointer. Missed, but it wasn’t a bad look at all. I just think she was trying to will this team to a win, which I thought was really impressive. Same notes as you: missed opportunities, second-chance points.

Something you brought up was the officiating felt really fair. For the first time in a while, I felt like I didn’t notice the refs.

Caitlin: And that’s how it should be. I shouldn’t really notice that you are having a big influence on the game. Foul calls were fair. One final thing related to that: there were a few moments where you could see the players were visibly frustrated. One of my favorite parts of the game was Liv was kind of gesticulating at the referee and it was right in front of Cheryl, and Cheryl was basically like, you knock that off.

Alex: You go play the game. I’ll talk to the ref.

Caitlin: Right. And I love that. Keep her focused on playing and distributing. Liv did not have the assists we’re used to seeing from her. She had one assist in that game. They were all over the passing lanes. But she found a way to produce through points.

Alex: All right. We’re gonna talk about rounding out this list of MVP contenders.

Let’s talk Olivia Miles first. My note here is: is she the MVP in a Rookie of the Year trench coat? If we go through the stats: 18.6 points per game over a 31-minute average, 53.5% field goal percentage, 39.3% from three, 5.1 rebounds per game, 5.9 assists per game, and 3.2 turnovers.

Caitlin: That two-to-one ratio you want to see in a point guard handling the ball a lot. Good shooting. She’s knocking on the door of the 50-40-90 club.

Alex: Do you want me to take Kelsey Plum? I have the point-scoring queen on the middle-of-the-pack team.

Caitlin: Because of that, I feel like no one’s talking about her.

Alex: Yeah, they are literally right in the middle of the pack. Let’s look at the stat line: 26.6 points per game over 35 minutes average, 55.5% field goal percentage, 41.4% from three, 2.2 rebounds per game, 6.9 assists, 3.4 turnovers.

Caitlin: Kelsey Plum is a player that can will her team to win. Makes players around her better. She had that injury, so she had to sit down a couple games. Her points per game are so high. She’s leading the league in scoring right now.

Alex: I think she led the league in total points even over the course of those missed games.

Caitlin: I do think that the Sparks have to at least make the playoffs for her to be in that discussion, because it’s not just statistically you’re the best player. It’s most valuable. And that usually also means you have to win. She’s got the pieces around her, to be clear.

Caitlin: All right. My two. The player we’ve already talked about: A’ja Wilson. She looks like an MVP. She just has that presence. She is shooting an insane clip from three, basically 55% from behind the arc. 52% from the floor overall. 26.2 points on 32 minutes a game. 9.3 rebounds, 3.2 assists, 1.2 steals, 2.4 blocks. When I look at steals and blocks, blocks are resulting in a turnover for the other team. So you’re looking at somebody who is creating potentially 3.5 turnovers per game by the other team, while she herself turns the ball over 2.7 times. Really high efficiency rating. She’s on a really good team. They’re probably going to do really well this season. Her three-level scoring is crazy. She’s worked a lot on her three-point shot, but her ability to hit the mid-range, her ability to get to the bucket. We saw that on display in the game over the weekend. Hard to say no to her.

Do we need an MVP for the fifth time, third time in a row or whatever it is right now? I don’t know. But if you’re performing at that level, then yeah, you probably deserve it.

Alex: On paper right now, she is the MVP. But my prediction on Miles is that if she continues the way she’s going and only gets better, it’s going to be a tougher conversation.

Caitlin: Agree. And then my other outside-looking-in candidate: somebody who we have definitely not talked a lot about and I don’t think I’ve even seen her come up much in the general chatter. I feel like no one’s talking about the Liberty. I said last week that they had the best chance of the teams in the top five to change their position in the ranking order over their next five games. Folks, they are now in third in the league. They’re leading the Eastern Conference.

Brianna Stewart is somebody who I think we’ve got to have on MVP watch. 19.9 points per game on 32.6 minutes. 44% from the floor. She’s not really a three-point shooting big. 9 rebounds, 2.6 assists, 1.4 steals, 1.4 blocks on 2.4 turnovers. One of the highest efficiency ratings in the league right now. Another team that I think has all the pieces and they’re going to make a run at it. They’ve qualified for the Commissioner’s Cup final. Stewie is on my watch list for both individual statistics and the way that she runs that team out in New York.

Alex: I don’t know if the games have just been at weird times for us, but we haven’t gotten a good chance to watch a lot of their games. And everything I see on social media is never about the play. It’s about Ellie.

Caitlin: Apparently it was her birthday. She brought in Violet, the Valkyrie mascot, and Sky, the Chicago Sky mascot. They did a dance. She did the fit check through the tunnel.

Alex: I love it.

Caitlin: I am here for Ellie. Speaking of marketing, genius.

Alex: Oh yeah, it’s really good. All right, we’ve got to move on. We’ve got to talk about the national team. We’ve got to talk about the chaotic game two against Brazil.

USWNT vs. Brazil: game two recap

Caitlin: Yes. Let’s just recap the game. I believe the US started with six changes to their starting lineup compared to the prior game. US won 1-nil, as Alex mentioned. That goal came in the second half on just a superb effort by Sophia Wilson to fend off not one but two defenders, break into space, take a shot. It did get deflected off of a Brazilian defender into the back of the net, ultimately called an own goal. But it doesn’t get there if she doesn’t take the shot. Honestly, that felt like the way you had to score on Lorena that night. Lorena, the Brazilian goalkeeper, made some crazy saves. Emma Sears had one really good opportunity, and Sophia was right there on the doorstep and just couldn’t put it in. Trinity Rodman had a really close-range shot and she came up big in the moments she needed to.

What took the headlines though was the cards. There were 23 yellow cards handed out in this game between both teams. And there were eight red cards.

Alex: Yeah.

Caitlin: I think of the eight, four were straight reds and four were accumulation yellows. And you had the Brazilian head coach, Arthur Elias, being, frankly, an ass on the sideline.

Alex: It was weird because it started with the ref making him put on a pinny because he wore the same color as the US team’s jerseys.

Caitlin: You know the jersey colors of the other team before you come out on the pitch.

Alex: And then I think he got the red card for kicking one of the reserve balls off the tee.

Caitlin: And then proceeded to not leave the field, which was very disrespectful.

Alex: And then proceeded to take the pinny and put it on the ref’s shoulder. Like, here you go. Very, very disrespectful.

Caitlin: Of those eight reds, four were coaches, including head coach Arthur Elias. Presumably the others were for things said to the referee. He kind of set the stage for that to happen. And then you had a couple red cards happen on the field as a result of play. Tassiane just lined up an elbow to Sophia Wilson’s face at one point. Marta got a card and she was on the pitch for maybe 15 minutes at the end.

Alex: We played a ton of extra time.

Caitlin: Very, very chaotic. So the first game, I said the thing going into this set of friendlies was, can we stay disciplined? That was my whole thing. They kind of got to the US in that first 15, 20 minutes of game one. In this one, if I am Emma Hayes, I saw almost exactly what I want to see. They stayed disciplined. They stayed composed. They created a lot of chances. The one thing I’m harping on them for is you have to convert the chances.

Alex: Yeah, 100%. They kind of also played into Brazil’s game a little bit in the sense that if Brazil is going to do this, we’re maybe going to embellish a little. Emily Sonnett specifically.

Caitlin: Let’s be honest, it was more or less one player who knows how they play. She’s a veteran. She understood how the ref was playing the game. That is part of these games. I can understand why the Brazilian players were very frustrated with her. Marta called her out on social media being like, hey, give this actress an award. But your players were also doing it all night long.

Going back to your comment about matching physicality: Emma made roster changes that clearly indicated she wanted to match Brazil’s physicality. We had Avery Patterson start on the outside. She was fantastic. We had Kennedy Wesley start at center back, which I said we should do, and she was great. We had Michelle Cooper who started up top and really brought a physical presence as a winger. And then Emma moved her to right back in the second half to bring Trinity Rodman on and take Emily Fox off. She played great back there. I think that performance helped solidify her in the World Cup roster because she showed versatility. She can play multiple positions.

I think for me, a couple other notes: after game one, I was really curious about our defense. I think bringing Wesley in really helped. She plays a very similar style to Naomi Girma, in her communication and things like that. I think we sped up the build-out of the back. Brazil plays a very aggressive high press. In the first game, that really hurt us. We saw a lot of balls if they were played back to Dickie or even some of the centerbacks where we decided to go more direct. They were really trying to find Lindsey Horan’s head so she could flick on to the forwards running off of her. I thought that was a really smart adjustment.

I had wanted to see more of Olivia Moultrie. We did get to see her in this game. But honestly, at that point, with everything going on, it was so disrupted and disorienting. Overall, I thought the team did well. I think Emma would agree with us. Coming out of game one, she was really challenging them to embrace the madness, contain it. That was one of her quotes. And she said she thought they would be better as a result of that game. I think she walks away from game two saying we’re better.

I’ll let her words speak for that. This was in the post-game huddle to her players, and if you go find this video, her players look emotional hearing this. She says, quote: “I was going to say, regardless of the result, that I didn’t care about the outcome because the process for me is far more valuable. It doesn’t matter whether it’s you, whether it’s me, whether it’s us having to contain our emotions in this game. I am so proud of us. I am so proud of our group. I’m so proud of how we stuck together.”

And then in the post-game presser, she went on to build on that, to say: “If you cannot take responsibility to be in these situations, to thrive, to cope with the demands and everything that comes with that, to find joy from the beautiful crowd, from the noise, from Marta, a real legend, and to stand there as a coach with such pride for my players, proud of everything, that is what can happen when you have a growth mindset. This is what can happen if you’re not focused on the result. We are growing.”

Alex: I don’t know how many times we can say that we’d run through a wall for Emma Hayes, but there it is.

Caitlin: She is a wizard. Or a witch, actually. Maybe a witch. Sloppy game, I think the US made the most of it. We won’t see them back on the pitch, I think, until October. In our next episode, we can talk about who has qualified for the World Cup as more European qualifications have come out.

What to watch

Alex: All right, let’s wrap up. What to watch. The PWHL draft is Wednesday, the day this releases. 4 p.m. Central time in Detroit. It’ll be fun to see how accurate we were on our guesses.

Caitlin: If you want to watch that, my gut would say go to PWHL’s YouTube. They’re good about putting things up there and the production value is pretty good.

Alex: Moving into the WNBA, I picked one per day. Friday: Minnesota Lynx at the Golden State Valkyries, Friday, June 19th, 9 p.m. Central on ION. Golden State is always tough, and Valhalla is a tough place to go play. Saturday: Indiana Fever at the Atlanta Dream. Noon Central time on ABC. The Dream have dropped to around fourth or so in the league, and the Fever are on a three-game win streak. That’s gonna be good. Sunday: New York Liberty at the Los Angeles Sparks, prime time on ESPN. This is the first Women’s Sports Sunday game. And we’re done with the Commissioner’s Cup slate, so you’ve got East versus West.

Alex: Women’s Elite Rugby, all on Sunday on the Women’s Sports Network. 1 p.m.: TC Gemini versus the Chicago Tempest. 4 p.m.: Denver Onyx versus the New York Exiles. 7 p.m.: Bay Breakers versus the Boston Banshees.

And we have the LPGA, the Meijer LPGA Classic, in Belmont, Michigan at Blythe Field Country Club. Golf Channel, CBS, or stream it on NBC Sports, Peacock, and Golf Channel all weekend.

Caitlin: And on the Tennis Channel, the Berlin Tennis Open is going on. Serena plays doubles starting on Tuesday, but there’s a whole tournament going on there if you want to watch tennis.

Momentum and setbacks

Alex: Momentum and setbacks.

Alex: I said the US Women’s National Team taking one from Brazil. Going into a hostile environment and grabbing a result is going to be good momentum for the team as they continue to move towards the World Cup.

Caitlin: I agree. And I am kind of curious to see: as the buzz around the Men’s World Cup continues to amplify and get louder, does that carry over to the NWSL? I know we’re missing that right now a little bit, but that’s how I’m thinking about momentum.

Alex: Setbacks: I have two. The Lynx losing to the Aces.

Caitlin: Mine too.

Alex: Not really a setback, just kind of the opposite of momentum. It would have been really nice for them to win that game.

Caitlin: For me it’s similar to the national team losing to Brazil in that first game. Not unexpected at all. And I think they can convert it into momentum. The setback would have been if they came out against Portland and totally flatlined. They did not.

Alex: The other one I had was the Duginia ACL.

Caitlin: Yes. And we talked about what’s gonna happen while the NWSL is away, who’s gonna come back with energy. That’s a bummer for San Diego. But specifically, just as a women’s sports fan, she was playing some really fantastic football and we wish her a speedy recovery. The timing couldn’t be worse with the World Cup coming up next. About a year out now.

Alex: It’s gonna be hard.

Caitlin: Maybe. I would love to see her back on the pitch.

Alex: Do you have a setback? Or are you just agreeing with mine?

Caitlin: My setbacks were the Lynx and Duginia. And maybe Victoria Mboko’s injury, so she and Serena couldn’t continue their partnership. I was curious to see that continue.

Alex: Yeah, that would have been fun. All right. RTG underscore pod on Instagram and Threads. Raising the Game Podcast on Substack. YouTube. raisingthegamepodcast at gmail.com. rtgpod.com. Yeah, like, subscribe, share.

Caitlin: Comment. We love reading the comments.

Alex: We do. Thank you. All right.

Caitlin: All right, till next week, y’all. Thanks for being here.

Alex: Bye.