This year’s FIFA Women’s World Cup is on track to be the best-attended and viewed women’s sporting event in history. It is most likely to also be the most-wagered-upon women’s sporting event yet.
That is a good thing. Betting boosts audiences, media coverage and sponsorships. For women’s sports, which still struggle with gender equality, the money and attention is critical to growth, especially if it can be done while maintaining the integrity of the industry.
In important, measurable ways, that growth is already happening.
Bets on soccer have grown at a roughly 20 percent annualized compounded growth rate since 2020, a study on betting in women’s sports found.
Tennis, basketball and cricket saw more than 10 percent annualized compounded growth from 2017 to last year, it found.
Betting data for this year’s Women’s World Cup is not publicly available yet, but a spokeswoman for Flutter Entertainment PLC, the world’s largest online betting firm and owner of FanDuel, recently told me that the company expects the international competition to boost trading activity.
That is a safe bet. Viewership for women’s sports is growing rapidly, with expectations that this year’s Women’s World Cup could have double the 1.12 billion viewers who watched the tournament in 2019. Likewise, the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) reports that national TV audiences for this season are up 67 percent from last year.
Audience growth parallels an increase in betting.
Last month, German researchers, using data provided by Flutter and other gambling industry organizations, operators and suppliers, traced the expansion.
In 2019, just more than 300,000 legal bets were made on women’s soccer; last year, the number had reached 700,000.
In the world of basketball, the WNBA reported that the number of bets made last year grew 270 percent from the 2021 season.
Women’s sports made up a small fraction of the US$93.2 billion in bets that legal US sportsbooks handled last year, but the steady growth in those wagers is critical to understanding one important factor: audience engagement. Research shows that gamblers pay closer attention to a sports broadcast if they have money riding on it.
The competitiveness of a match does not always matter, either.
In 2015, economists found that ratings would spike during blowouts if one of the teams had a chance to cover the point spread.
If viewers stay with a broadcast longer, they are more likely to pay attention to advertisements and become fans of new teams — both of which enable leagues and their broadcast and streaming partners to charge higher rates.
Women’s sports are right to seize the opportunity.
In September last year, the WNBA extended a multi-year deal with FanDuel, cementing the company’s role as the league’s top sportsbook and fantasy partner, and in June, TAB New Zealand became the first gambling firm to be named an official betting partner of the Women’s World Cup.
These deals and others can be expected to bring added attention, engagement and — critically — money to women’s sports. Although the equality gap with men’s sports cannot be bridged overnight, those revenues can contribute to better salaries, prize money and treatment, including safer travel arrangements.
Of course, any expansion of gambling risks undermining the integrity of a given sport, and women’s sports are not immune.
Sportradar, a leading monitor of suspicious betting activities, detected 1,212 suspicious matches in 12 different sports worldwide last year. While only 24 of those came from women’s sporting events, mostly from lower-level competitions, that is no reason to sleep on a potential problem.
The low incidence numbers are likely due to the lesser profile of women’s sports. As the industry’s popularity grows, match-fixing is likely to increase.
While this is a problem long associated with men’s sports, it poses a unique threat to women’s sports, which have expanded partly because of their close association with social movements such as #MeToo and purpose-driven advertising. Match-fixing would dent the brand.
Historically, athletes are most vulnerable to corruption when they are paid poorly. As gambling expands in women’s sports, that vulnerability is likely to increase unless leagues and teams take steps to raise pay to such a level that bribes are no longer attractive to their athletes.
Not every women’s sports association might have the opportunity to do that, but FIFA does. It has US$4 billion in reserves, yet prize money at this year’s Women’s World Cup stands at US$110 million, versus US$440 million for the men’s FIFA World Cup last year.
If FIFA, the WNBA and other leagues do not bridge the sports gender gap out of pocket, they should consider recruiting legal sportsbooks that might sponsor better pay. In time, these betting partners might even see it in their self-interest to serve as key proponents of pay equality.
For gamblers, fans and athletes, that is a future worth wagering on.
Adam Minter is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asia, technology and the environment. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
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