WOMEN’S SPORT AND SPORTS BETTING
Betting on women’s sports: realizing the untapped potential A NEW REPORT SHEDS LIGHT ON THE INCREASED INTEREST IN WOMEN’S SPORT AND SPORTS BETTING AS SILVIA PALEARI REPORTS .
T he recent and dramatic increase in interest in women’s sports is undeniable. It is a hugely positive development – for fans, the sports and women athletes themselves, and also for the betting market. It is creating very significant and untapped opportunities for sports betting operators, and the whole women’s sports ecosystem which we are only just beginning to understand. Records were set in 2019, with over a billion people watching the Women‘s Football World Cup. It continued with the UEFA Women’s EURO in 2022 and further records, for attendance, viewers, and sponsorship, were broken at this year’s Women’s World Cup. And it is not just football. The 2023 NCAA women’s basketball tournament, for example, drew nearly 10 million viewers for the final game between Iowa and LSU—up 103 percent from the previous year 1 .
developments have also raised a number of fundamental questions about women’s sports and sports betting. Has its growing popularity been matched by a similar increase in betting on women’s sport, and what might this mean for the sports betting market and operators? Could growth in betting on women’s sports create integrity issues for those sports? Unfortunately, research on women’s sports in general, let alone research on betting on women’s sports, is scarce. Much of the data that does exist is recent, or not publicly available, which limits its value from an academic and research perspective. To help bridge this gap and initiate a conversation about women’s sport and sports betting, the International Betting Integrity Association (IBIA), together with the All-In Diversity Project, Entain, Flutter and Stats Perform, recently commissioned a ground-breaking study, “Breaking Barriers: Assessing Women’s Sports, Betting, and Integrity Challenges.” 2
In addition to generating headlines across the world, these
1 Women’s sports viewership on the rise, July 2023, Nielsen https://www.nielsen.com/insights/2023/womens-sports-viewership-on-the-rise/ 2 https://ibia.bet/study-on-womens-sports/
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IMGL MAGAZINE | OCTOBER 2023
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