We deliver! Get curated industry news straight to your inbox. Subscribe to Adweek newsletters.
When the sports marketing business is booming, everyone wants a league of their own.
Globally, Statista estimates that sports revenue will hit $117.9 billion in 2025, increasing nearly 4% annually to $137.82 billion by 2029. Meanwhile, Deloitte projects women’s sports revenue to more than double from $981 million in 2023 to $2.35 billion this year, driven largely by media-rights deals and sponsorships.
With that increased investment, Deloitte’s 2025 sports outlook forecasts the expansion of current sports leagues to meet media and sponsor demand and the addition of new leagues to address underserved pockets of fans. As more new leagues continue to pop up, here are several that marketers should keep an eye on as they look for new ways to get into the game this year.
Unrivaled
Founded by WNBA stars Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart as a means to enhance player salaries and profiles, the 3-on-3 women’s basketball league of 36 players just finished its first season with help from investors including former ESPN president John Skipper, former Turner president David Levy, Moira Forbes, Alex Morgan, Michelle Wie West, Dawn Staley, Gary Vaynerchuck, and Megan Rapinoe.
Throughout the season, Unrivaled rolled up nearly 20 sponsors (including Ally Financial, State Farm, Morgan Stanley, and Under Armour), an average of 221,000 viewers on TNT and truTV as part of its six-year deal with TNT Sports, and an average of $220,000 per player in salary—or just under the WNBA maximum of close to $250,000.
Athletes Unlimited Softball League (AUSL)
The multi-sport women’s league Athletes Unlimited drifted away from its individual-based, team-selecting format for softball this year and brought in all-star consultants Jennie Finch, Cat Osterman, Natasha Watley, and Jessica Mendoza—as well as newly minted commissioner Kim Ng, former gm of the Florida Marlins—to build a team-based league.
The league has an ad campaign under way, a deal in place with ESPN to air 33 games, and a touring schedule taking the first season through Wichita, Kansas; Round Rock, Texas; Salt Lake City; Seattle; Sulphur, Louisiana; Chattanooga, Tennessee; Omaha, Nebraska; and Tuscaloosa, Alabama, for the AUSL Championship. With the AUSL’s summer season immediately following the Women’s College Softball World Series—which reached an all-time viewership record of 2 million per game on ESPN last year—the league is looking to harness the momentum of a growing sport with an increasingly passionate fan base.
TMRW Golf League (TGL)
When he’s not distracted with other pursuits like winning The Masters this year, Rory McIlroy joins other PGA pros like Tiger Woods at SoFi Center in West Palm Beach to smack golf balls at an arena-sized screen and putt their way around a rotating, shape-shifting green.
In its first season of presenting a version of golf aimed squarely at the more than 19 million people who only play the game “off course” in simulators or at facilities like Topgolf, TMRW Sports’ TGL averaged more than 550,000 viewers on ESPN this year, drew roughly 20 sponsors, and got more than 1 million to tune in to see Woods’ first “Eye of the Tiger” walkup.
Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL)
In its first season under an ownership group including Guggenheim Partners CEO and Los Angeles Dodgers owner Mark Walter and tennis legend Billie Jean King, the women’s hockey league’s six teams in Boston, Minnesota, Montréal, New York, Ottawa, and Toronto set six attendance records that included a crowd of 21,105 for a Toronto-Montréal matchup at Montréal’s Bell Centre.
After bringing in more than 40 sponsors last year and broadcasting every game free on YouTube, the PWHL has its eyes on growth. Its broadcast partners in the U.S. now include regional sports networks in New York, Boston, and Minnesota, as well as the Women’s Sports Network FAST channel nationwide. As it attempts to select two new markets for expansion, its “takeover tour” of nine North American cities from January through March drew more than 123,000 fans and crowds of more than 10,000 in Raleigh (10,782), Seattle (12,608), Denver (14,018), Detroit (14,288), Edmonton (17,518), Quebec City (18,259), and Vancouver (19,038).
League One Volleyball (LOVB)
The six-team league made its debut in Atlanta, Austin, Houston, Madison, Omaha, and Salt Lake City earlier this year, bringing on Adidas, Revolve, Mikasa, and Spanx among its sponsors and building broadcast partnerships with ESPN, DAZN, and the Women’s Sports Network.
Its roster includes 19 Olympians with two dozen medals among them, and the investors who contributed to its initial $160 million fundraising include Lindsey Vonn, Candace Parker, and Fenway Sports Group’s Linda Henry. It isn’t the only volleyball league out there—Athletes Unlimited’s had one for years, while the Volleyball League of America (2019) and Pro Volleyball Federation (2024) have also provided a place to play. However, LOVB is also developing the sport through its 59 youth clubs and more than 19,000 athletes.
Women’s Lacrosse League (WLL)
With lacrosse making its Olympic debut in Los Angeles in 2028, it was going to be weird if there wasn’t some professional infrastructure in place for women’s lacrosse.
Again, Athletes Unlimited initially had a lacrosse league—in the short-field sixes format—but the Professional Lacrosse League’s (PLL) decision last year to create a full women’s league and put both brand and broadcast support behind it made the WLL a formidable full-field option.
Immediately branded the Maybelline New York Women’s Lacrosse League, the WLL received backing from Gatorade, Lexus, Whirlpool, and New Balance, among others, while its games aired on ESPN+ and ESPN2 through an exclusive rights agreement with ESPN. This year, the PLL is even hosting a joint All-Star weekend in Kansas City for the men’s and women’s All-Star Games.
Backed by both the PLL’s founding Rabil brothers and an investment group that includes Joe Tsai Sports, The Chernin Group, Creative Artists Agency (CAA), and The Kraft Group, the WLL wants to make it clear it’s sticking around a while.
Women’s Elite Rugby (WER)
Despite the fact that Ilona Maher plays Premiership Women’s Rugby in Bristol, an ocean away from this league, ripples of her the U.S. women’s sevens team run to the bronze medal at the Paris Olympics are felt throughout this six-team league.
After that team put women’s rugby in the collective U.S. consciousness—and fundraisers realized that Olympic rugby was coming to the states in 2028, with a Women’s Rugby World Cup to follow in 2033—the amateur Women’s Premier League scrambled for investors and media partners to attract pros. They found a willing broadcaster in DAZN, drew funding from private equity and venture capital—and investors including former Procter & Gamble executive Deb Henretta—and partners including women’s cleats manufacturer IDA Sports.
United Soccer League (USL)
This is a bit misleading since the United Soccer League has been around in one form or another for nearly 40 years, but there are a few new wrinkles within the organization that make it worth watching in the near future.
On the men’s side, it announced a Division One league that would not only contend with Major League Soccer for attention and talent, but would allow for something unheard of in U.S. soccer leagues: Promotion from and relegation to its lower USL Championship and USL League One divisions. The top-tier league and the new system would debut in 2027.
As a more immediate concern, the USL Super League women’s division began its first season at the end of 2024 as a step up from the semi-pro USL W League. Considered at the highest level of U.S. women’s soccer next to the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL), the Super League doesn’t draft players, has no salary cap, streamsmatches on Peacock, and has already planted teams in Brooklyn, Dallas, Charlotte, and D.C.
