Women’s football has long suffered from a lack of investment, creating a vicious circle of bad facilities, mediocre media coverage and little spectator interest. The tide is clearly turning: attendance numbers are rising, interest is soaring, and the cash is flowing. And it’s accepted – in some cases, all too readily. According to the rhetoric of many investors and owners, particularly in the US, women’s football is to be treated like a start-up whose true value has been underestimated for years. Now, according to this logic, is the time to catch up and go all-in, as investment is still relatively cheap. Spending big is the recipe for cashing in tomorrow. There are real numbers behind that idea: a Nielsen study from 2025 predicted that by 2030, there would be 800 million fans of women’s football globally, a 38% increase compared to five years earlier.
Yet, some rather problematic assumptions follow from this logic where women’s football is a goldmine waiting to be exploited. There needs to be investment now, a lot of it, as other leagues are ready to start digging too. Moral objections are discarded, since, of course, it’s all about women’s empowerment. That logic has produced alienating results. For instance, in Columbus, a public park set to become a sports field for residents with disabilities is instead now being turned into a training facility for the NWSL expansion team in the city.
“Empowering women” through betting:
But the clearest example has been the failure of women’s football to condemn betting – and instead to embrace it fully in some cases. In 2024, the Washington Spirit signed a multi-year partnership with gambling firm Fanatics Sportsbook. In a press release, Spirit CEO Kim Stone was quoted as saying: “This is another indication of the momentum surrounding the Spirit and women’s sports. This collaboration gives us the chance to enter the sports betting space with a trusted brand, all while staying true to our commitment to integrity, empowering women, and creating better experiences for our fans.” How exactly women are empowered by luring them into gambling addiction remains Stone’s secret for now. Her quote exemplifies the glossy girlboss aesthetic that sticks to the NWSL like a pink nail varnish. It may turn out to be toxic. Anything can be justified by the noble motive of serving the women’s cause, while in reality, it may rather be the billionaire’s cause. The Spirit’s deal included even pre-match and halftime activities sponsored by the firm, making betting an omnipresent part of the stadium experience.
A similar wording can be found in basketball, the second big women’s sport after football. After BetMGM started sponsoring the Las Vegas Aces, WNBA Chief Growth Officer Colie Edison said: “By partnering with the Aces, BetMGM continues to recognize the extraordinary potential for growth that comes from tapping into the power of women’s sports and the connections fans have to their favourite players and teams.” Is this really about the power of women’s sports? Or rather about the power of finding a niche to make more money? As most gamblers are male – half of American men between 18 and 49 have an active account with an online sportsbook -, women’s sports offers betting firms an opportunity to tap into a new demographic. Jeevan Jeyaratnam, Abelson Sport’s Chief Betting Officer, said last year that women’s football was the company’s fastest growing segment.
Athletes embrace betting – even though they pay a high price for it
What’s just as disturbing is the fact that some athletes have embraced betting individually as well. Basketball legend Lisa Leslie and USWNT star Alex Morgan both appear in advertisements for the betting company DraftKings. Yet, they should know that athletes themselves pay an extremely high price for the omnipresence of betting in sports: Various athletes from tennis player Caroline Garcia to basketball star Natasha Cloud have spoken about the betting-related abuse they have received; Olympic sprinter Gabby Thomas was even verbally harassed by a gambler during a track race in an attempt to make her lose. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) estimates that 15 to 25% of all online abuse is betting-related, noting a “gamblification” of abuse. While that concerns male athletes as well, sexism often adds to the abuse, making it even more vile.
You probably don’t need a reminder that betting is bad, but here’s one anyway, since these companies work hard to normalize it and make it seem like a fun and chill activity. DraftKings, the company Alex Morgan promotes, has just been sued over allegations that it targets vulnerable gamblers with AI to lure them back to gambling. Like other betting companies, it has VIP programs to make problem gamblers spend even more money by offering them free bets and seats at games. A 2024 study from Connecticut found that 1.8% of problem gamblers accounted for 51% of sports betting revenue in the state. Sports betting is a game you can’t win: even breaking even over the course of a season is almost impossible. For good reasons, it was restricted to Nevada until 2018, when New Jersey, hopeful of bringing in money in the form of tax revenue, allowed betting in the Garden State. In The Atlantic, McKay Coppins writes: “To humanity’s great thinkers and leaders, gambling was an impediment to an ethical life (Aristotle), an invention of the devil (Saint Augustine), and a tax on the ignorant (Warren Buffett) (…) Practically overnight, we took an ancient vice- long regarded as soul-rotting and civilizationally ruinous – put it on everyone’s phone, and made it as normal and frictionless as checking the weather. What could possibly go wrong?”
Room for nuance?
Well, some organizations in women’s sports clearly haven’t got the memo yet. While clubs and leagues in men’s football should absolutely be held to the same standards, there’s something particularly perverse in marketing gambling as feminist. In some cases, there is room for nuance: for instance, Ghana’s Women’s Premier League accepted Betway as a sponsor between 2021 and 2023, receiving not only money but also training equipment for the teams. In a situation where professional standards are way lower than in the US, some lenience can be allowed even though Betway remains no less problematic. In Spain, the inclusion of Liga F on the national betting slip (La Quiniela) was celebrated as correcting historical inequalities by the government, but the difference is that La Quiniela is government-owned and much more heavily regulated and taxed than online casinos.
For clubs and athletes in the US, the argument of underinvestment cannot really be made. Nor can it be made in Europe, the problem with betting also exists, albeit on a smaller scale: France’s Première Ligue made Betclic an official sponsor in 2025, with the federation’s president, Philippe Diallo, saying: “The FFF has made the promotion of women’s football a key focus of its policy. Our partners, such as Betclic, are fully committed to this” – a similar rhetoric to the one from the Washington Spirit. The ban on betting logos in the Premier League and the WSL from this season on, however, is an encouraging step in the right direction. Leagues and clubs alike should remind themselves of a plea sent to the WSL in 2023 by Kay Wadsworth, whose daughter Kimberly committed suicide in 2018 after developing a severe gambling addiction: In her open letter, she urged the WSL not to accept “bloodied cash” in the name of growing the game. For organizations which have long championed social justice, justifying these deals with empty phrases about empowerment and the potential of women’s sports is even more hypocritical.
Text: Helene Altgelt
