Tip of the Cap Series: Women in Sports
Seeing the women in the news as of late at the forefront of sports and entertainment, here are a few that have helped push the industry forward.
- After a load of achievements that includes 23 Grand Slam singles championships, Serena Williams announced she will be retiring from the sport of tennis. Not only is Williams one of the greatest athletes of all time, but her impact on the sports business is also immeasurable. According to Forbes estimates, her $340 million in career endorsements rank her 31st on the world’s highest-paid athletes list — despite missing nearly a year’s worth of action between 2021 and 2022. Williams’ popularity brought visibility to the game, especially with sponsors like Gatorade, Nike, Delta Air Lines, Aston Martin, Pepsi, Upper Deck, Beats by Dre, JP Morgan Chase, Wilson, and DirecTV. She’s also helped women athletes get paid on a grander scale; in 1980, the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) awarded players $7.2 million in total prize money. Since Williams’ pro debut in 1995, she’s averaged $8 million per year in average prize money, according to Essentially Sports. It must also be noted that Williams is part owner of two sports franchises — the NFL’s Miami Dolphins and the NWSL’s Angel City FC.
- The XFL recently announced its eight cities for its return for the 2023 season: Arlington, Texas; Houston, Texas; Seattle, Wash.; St. Louis, Mo.; Washington, D.C., Orlando, Fla.; Las Vegas, Nev.; and San Antonio, Texas. The league is owned by a collective of Gerry Cardinale of RedBird Capital, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and Dany Garcia. And with Garcia — the CEO and chairwoman of The Garcia Companies and TGC Management — being involved, she is the first woman and woman of color to hold a majority ownership stake in an American professional sports league. At the 2022 ESPY Awards, Garcia credited her career and success to the passing of Title IX. The XFL has other prominent women running league operations: Erica Muhleman
(Senior Vice President of Team Services), Danielle Lee (Director of Team Operations), Ginaleigh Porreca (Executive Assistant to the President & League Liaison), and Janet Dutch (Chief Marketing & Content Officer), to name a few. - Just after the end of the 2021-22 NBA season, the Phoenix Suns hired Morgan Cato as Assistant General Manager. She will be working in lockstep with 2021 NBA Executive of the Year winner and Suns GM James Jones, as she will be the NBA’s first woman of color to sit in the assistant GM seat. Cato worked in the NBA’s front office for nearly a decade in roles that include Associate Vice President of Business Operations and League Operations and Manager of Recruiting and College Relations. While working in the league office, Cato has helped expand the game’s reach, including the launch of the Basketball Africa League, basketball talent pipeline programming, and her overall advocacy for women and people of color in basketball operations.
- The Las Vegas Raiders made many waves with the hire of Sandra Douglass Morgan as the NFL’s first Black woman President, third-ever female president, and third-ever Black team President in league history. Douglass Morgan is also of Korean descent. She is the second BIPOC woman that Raiders and Las Vegas Aces owner Mark Davis has brought on to serve as team President following the hire of Nikki Fargas with the Aces in 2021. But it doesn’t just stop there; the Raiders have revamped their front office in recent years by enlisting several other women like Coordinator of Team Operations Ansley Moore, Raiders Operations Assistant Skylar Phan, Corporate Partnerships Activation Coordinator Taylor Tufano, and Human Resources Generalist Kazuko Imura.
- Rachel Balkovec has helped shine new light on the women taking part in the world of baseball. But another name that needs to be highlighted is Katie Krall, who is now a Development Coach with the Portland Sea Dogs, the Double-A affiliate of the Boston Red Sox. This role makes her the first woman to have an on-field role for a Double-A club. Before she made her way down to the field, she held several front office positions: Baseball Operations Analyst with the Cincinnati Reds, Assistant GM of the Cape Cod Baseball League, and Coordinator of League Economics & Operations for the MLB’s league office.
- After 36 years as the New York Yankees radio broadcaster, Suzyn Waldman is being inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in November of 2022. Waldman, who has been the Yankees’ color analyst for the last 18 seasons, was the first woman to become a full-time MLB announcer. She is one of roughly 30 women that have been inducted by the hall, as she follows in the footsteps of 2018 inductee Nanci Donnellan, who is better known as ‘The Fabulous Sports Babe.’
- As the Denver Broncos’ team sale was finalized in the summer of 2022, the move brought on Mellody Hobson and former United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as limited owners of the team. They are now the first Black women to serve as owners in NFL history. Joining them in the ownership group is Carrie Walton Penner, the daughter of Walmart's heir Rob Walton. Hobson and Walton Penner are two of the growing number of women who have a partial or majority ownership stake throughout the league. Rice and Hobson are just the NFL’s second and third women of color in ownership roles behind the Buffalo Bills’ Kim Pegula.
Jennifer Proud Mearns — former TeamWork Consulting Executive Vice President — has over a decade of experience in sports and entertainment. She was also featured recently as one of Buffy Filippell’s 50 Women who have made a Positive Difference to me LinkedIn series.
While she has not directly been involved in the industry in nearly 20 years, she has seen the progress the industry has made with women since she was a part of it herself:
“I just think back to when I was in the business, I think it’s wonderful that women are getting the opportunities. … Back in the day, a lot of work was done by word of mouth and so just networking, and again, if women weren’t in the room or getting the opportunities to network, it made it very difficult for them to get those opportunities,” Mearns said.
Mearns felt that there was a bias against women in sports at that time, particularly on the sales front. She noted that may have caused an unintended gap between men and women, as many of the sales roles brought in higher salaries and commission opportunities.
One woman in sports that Mearns wanted to tip her cap to was Micky Lawler, President of the WTA. Coming up together as media liaisons with the Men’s International Professional Tennis Council, Mearns gets to see Lawler continue to elevate throughout the industry.
“She was one of the few women to drive her career as an agent and then in sales. And she took that path and to see her rise to the top of women’s tennis, has been great for me to sit back and watch. Here she was a peer and then she just continued to drive her career while she was a mother, while she had kids … I think she’s a great example of somebody who stayed focused and worked hard and has reached the highest level of her profession,” Mearns said.
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