The Athletic and Google today announced the launch of a multiplatform project produced by The Athletic newsroom to support the growth and future of professional women’s sports journalism, through increased resources and use of Google products and tools for reporting.
With one of the largest global sports newsrooms, and one of the biggest, most passionate communities of global sports fans — The Athletic has built a foundation of coverage for fan-favorite women’s sports leagues and teams. Through this initiative with Google, The Athletic will devote more staffing and resources and double its women’s sports coverage with a focus on WNBA and women’s professional soccer. This means not only covering essential in-season game and match highlights, but broadening the coverage focus to include in-depth reporting and analysis of moments and athletes to tell deeper stories.
Starting in November, The Athletic will increase its coverage of women’s sports via the following efforts:
- Expanded coverage in professional women’s basketball and soccer where The Athletic has continued to build audiences for these leagues. For pro-soccer, The Athletic will expand its existing industry-leading coverage to seek out stories around the global world of women’s soccer. This includes reporting on all of the major qualifying tournaments, roster decisions, and match action from the FIFA Women’s 2023 World Cup and The 2023 NWSL Championship. For the WNBA, The Athletic has added additional national writers who will build on insider access and deeply reported features to expand coverage of professional basketball on a year-round basis. This enhanced coverage will bring added depth to the WNBA, ranging from the draft and free agency to the regular season and playoffs to the business of women’s basketball. It will also expand to cover both international competitions and the top players as they compete in Europe and around the world.
- Increased support from the newsroom — including devoting more staffing and resources— to grow the production of game coverage, in-depth reporting, breaking news and special features for WNBA and professional women’s soccer fans.
- Multiplatform storytelling spanning The Athletic’s premium podcasts (“Full Time with Meg Linehan”), newsletters (“The Pulse”) and social franchises — going beyond stats and play-by-plays to provide deeper, global stories on professional women’s soccer and basketball.
The Athletic is channeling growing enthusiasm in women’s sports to provide additional resources, amplification and support. The Athletic aims to evolve the breadth and depth of its reporting in focus areas such as professional women’s soccer and basketball, creating further access and attracting even more new readers.
“We couldn’t be more thrilled to be working with Google to accelerate our investments in women’s sports. Our shared ambition with Google to increase media coverage will lead to even more audience interest, and continued growth in women’s sports,” said Sebastian Tomich, Chief Commercial Officer, The Athletic.
This collaboration is the latest among Google’s efforts to increase representation and coverage of women’s sports. As a Changemaker partner of the WNBA, Google has teamed with the league over the past two seasons to broadcast additional live regular season and Playoff games. And as FIBA’s first global partner for women’s basketball, Google helped air the most-ever Women’s World Cup basketball games on live television in the U.S.
“Women athletes deserve to be recognized for their incredible talents and media coverage is an area that has traditionally lacked representation,” said Kate Johnson, Director, Marketing Partnerships and Sports Media, Google. “I’m proud that Google is teaming up with The Athletic to increase coverage of women’s professional basketball and soccer across its various news formats and helping to create a new cycle where intentional investment leads to more exposure and opportunities for these amazing athletes.”
In collaboration with Google, this initiative helps ensure The Athletic is positioned for the future of sport, which will increasingly be more female, diverse and multi-faceted.
