Welcome to a Brand Story, Inc. exclusive new series, the Future of Sports Content. Over the next two months, we’ll be hosting a “Who’s Who” of the sports industry. We’ll be futurecasting a plethora of sports content topic. College and pro sports content, technology, investment, experiential, streaming and a host of other topics will
Last week, big sports news broke with the announcement of the Women’s Sports Network and the WNBA’s valuation at $1 billion based on a $75M influx of star-studded investment.
I thought the timing was perfect for our premiere episode on the future of women’s sports content. I’m delighted to host the most influential human in advancing women’s sports content in our generation: Carol Stiff. Carol was recently named a board advisor to the aforementioned Women’s Sports Network.
The Carol Stiff Story
Carol spent 31 years at ESPN where she recently left her reign as VP Women’s Sports Programming & Acquisitions. There she was responsible for all streamed and live women’s sports and relationships with the likes of the NCAA, WNBA, Olympics, Pro Softball and NBA. Carol was the primary person responsible for expanding the NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship from 24 games in 1996 to as of 2021, all 63 games and helped secure the Final Four on ESPN, the mother ship. I got to know Carol through our company’s work with USA Softball and the 2004 Aiming For Athens tour on ESPN and ESPN2, which was a ratings success and helped lead to the expansion of NCAA women’s softball on ESPN.
Carol is a 2021 Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame inductee, and 2021 Naismith Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, as well as an Edward R. Murrow award winner. She’s also a frequent guest on industry panels, and today she runs Stiff Sports Media Consulting and is an advisor to C-level execs on growth strategies in media.
Here are a few highlights from this episode:
- The vision for the Women’s Sports Network as well as Carol’s role and aspirations.
- Why the most powerful person in women’s sports content left ESPN and why now.
- Seminal moments in women’s sports content history and where we are in the big picture.
- The stats and facts Carol uses to educate brands, media companies and stakeholders as to why the future of women’s sports content has so much upside.
- How Carol would spend $1B SPAC in women’s sports media.
- The remaining barriers for marketplace course correction and growth of women’s sports content valuations.
- Advice to investors, media companies and stakeholders on the ROI of women’s sports.
- As always, we explore the books on our guests’ bedside.
Thank you Brand Story, Inc. community for your support as we kick-off our inaugural Future of Sports Content series. We want to continue to hear from you. Share your guest recommendations, topic suggestions, questions and overall feedback. This community is for YOU.
Drop me a note at [email protected] or ping me at LinkedIn here. You can follow Carol Stiff on Twitter here or LinkedIn here – feel free to let her know what you liked from this episode. Guests love to hear from our listeners. Enjoy the episode!