Damien Cox: A new era for professional women’s sports might finally be here

If you take a quick snapshot today of the status of professional women's sports in North America, you might assume only a small dent has been made in the overall sports landscape.

Many male athletes are still getting incredibly rich and men's sports continue to attract the lion's share of television and media attention. Women still have a much, much smaller piece of the overall pie.

On the other hand, if you pull back and take a photo that would encompass all that has happened this century that has contributed to the growth of women's pro sports, you might think dizzying progress has been made.

Like most things, it depends how you look at it. Or how you prefer to look at it.

Really, events in the past two years alone suggest we are getting close to the end of the beginning for professional women's sports, and moving into a significant growth period. It's happening everywhere, and in many sports.

Women are demonstrating they don't need men to run their sports. They can do it themselves, thank you very much.

Women also don't need men to start their leagues. Or referee their games. Or manage their teams. Or own their teams.

Moreover, we are seeing almost on a daily basis the rapid expansion of opportunities for women to make a living through professional sports, both female and male. Overall, there are just too many things happening impacting different elements of women's sports to ignore the trends. For example:

• The Premier Hockey Federation this week announced plans to double the salary cap for the 2023-24 season to $1.5 million (U.S.) per team. Players in the seven-team league could soon be looking at salaries of $75,000 or more.

• The 2022 World Cup in Qatar made history when an all-female squad officiated the Germany-Costa Rica match. Meanwhile, there are a record eight female referees in the NBA this season.

• Current Canadian women's national soccer team captain Christine Sinclair and former national team member Diana Matheson earlier this month announced plans for an eight-team Canadian women's pro soccer league.

• Five women, including former national team star Cassie Campbell-Pascal, were nominated this week to fill nine vacant positions on Hockey Canada's board of directors after a scandal-plagued year. It would be the first time women represented the majority on the board of the world's leading hockey nation.

• Marie-Philip Poulin became the first female professional hockey player to be recognized as Canada's athlete-of-the-year earlier this month when she won the Northern Star Award.

• Hayley Wickenheiser was promoted to assistant GM by the Maple Leafs in July, making her the fifth woman named to assistant GM by NHL teams in recent years.

• After six years of litigation, the U.S. women's soccer team won it's pay equity class action lawsuit in January against the U.S. Soccer Federation. The federation agreed to pay a lump sum of $22 million to the players and also promised to provide an equal rate of pay between the men's and women's national senior teams.

• Team Canada hockey star Sarah Nurse made history this fall as the first women's hockey player to appear on the cover of EA Sports NHL, joining Anaheim Ducks forward Trevor Zegras. The video game introduced women's national team rosters for the first time in NHL 22.

• The WNBA, now 26 years old, had record television numbers during the 2022 season. The average salary in the league is now more than $71,000, and the WNBA has announced it is increasing its schedule to 40 games next year. The league has also announced it will play a 2023 pre-season game in Canada, and some are touting Toronto as a strong candidate for the league's next expansion.

• Women are starting to assert themselves at ownership levels. Former Canadian women's hockey superstar Angela James became a co-owner of the PHF's Toronto Six earlier this year. Renee Montgomery, a two-time WNBA champion, is now part owner of the league's Atlanta Dream and the team's vice-president. She is also co-owner of Atlanta's Indoor Football League team along with former NFLers Marshawn Lynch and Todd Gurley.

Tennis star Naomi Osaka is part owner of the NWSL North Carolina Courage. Serena Williams and Lindsay Vonn are two of 18 former female athletes who are part of the group that owns Angel City FC, an NWSL franchise based in Los Angeles. Three Seattle businesswomen - Lisa Brummel, Dawn Trudeau and Ginny Gilder - own the WNBA Seattle Storm, called by some the most political team in sports.

As well, Jeannie Buss is the controlling owner of the NBA's Los Angeles Lakers, Jody Allen is the chairman and de facto owner of the NFL's Seattle Seahawks and Gayle Benson is majority owner of the NFL's New Orleans Saints and NBA's New Orleans Pelicans. Amy Adams Strunk is controlling owner of the NFL's Tennessee Titans, while Denis DeBartolo York is owner of the San Francisco 49ers. Three women - Kim Pegula, Ann Walton Kroenke and Susan Samueli - are co-owners of NHL teams.

Many of these developments would have been unthinkable at the turn of the century. Or even five years ago, in some cases. Collectively they suggest significant cultural change as women assume more influential roles in North American pro sports.

Internationally, meanwhile, Australia and New Zealand will co-host the FIFA Women's World Cup next year, which has expanded to 32 teams from 24. The average television audience for the final of the 2019 Women's World Cup was more than 82 million.

It's pretty clear women's pro sports, and the influence of women in all sports, are both growth industries. The sports betting revolution could be a significant part of that growth. Larger television deals and more lucrative sponsorship arrangements for women's pro sports are on the horizon.

Is it all happening fast enough? Or faster than expected? Depends on who you ask.

But it's definitely happening, folks.

Damien Cox is a former Star sports reporter who is a current freelance contributing columnist based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @DamoSpin