Taking Women Sports Fans Seriously Means It’s Time to Give Bowl Games the Bravo Treatment

The next time you watch a sports broadcast—pick a sport, any sport—pay attention to who’s talking and let the Betchdel test guide you. Does the broadcast feature two women? Do they talk to each other? Are they in the studio or the booth, or are they relegated to the sidelines? These are the questions that Betches wants you to consider when you watch football on Sunday or Monday or Thursday or Friday or Saturday—OK, yes, there’s too much football.

Betches, the iconic women’s media brand, started as an anonymous blog called Betches Love This in 2011 and has become a massive presence through its Instagram account (9.1 million followers), as well as podcasts and articles. Aleen Dreksler told Slate that the company strives to take women seriously and take their interests seriously—whether that’s politics, celebrity culture, the Bravoverse, or, increasingly, sports.

The company recently launched Betches Sports, a cross-platform effort to cater to not just women’s sports but women as sports fans. That’s where the Betchdel test, a microcosm of the media criticism inherent in the launch, comes into play. At a time when traditional media are starting to recognize the value of women’s sports and women sports fans, Dreksler says she wants to do it right. Slate talked to Dreksler about Betches’ new sports vertical, the company’s evolution, and its underlying critique of mainstream sports media.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Why did you decide to launch a sports vertical now?

It’s been in the back of our minds for a bit now, against the landscape of women’s sports becoming so, so popular over the last few years. It’s so great that it’s really piercing the zeitgeist. It’s not just within the sports industry, but it’s really in pop culture now, and people don’t have any choice to look away, which is really, really amazing.

But it really opened my eyes to the fact that women—not just as athletes but as audience members—have also been ignored for a really long time. There’s really no women’s media brand that caters to women as fans, not just for women’s sports but for all sports. And what we have really set out to do is redefine the experience for women’s sports fans. So Betches Sports really is not about women’s sports—of course, we’re going to cover it equally. But it’s really about sports for women.

How have you seen traditional media treat women’s sports and female audiences? What leaves a sour taste in your mouth?

It’s not a sour taste. It’s more so just seeing that there’s a real white space for the audience and that there’s really no destination for women. Sports media caters mostly to men from its branding, from its representation. Whether or not they mean to make it like that, it feels a little bit of a boys’ club. That’s not to say that there aren’t plenty of female fans out there who follow ESPN, who follow all of the sports-media sites and platforms that exist, but there really isn’t anything out there until now that exists as a place where it’s not that daunting to follow. You don’t have to be a super fan. You can enter Betches Sports being a casual fan. You’re here to see what celebrities are at a game, or you are in multiple fantasy leagues and have 12 parlays for whatever game you’re watching. You can be any type of fan, but it’s really about a place that is for women as fans, and that’s what we are solving for.

How do you strike the right tone of talking to both the casuals who are maybe tuning in to the Chiefs game to see Taylor Swift and, say, the diehards who grew up going to Bills games?

Well, first of all, the tone is always going to be fun. Sports is entertainment. It is supposed to be fun. It’s about taking a break from your life and your day and escaping and doing something that you either really, really care about or just want an escape. What Betches is all about is an understanding that women contain multitudes. You can care really deeply about the news and being an activist and politics, but you can also really care about what’s happening on Bravo. That’s just being a person, and we’re applying that same ethos to sports. You can watch one game and care deeply both about seeing what Taylor Swift is wearing but also what’s going on in the game, who’s winning, and if your fantasy team is winning. So it’s really both.

I know Betches has evolved since you co-founded it in 2011. When did sports come onto your radar, and when did you realize that this was something you should cover in an intentional way?

I think it’s both a product of an evolution of the brand as it grows, but also a response to the world. You cannot ignore women’s sports now. It’s amazing what’s going on. I’m a millennial. I started Betches when I was 21, and I very much grew up with my company, but also we brought in younger demos, and so we very much span millennial and Gen Z women.

I’m also a first-generation American. I didn’t have American football. I had the English Premier League on my TV, so I didn’t grow up watching American football but very much know everything about Arsenal. I also watched tennis. That said, living in America, I always felt like there was such a barrier of entry for American football. I didn’t know who to root for. I didn’t know how to be a fan. As a woman, I felt like you had to dumb down yourself in order to pay attention.

But for Betches, again, our ethos is very much making fun of ourselves and making commentary of the world by making fun of ourselves and our part in it. So now, kind of looking back to that, that was really a symptom of the problem. The reason why being a sports fan felt more exclusive to men is because, again, there was no destination that catered to us, that allowed us to join without being quizzed about who had the most points in whatever season. So, very much, Betches Sports is meant to lower or open the barrier for people who are interested in sports but want to feel like it’s a fun community and it’s not that scary—it’s not that daunting to be a sports fan.

The reason why Betches has been so successful over the last 13 years is that we really know our audience, and also, looking at the timeline of what’s going on in pop culture and sports media, there are certain things that can’t be ignored. Like in 2022, Serena Williams’ U.S. Open finals match was the most watched tennis match in ESPN history, with 4.6 million viewers. Caitlin Clark was in all of the headlines. The 2024 NCAA women’s basketball final broke records with almost 19 million viewers. Bob Iger just acquired Angel City FC for $250 million. All these things just can’t be ignored, and obviously the Super Bowl last year had the most women viewers in history. So, again, I don’t want to say that it’s like we’re just doing it because now people are talking about it, but it just feels like the time—why not now?

You mentioned knowing your audience, and I’m interested in what you’re hearing from your audience that informs this decision and the way that you’re going about coverage.

Anytime we would talk about sports on our main account, there would be a lot of engagement, so we definitely saw interest.

And that’s kind of how we start any brand within Betches. We start talking about it when it feels really relevant, and if we see there’s really strong interest, we have to do a little research, and then we decide: Is this something that makes sense for us? Is there a white space? And all those boxes were checked off and there was definitely a need, and we really wanted to just answer that at the right moment.

What have you noticed about traditional media glomming on to this moment of increased interest in women’s sports? Does it feel opportunistic?

Regardless of the effect of glomming on or not, I think at the end of the day, it’s really, really good. Women athletes work so, so hard, and they get paid so much less than their counterparts. And media has a very, very strong responsibility because media coverage is crucial for the future of women’s sports. It increases visibility. I mean, women’s sports were receiving less than 4 percent of media coverage three years ago, and now it’s risen to 15 percent in 2024. So, regardless of people being opportunistic or not, it really doesn’t matter. It’s great for women’s sports.

In order for a person to be invested in the stakes of the game, you have to know what the storylines are. You have to know what’s going on. And in order for you to know that, you have to read about it. You have to hear about it. And it’s the job of media to share that with you. And the more that happens, the more people care, the more people want to watch, and the more the athletes rise into relevance, pop-culture fandom, and the more we care about them. And it’s also so inspiring to see female athletes doing their thing from the Olympics. If you think about it, in the last several years—I mean, when I was a young girl, I was a big fan of tennis. I loved Martina Hingis. She was so good, and it was really inspiring. I play tennis now. I love it. I am obsessed with Serena Williams. And because of that representation, I felt like—of course, I never thought I was going to be professional, but I felt like: It was great that women have a place there, but it’s not the same for all other sports. And now, since this year, you can see how many more female athletes have risen into celebrity status. It’s not just one or two—it’s several. There’s Ilona Maher, Simone Biles, Angel Reese. And again, whether or not that’s opportunistic, net-net, it’s super positive, and I’m excited about it.

I think that we’re offering something that felt like a need for a while, and I believe that Betches is really the one to do it. We’re an entertainment powerhouse. Sports is a cornerstone part of entertainment in culture, and it’s squarely in our wheelhouse. And my goal is for Betches Sports to be one of the largest sports media brands for women globally. I know that’s a big vision, but I had the same vision for Betches as a brand, and here we are.