This story was originally published on Glossy’s sibling publication Digiday.
In 2026, being a pro athlete increasingly means being a full-time creator too. For women athletes in particular, content isn’t a side hustle; it’s become a crucial part of how they get paid, grow their sport, and set themselves up for life after competition.
The attention is there, the paychecks aren’t. Revenues, viewership and brand interest in women’s sports are all climbing, but individual athletes are still fighting for fair pay and long-term security. A fast way to close some of that gap is to own an audience. That’s why companies like Togethxr are helping teach women athletes how to be creators, and those very same athletes are leaning on managers to help grow their creator careers.
And with the FIFA Women’s World Cup around the corner and the Summer Olympics around the next bend, it’s the perfect time for women athletes to lean into content.
“We’ve seen firsthand that when individual athletes know how to properly present themselves, build their personal brands on social to drum up excitement for their upcoming games and their teams, that can really lead to commercial success,” said Jess Dashner, director of media strategy and operations at Gupta Media.
Togethxr – a women’s sports media and commerce company co-founded by women athletes – are betting on that dynamic. Their Snap the Gap cohort, which is now in its second year, is a partnership with Snapchat that gives women athletes production resources and mentorship in the hopes it’ll boost their content quality and get them more followers.
So far, the seven women athletes in the cohort, which included professional hockey players, soccer stars, hoopers, gymnasts, and NCAA athletes, all grew their Snapchat audiences.
Within three months, Michelle Alozie, Houston Dash forward and Nigerian national soccer team player, grew her Snapchat followers by 61 percent, going from 127,000 followers to 204,000, according to numbers provided by Togethxr. In the same time period, Kyrstina Johnson, a gymnast at Temple University, went from 650 followers to nearly 40,000, while Michigan State distance runner Mia Rogan went from 1,600 to 53,000. They did not share revenue numbers with Digiday.
Brandom Lim, director of social media at Togethxr, told Digiday it held an in-person Snap school for its cohorts and monthly calls to review progress, provide feedback and offer advice.
“It taught me to be more consistent and post anything and everything,” Alozie said of the cohort. “Initially, I thought I could only post if we did a preseason trip or something exciting, but one of the best videos that I posted on Snapchat was one of my teammates and I reacting to Love Island.”
She told Digiday that participating in the program helped her build an identity outside of soccer and fashion, let her connect with a larger audience and make herself more available to new brands in new ways.
It’s also helping build an audience and opportunities ahead of the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup. Alozie was regularly posting on Snap during this year’s Men’s World Cup; she told Digiday her content “blew up.”
“It’s a fun, interactive way to highlight an event that’s already on the global stage,” she said.
Content centers the individual, the individual grows the sport
All of this serves a bigger purpose: building up women athletes so that they can build up their teams, their leagues and ultimately the value of the sport and the ad dollars that follow it. Nielsen reports that there are over 120 million women’s sports fans in the U.S., with more than half the population interested in it.
Athletes acting as creators have only helped spur on that growth.
“As women’s sports continue to grow, the creator economy gives these athletes more ownership over how they show up, what they share, and the people they’re able to reach,” explained Andrew Perlmutter, CEO of NBA Take-Two Media.
Perlmutter said not every athlete needs to become a content creator, but they can all tell their own stories and build relationships with fans on their own terms.
“The more ways fans have to discover and connect with athletes, the more entry points they have into the sport itself,” he said.
Those increased entry points have helped grow women’s professional leagues like the Professional Women’s Hockey League, or PWHL, which launched just two years ago.
“When we started the league, it really benefited everyone that some of the players had existing platforms and that we could use those platforms to promote what we were doing and bring in audiences,” said Sarah Nurse, a PWHL player and Olympian who played for Team Canada this past Winter Games. “It’s not lost on me that social media has allowed me and the rest of the league to connect with so many hockey fans and bring fans into games.”
Nurse said she’s met influencers and PWHL fans at games who’ve told her they learned about the league through seeing her beauty content on TikTok and Instagram. She works with a manager to hone her content strategy.
“We built out brand pillars and chat through content every week. We’re constantly sending each other ideas and [they will] base my content calendar around the schedule I have, while also leaning into trends and data,” Nurse said. “This summer, we started to put a lot more emphasis on strategy as I launched my YouTube, and we’re actually meeting next week to regroup on data across my channels and strategy for the rest of Q4.”
A recent study from WPP found that ads on live women’s sports deliver 20% better results than on non-sports cable TV broadcasts. Deloitte reported in April that elite women’s sports will reach $3 billion in matchday, broadcast, and commercial revenue this year, a new high and a 25% increase from last year. And the PWHL reported a 77% increase YoY in YouTube viewership, while the National Women’s Soccer League reported a 42% increase YoY in YouTube viewership.
It’s not just about ad dollars. Women athletes can build career longevity and open doors to new brand partnership opportunities by being creators. Nurse told Digiday she uses the money she gets from social media to reinvest in her hockey game.
“I’ve hired private trainers, power skating coaches, nutritionists and mobility coaches, reinvesting money I’ve made through partnerships so I can be a better player on the ice,” Nurse said.
Snap the Gap had a partnership with beauty brand e.l.f. cosmetics and several athletes, including Alozie, who posted and promoted lip products in their Snap stories, though they didn’t provide details on how well the partnership performed.
Cayley Stonehouse, Gupta Media’s senior social media strategist, said women athletes who focus on content creation as a secondary source of income can also open the door to partnerships that aren’t rooted in their sport. “They can authentically enter conversations around fashion or beauty or lifestyle or travel. That’s where the opportunity is,” she said.
And since professional sports rarely offer long-term stability, women athletes need to be thinking about the bigger picture.
That creator muscle doesn’t just pay off during their playing days. It’s also a hedge against how precarious a professional sports career can be.
“Athletes need to think about life after sports and align their content to their larger ambitions beyond ball,” said Anthony Baldini, CEO of Athlete Strategies, a strategic enterprising and communications firm. “Establishing credibility and expertise through media, speaking at conferences and developing multiple content mediums helps athletes build a moat that supports them the rest of their lives.
