NEW YORK, Sept 30 (Reuters) - Deteriorating conditions in women's college sport could threaten momentum in the professional sector, according to a Women's Sports Foundation study released on Wednesday, as North American leagues enjoy a surge of popularity.
Both the WNBA and NWSL have moved quickly to add teams amid increased viewership, attendance and commercial opportunities, while the Professional Women's Hockey League enters its fourth season with broadcast deals in Canada and the United States.
But experts warned that weakened Title IX enforcement as well as potential new inequities in resources could lead to a decline in opportunities for women in college sports, a key training ground for an overwhelming number of women's pro athletes in North America.
"This is a significant part of the pipeline. It is one that is under threat because of the changing landscape in college sports that is both an economic challenge and a regulation challenge and more. And we need to be paying attention to it," said Danette Leighton, CEO of the Women's Sports Foundation.
The study surveyed a panel of 60 senior leaders across women's sport, including league and team executives, conference commissioners and national governing body leaders.
EQUAL FUNDING LAW
Nearly half of them identified rollbacks and weakened enforcement of Title IX - a more than 50-year-old law requiring equal funding of US education programs - as the biggest risk to progress.
Name, image and likeness (NIL) rules, which allowed college athletes to be paid after a 2021 Supreme Court ruling, have further complicated the outlook.
"NIL is the headline in the changing landscape of college sports, but underneath it is an antiquated economic model that's now buckling under pressure from every direction at once," said Leighton.
"As schools make decisions about finite resources, women’s sports and men’s Olympic sports risk becoming increasingly vulnerable. And because college athletics is a pipeline to Team USA and the global Games, what happens on college campuses has implications far beyond college sports."
More than 1,200 athletes from 125 countries at the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games had NCAA ties, according to the Women's Sports Foundation. At the Milano Cortina Games this year, more than half the women competing in the ice hockey tournament had an NCAA background.
The Billie Jean King-founded organization's "Sport Report" study took a sweeping view of the state of women's and girls' sport in the United States, finding gender participation gaps remain in youth and high school sports. Parents of girls typically spend more.
"Girls want to play sports, and we've got to make sure that there's opportunities for them," Leighton said.
(Reporting by Amy Tennery in New York, editing by Ed Osmond)
