The Fan Who Was Always There: Understanding the Women's Sport Audience- Insights from India

If you ask most brands about investing in women's sport in India, you will often hear, 'But is there really an audience?'

I have been following women's sport and conducting research in the field for a long time. The data has a clear answer. Yes, it is worth the investment and always has been.

The problem was never the audience. It was the assumption and the (stereotype?)

AFC Women's Asian Cup 2026/India vs Chinese Taipei

The statistics brands can no longer ignore

Let's start with cricket, because the numbers are hard to argue with and most of us know about it.

The Women's Premier League's cumulative TV viewership doubled to 103 million in its first 15 games of the 2024 season. By 2025, 30 million viewers watched the opening match live on TV alone, with TV ratings up 150% and digital viewership up 70% over the prior year (The Streaming Lab).

To put that in perspective, the WPL 2025 opener drew nearly three times the peak global viewership of the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup final.

And it is not just television. During the ICC Women's Cricket World Cup 2025, digital engagement reached historic levels, generating 5.2 billion video views and driving 279 million social media interactions, more than triple the previous year (Yougov).

This is not a niche audience. This is a mainstream one that was simply never given the attention.

Who is actually watching?

Here is where it gets interesting for marketers.

Interest in women's cricket among Indians has gone mainstream, especially after the World Cup Win, with 80% of the general population showing some level of interest in the WPL. Over 45% of the Indian population was actively following women's cricket in January 2026, two months after India's World Cup win, compared to 38.9% just two months before it.

The audience is also younger and more digitally engaged than many brands assume. Gen Z audiences are more likely to engage through team or franchise loyalties, social media influencers, while older audiences tend to follow the tournament more broadly.

And globally, almost every single women's sports competition has a mostly male audience, which means brands targeting men are also leaving money on the table by ignoring women's sport sponsorship.

Brands are starting to catch up ( but is it too late?)

The commercial momentum is building. Over 70 brands partnered with WPL 2025, up from 50 in 2023, spanning 45 categories, including beauty, fashion, and fintech sectors (The Streaming Lab)

That last point matters. Women's sport is not just reaching the same audience as men's sport at a lower price. It is reaching a different, often underserved audience, one with real purchasing power and strong brand loyalty.

Gen Zs are digitally savvy, and they want trust and proof of what they purchase. 32% of consumers say that if a brand sponsors their favourite sports league or team, they are likely to think about that brand more positively. In a market where women's sport sponsorship is still relatively uncrowded, that brand recall opportunity is enormous.

But, as someone who has been following women's sports for a long I feel that this support only came after the women proved their worth without any support. Winning the World Cup was the highlight and a dream this team has been chasing for decades, when hardly anyone was cheering for them.

And this is not just the case with women in cricket......

The Image beyond Cricket

Women's cricket gets the headlines, but it is not the whole story.

The Women's Football Team qualified for the AFC Asian Cup in Australia after years of hard work, the Hockey team has been bringing laurels, badminton is on the rise, and so is squash, but they are all doing it without any support. They are building fanbases with almost no brand noise around them. They play a tournament, they win, the media shares, and this is how we get to know about these sports and not similar to the approach we follow for cricket, which is exactly the kind of white space that smart marketers should be looking at now.

Check out my LinkedIn post: AFC Women's Asian Cup 2026 | Blue Tigresses 

What this means for brands

The fan was always there. She was watching on a shared TV, following on Instagram, showing up at stadiums when tickets were affordable, and caring deeply about athletes who inspired her, came from communities like hers and were representing the girls of the nation.

The question was never whether the audience existed. It was whether brands were paying attention.

The window to enter women's sport in India at a meaningful but still affordable price point is open right now. Between 2022 and 2024, revenue from women's sports globally grew 4.5 times faster than revenue from men's sports. India is not behind that curve, it is just a bit slow in it.

Brands that wait for the audience to grow even bigger will pay a lot more to reach it. The smarter move is to show up now, authentically, and grow with it.

Conclusion

I am an early-career marketer with a background in engineering and a deep interest in martech, market research, and sports marketing. I wrote this because I think the data on women's sport in India is genuinely exciting and underreported, and I am highly passionate about this space. If this sounds interesting to you, I am open to connecting and chat on where we can together make a difference. Drop an email at anika16marketing@gmail.com or send me a message on LinkedIn.