Angela Ruggiero on Business of Women’s Sports, Rugby

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1:27All to keep you in control however buying happens next. We're built for payments, built for growth, built for agentic. PayPal Open, built for all business. Get started at paypalopen.com. Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts, radio, news. You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live weekdays at 10 a.m. Eastern. On Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. Listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts. Or watch us live on YouTube. Paul and I are live at Bloomberg Power Players New York. This is a Bloomberg Live event that we're talking about the business of sports, which is a multi-trillion dollar global industry.

2:15And we're bringing you influential voices from the business behind sports to help you identify what's next. So I'm thrilled to welcome Angela Regiro. She is co-founder at Sports Innovation Lab, executive board at World Rugby and at International Olympic Committee. And of course, you might well know her as a gold medalist, four-time Olympian, a former ice hockey defense woman. Angela, great to see you. Thanks for having me. This is not your first time around at Power Players. What does this event mean to you and the growth of women's sports? Yeah, love getting in the room with smart people, with data, with understanding what the trends are.

2:53I think it behooves everyone to just stay in the know of what's happening. This event does that. Yeah, women's sports is one of the probably major trends that I think everyone's going to be talking about today. It's just in the last five years exploded, and particularly in the last two. You're seeing valuations going up. You're seeing a lot of transactions happening that, you know, even three, four years ago, So no one was paying attention. Well, I was, for the record. You're a pioneer. I was telling everyone our company's data at Sports Invasion Lab. We were pumping it out, saying there's a business case here.

3:26There's an undercurrent of fans that want to buy and spend money. And there's a market. And so it's nice to see the market finally catching up. I mean, Angela's had such a career. My favorite, I think, is you're a member of the 2015 Hockey Hall of Fame. Only the fourth woman. Very cool. Caitlin Clark effect. That's just been phenomenal, I think, for a lot of people. Yeah, it's funny. the league's been around, W has been around forever. So there's so many great players. It's not like the game has changed, but she's just has star power that's exceeded, I think, all expectations. I'm actually an investor in the WNBA, invest pre-Kaitlyn Clark and see her effect on the league in terms of just visibility and reach is profound.

4:06And I think what she's done, not only for the WNBA, but all the women's sports leagues has shown that, hey, there's a market here. Brands are excited. It only takes one breakthrough star. Think Alona Maher on the rugby side. There's a few stars you can identify that are breakthrough stars. And those are really, I think, capturing what the future of sports overall looks like. You know, talk Jason Kelsey, talk any of these big players that exceed the sports arena. That's what Caitlin Clark is. Yeah, she's larger than life. She's larger than the WNBA. I guess my question here, though, is as everyone tries to capitalize on this moment in women's sports, all the interest, all the money, How do you make sure that you don't grow it too fast?

4:46That's happened with the WNBA in the past where they expanded too quickly and then they had to retrench. How do you do this carefully in moderation so that it's sustainable? It's a great question. I think that is the key. There's a lot of interest from investors now, which is fantastic. I think there's 10 or 12 women's sports private equity funds that have popped up in the last two to three years. You have bigger funds saying we want to be in the game. But those revenues have to catch up, right? There's a laggard effect. Either you're getting out of old contracts and renegotiating new. That's what you see with the WNBA and the NWSL.

5:19Or sponsors are coming in. So we see brands saying, okay, maybe we've spent 5 % of our marketing budget. We should be spending 10%, 15%, 20%. And that reallocation is going to the women's game. You're seeing media partners, again, previously not spending anything, maybe just paying production costs. Now that's a big piece of the check. Women's sports traditionally has relied on sponsorship, ticket sales, and a little bit of merch. And again, now you're getting media, which is the big bucket the men survive on, coming in the door. So, yeah, it's a great point. I think slow and steady wins the race here, but investment.

5:52It's okay to be in the red, right? I think previously there was this unfair expectation on the women's game. You should be profitable in two to three years or else we're out. Whereas in the men's game, you could be in the red two to three decades. Literally, look at the MLS. But now you're seeing, okay, enterprise value and growth. So slow and steady, but a long-term play, if that makes sense. How about women's ownership of sports, just in general? Kind of where are we and how would you like to see it go? Yeah, it's great. More women. Look, there's more wealth out there. Women are, think of the family office trend.

6:27They have more dollars to spend now. And you never had this opportunity to spend it against a women's asset class like women's sports. So I think you're seeing a lot of family offices in particular saying, look, private equity and kind of that capital will come in soon. But in that personal wealth, you see the Michelle Kangs out there saying, hey, no one's taking the bet. I'm going to take the bet. And they're first to market. I think they're seeing that upside. So I'm very excited because there's so many women and men, quite frankly, families that have daughters or believe themselves that women deserve that kind of investment to grow.

7:03And that's absolutely changing the game. This is the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast, available on Apple, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live each weekday, 10 a.m. to noon Eastern on Bloomberg.com, the iHeartRadio app, TuneIn, and the Bloomberg Business app. You can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube and always on the Bloomberg Terminal.

7:30When you're running a business, the best days are the ones where priorities stay on track. For midsize and large companies, risk can affect multiple parts of the organization at once, from property and liability to cyber and regulatory challenges. At that level, managing risk becomes an ongoing discipline. At the Hartford, the focus is on helping businesses manage risk before it turns into something more disruptive. And when losses do happen, that work is paired with insurance coverage shaped by years of underwriting, risk engineering, and claims experience. Learn more at thehartford.com slash risk mitigation.

8:06Policies provided by Hartford Fire Insurance Company and its property and casualty affiliates, Hartford, Connecticut. This is Tony Ayo from The Real Report with Tony Ayo and Uncle Murda. You ever notice how everything keeps going up? Rent, streaming, even extra salsa at your favorite burrito spot? But with Boost Mobile, you don't have to play the will it's go up soon game. Boost Mobile offers an unlimited talk, text, and data plan at a price that'll never go up. It's the same price you'll pay for life. Switch now for unlimited wireless at a price that'll never go up, only at Boost Mobile. After 30 gigabytes, customers may experience slower speeds.

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