Willow Bay: Reimagining the Future of Women’s Sports

0:00It's late. Your team has a launch to plan, while your customer inbox fills up. No worries. In one prompt, Klaviyo builds the whole campaign. The emails, the texts, WhatsApp, all in your voice. Never without your okay. Plus, Klaviyo spots the revenue you're leaving on the table and answers those customer questions, so your team can get some rest. Go to klaviyo.com slash bestfriends. Students will always, you know, talk about imposter syndrome and, you know, all the strategies like put your hands on your hips and assume your power pose. I'm like, no, here's what I would try. I would try remembering all the things that you've done that have gotten you to this moment.

0:41The very concrete, specific things that you have done and stand on those and know that you deserve to be here. not because you're the expert, not because you have decades of experience, but because of the skill sets that you have built, one step at a time that you now stand upon, that gives you the right to be here.

1:07Hypothetical question. What if you're a longtime reporter running one of the most esteemed journalism schools in the country? And on the side, you happen to own one of the highest value teams in women's sports. Oh yeah, and what if your husband was in charge of one of the most influential brands in the world? What would you talk about at dinner? This is the daily life for Willow Bay. As a journalist, Willow has been a major talent across pretty much every national TV network. She now runs USC Annenberg, the school for communications and journalism, and her husband is longtime Disney CEO Bob Iger.

1:41And together, they own the women's soccer team Angel City FC. Willow and I get into everything from spotting opportunity, conquering imposter syndrome, and the value of athletes telling their own stories. I'm Maria Sharapova, and that's all coming next on Pretty Tough.

2:03Willow, thank you so much for joining us today. My pleasure. It means a lot. We recently met at the conference that you held for USC Annenberg. I know. Thank you for being there. It was so much fun. It was a full house. And I kind of put you on the spot and I asked you to join this podcast. There I was. I was sitting in the front row watching you intently, enjoying the programming, enjoying your interview with Jason Kelly from Bloomberg, innocently watching. And you pointed at me. I put you on the spot and you committed to it. And here you are. Thank you. Are you kidding? Thank you for asking me.

2:41To your word, that means a lot. I wanted to start this segment with a quote from you. And the quote is, for maximum impact, listen more and speak less. When was the last time you had to speak less and listen more? I'm not inclined to speak, actually. So in some ways, listening more is the easier path for me because I do it naturally. And that's my place of security in a lot of ways. It's where I learn best. It's where I believe I can build trust and connection with people and then ultimately drive impact from what I've learned by listening. How do you know when's the right time to speak? Look, some of it is instinct.

3:31Some of it is understanding expectations of whatever the stakeholder group or audience group is there. Being able to, again, that's a little bit of listening too. And understanding when's the right time to strike. Exactly. You know, as a journalist, you're trained to not speak out, speak up, particularly, you know, in the era that I was trained. And it has really become part of my kind of non-journalism career where I've used my voice and thought about how I used my voice in very different ways. And, of course, that aligns with an era in culture and communication where everybody's empowered to use their voice, for better or worse.

4:22Everybody's empowered to use their voice. Very true. I'm skipping ahead a bit here, but you and your husband, Bob Iger, recently made a significant investment in becoming controlling owners of Angel City FC, the National Women's Soccer League team in L.A., and one of the highest valued franchises in all of women's sports. pretty significant, Willow. Why in the world? Why at this time in your life? It's interesting, as you will discover, I feel like when you get a little older and a little farther along in your career, the notion of impact weighs more heavily, right? It becomes, certainly for me and I would say for Bob, it becomes more of a priority.

5:11I've actually heard other women describe that, their career paths in similar ways as they start at around 50 or so thinking about what do I want to do next and what do I want this part of my life to look like? And I think impact and how we use our resources for impact was very foundational to this decision. So I was not looking to become an owner of a sports team. Bob had considered it and had been in the bidding process in a couple other situations. But, you know, my kids would say, Mom, do you want to own a sports team? And I'd say, no, thanks. That's good. You can do that. I'll help, but you go do that.

5:54And then the Angel City opportunity came along and it was a door that opened and said, come on in. And that was your call, right? You were the one that said, Bob, let's do this. I said, Bob, are you interested in doing this? And he said, absolutely. And it was, but I was definitely the driving force, I think, in the conviction about Angel City, right? Bob obviously has been in sports his entire life from producing Olympics to, you know, now ESPN reporting up to him. And we are sports. We are multi-generational sports fans in our house. I call it a monocultural sports all the time. So from a fan perspective, but also watching the industry grow and flourish and certainly watching the rise of women's sports, we both understood, but Bob really saw the data very clearly about how powerful a moment this is in sports with the rise of women's sports.

6:55I'd been following Angel City since its inception. I knew the founders, some of them from gym class. Were you going to games yourself? Went to games, took kids to games, took grandkids to games. And then I teach a sports immersion class. So you were a fan. I was a fan, but also a student of this team. I would bring my sports class to visit them before they even had players on the field. Because I really wanted to center women's sports in this immersion class that I teach. And they were an incredible, and it's a communication school. And this was an incredible triumph of storytelling and captivating an audience with the premise of offering these athletes an opportunity to play on the world's biggest stage, promising a deep commitment to building a team around community and community impact.

7:51They have community impact embedded into their business model. And to, you know, promising equity on and off the pitch and creating a truly inclusive space for players and fans. And it captivated Los Angeles' attention. And they put this incredibly exciting product on the field in playing in BMO Stadium, which is beautiful, and feels like a very special experience. And they had created something just extraordinary that was, I believe, really a precious resource now in this city. So I had learned about it, studied it through the eyes of my students and experienced it as a fan and knew just how special it was.

8:39So when the opportunity came up, was it a little impulsive? Absolutely. Or opportunistic may be a better word to describe it. Maybe impulsive. Did you realize the impact of going into this ownership role as a female, knowing how very few female positions, female leaders are actually overseeing teams of this size? I was surprised afterwards that the reaction was as powerful and positive and widespread as it was, that somehow it meant something, right, to women's sports to have the two of us announcing our commitment and conviction about this team, about the NWSL and about women's sports. What's fascinating is the league is very female-centered, right?

9:35It's not just the players. When you sit in the boardroom, the boardroom is more than half female. So in a way, it's one of the few times that I've ventured into new spaces that didn't feel male-dominated. I think the ecosystem is changing dramatically, and I see it so powerfully through the lens of Angel City and the NWSL. One of the things that has been so remarkable for me to watch is how the composition around the boardroom table has changed, how the rooms that I go into now really do look different and nowhere is that more visible than at the NWSL board meetings when it's majority female, powerful, accomplished women and men sitting around a table, but predominantly women making decisions about the future.

10:27of the league and their teams. And I feel like I am seeing that phenomenon more and more frequently. And it fills me with an incredible sense of optimism about our future. One of the other times that I saw this recently is that, you know, I was on a panel about sports leadership and it was Charlotte Jones, you know, from Dallas. It was Jeannie Buss. It was Lauren Lightman, a like renowned PE executive who's the owner of the San Diego Wave and me. Now, besides the fact it was a little bit like who of us doesn't belong here. It was moderated by Candace Parker. So Candace Parker was in the role that I would normally be in.

11:11And all of us were, oh, by the way, female talking about leadership in sports. And I was sitting next to legends in the space, not women legends, but legends in the space with Jeannie and Charlotte and Candice in particular. It was just such an aha moment as to how much the world has changed and how, as a result, how much our worldview about what it means to be in the sports business and be a woman in the sports business has changed. And your first experience with sport was when you co-hosted NBA's Insight Stuff. Was that the first time where you emphasized storytelling from an athlete's perspective?

12:01Why was that important to you at that time? Very definitely was the first time. That show was truly a pioneer at the time because it was the first show that each and every week told the story of athletes and their lives off the court. Didn't just cover the stats. We did that. Didn't just cover the highlights. Yes, we did that. But we covered their stories. We helped NBA players and then WNBA players when they launched in 97 help them tell their stories. And to this day, it, I believe, is foundational to the NBA being one of the most player-centric sports leagues in history. and to, again, to the way contemporary athletes see themselves and see their storytelling.

13:00Because back then— People can't even imagine, right? This was—I mean, it wasn't that long ago, but it was— It was a while ago. Right. It was 1991, 92 when I started— At a time when athletes were like, no, I just shoot hoops. I'm not going to tell you about my brother. There was no such thing. But there was also no social media. No. You know, there were none of the tools that we have today for athletes or people to connect directly. There literally was no such thing. It was the way players would learn about other players. Players watched it all the time. They would tune in. I mean, by the way, it was also at a time when you actually had to tune in at a certain time to a certain channel to see something.

13:38So part of your role must have been getting them comfortable to share, to give them the chance to open up about their life beyond the court, which is an entirely, I mean, it's fascinating. Now it feels like just second nature to an athlete, and we'll get to kind of the way that athletes have built their media. We also had to get coaches to open up to not just tell their story as a coach, but to let us into the huddle, to let us into the locker room pre or post game. All the things that now we take for granted as part of sports media. It was really part of educating a generation in how to do this, how important it is for individual player brand building, but also for team brand building and league brand building.

14:24And how important it is to expand the audience. I think that was – that's for me one of the takeaways of looking back on that moment and thinking about just how brilliant David Stern, you know, Adam Silver's predecessor was because he thought very intentionally about creating a space where more than the traditional NBA watcher, meaning women, kids, people with different backgrounds could come together and learn about the NBA. I think as an athlete, it's very easy to be selfish about what you own. And what you own is, you know, your ability, your talent, your family, your money. And so to feel like it is a good idea to share that with the world is incredibly uncomfortable.

15:14I mean, I faced it when I won my first Grand Slam. There was no such thing as social media. You know, now it's such a natural part of an athlete's career. And you recently co-led a study about how so many athletes are their own brands, how they're building incredible media businesses. And, I mean, I'd love for you to elaborate on that a little bit and talk about why that study was so important for you. Thank you. This was a study that I've been really wanting to do for years, and it took me longer than it should have to get the right team to get the funding together and get the right team together.

15:51Because I started observing, certainly pre-pandemic, the rise of media companies owned by athletes. They weren't just creating content. They weren't just working as sportscasters, but they were actually owning, monetizing their IP themselves. Well, they were paying for it. It was their money, right? Exactly. Whether it's theirs or their investors. Exactly. And so they really owned every step of the process. So flash forward to 2024, when we actually went in to the market and did the research, it's now become an athlete-owned media enterprises are a multi-billion dollar part of the sports media landscape.

16:32And it is now commonplace for not just athletes to tell their stories directly, you know, as you noted, but to create, own, monetize both short term and long term that content and to be decision makers. About other athletes as well. About other athletes. Everything. Storytelling. And they've used and it's been a space of real innovation, right? Athletes have used all sorts of platforms and all sorts of formats and have really been incredibly experimental. It's allowed them to develop both their creative brains and their business brains. It's allowed them to open the aperture of kind of sports storytelling or athlete storytelling, to your point.

17:21When we looked at the data, the athlete-owned podcast, and particularly when women were involved, spoke about a lot more than just sports, 30 % more in many cases than kind of a typically produced sports media entity. It's also a space, by the way, it will not surprise you to learn, where women are underrepresented. I think we're going to see that change dramatically when we go back in in maybe a year or so. Meaning about the stories that individuals say? For example, we looked at athletes, the top podcasts owned by athletes, only about 22 % of those were women. And when you look at podcasts overall, by the way, our Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, led by Dr.

18:14Stacey Smith, looks at media of all kinds. And they just did some research into podcasts and found exactly the same thing. So it's not just a sports phenomenon. It's actually broader than that that reaches across media platforms. And who, in your opinion, is doing it best? Is it LeBron James with Uninterrupted? Is it Omaha? I mean, they're the biggest and certainly Omaha. I mean, I think those are powerhouses. But I, you know, I feel like I'm seeing this new crop merge. A lot of, again, a lot of them are women. Experimenting with content, with storytelling. With reimagining what it means to be in these spaces.

19:00You know, I was thinking of the recap show with Tobin Heath and Kristen Press, who really are all about reimagining what these spaces are. By the way, I think that's the, you know, media and sports are inseparable, right? You wouldn't have values increasing in one without the other. But I think this notion of reimagining is much of what's going on today in women's sports, thinking about what it looks like to create, again, a sports universe with women at the center, Thinking about women as athletes and the needs of women as players and competitors. Thinking about the fans and audience connection in very different ways with a new generation of fans who may be casual fans or just sports curious fans.

19:52And our young people and women in greater numbers than we've ever seen before. So I think there's this really exciting space emerging that looks very different when you peel back a layer. So where does traditional media sit within this ecosystem where so many athletes are controlling the narrative, they're controlling their voice through social media platforms, through their own documentaries? At what point is it so controlled that you lose authenticity in the story? So I think there's room for all of it in the media ecosystem broadly and certainly in the sports media ecosystem. We are at a very unique moment in time where athletes, particularly stars, have enormous amounts of control over their image the media produced about them, which extends to the business ventures that they are invested in or aligned with.

21:02And we have seen a dramatic power shift. And I think the— Would you say for the better? I wouldn't say for the worse. With any power dynamic, there's pros and cons. And as long as we are in, let's get back to my day job. I think at this moment in time, not just sports, but anywhere, we've never needed ethical, accurate, timely, and compelling journalists more to really, right? Lean in. Tell the stories that need to be told and tell them in a way that's fair and accurate and reaches people right wherever they are. I think traditional media is what is powering sports. We want more fans. Selfishly, I want more fans watching Angel City games and NWSL games on traditional media because that is still the single biggest revenue driver for leagues, teams, and therefore athletes.

22:04and the power of traditional or mainstream media to bring people together right now around live sports events is has never been stronger you know and it's interesting at this moment when we're so fragmented in our viewing habits and consumption live sports is audiences are growing you know exponentially across all sports. So it retains this unique ability to bring people together at scale. And I don't think we want to lose that. Besides the monetary opportunities that come with it, there's something really powerful about being part of a big community doing something together, whether you're watching something together or you're attending a game together.

22:51It feels good. It feels good to be part of that community. At the same time, we have to make sure that in traditional media is making space for, right, these emerging genres for new talent, both creative and business to emerge. And I think you're certainly seeing that. I mean, when you look at the, you know, Omaha Productions is just an example, the relationships and deals they have with traditional media, whether it's ESPN on sports or Hulu for scripted content, they have massive opportunities to collaborate with both. I've always had an interesting relationship to media and showing up at a press conference, and I felt like I handled that fairly well.

23:41But at the beginning of my career, you really had no control over what journalists would write about you. You know, now you have the opportunity to commit to an interview as an athlete. In some cases, you have the requirement to commit to an interview. Well, most of the time you have a requirement, but oftentimes you get to choose whether you commit to, you know, a certain interview if you have approval rights after. So there's, it's a very interesting, this control dynamic of how much of your image and persona you want to share. I quite like the idea of giving an interview, being thoughtful with your answers and seeing where the journalist takes the story.

24:30what is the angle and perspective from their point of view like seeing this a public figure right that goes on court and and trains ferociously for hours gives everything they have on the court and then you know spends only 30 minutes in a room with you what is their that personal feeling is only there for several minutes but then they write the story on you and I I quite like that because You do? Because it's interesting. Do you worry about giving up control? Because you're so clear on how you present. Yeah, so much about being an athlete is losing control, is being okay with the fact that you are going to sweat and, you know, grind and you're going to have most of the times a tough day at the office in front of millions of people, whether it's live or on the screen.

25:25and the one thing that you develop is really just thick skin and acceptance that that's part of life. And that's like leaning into the fact that, you know, people won't always have great things to say about you. And, you know, but great thing about sport is you don't have to do a lot of talking. You know, it's all performance based. At the end of the day, if you win, most of the time people will say and write good things about you. And if you lose, then you should be okay with the fact that there might be a negative story. So that's kind of how I... It is one of the things that I've learned to appreciate, you know, particularly as I've gotten to know some of our players a little bit, about the way in which they are so comfortable with having failures, most of them microscopic, right?

26:19like the angle of your foot hitting the ball, for example, how they are so comfortable with having those disseminated, discussed, corrected in, you know, a quasi-public forum. And I think it's a great attribute to have to be able to take feedback that way, take coaching that way, make adjustments, get up, do it again, and get ready for the next round. It's extraordinary. There was a moment after winning, I was in the semifinals of the U.S. Open, and my father, I didn't like to drink a lot during the match, water, and I was always dehydrated. I didn't fuel my body enough, so he'd always show me a banana and water.

27:04He's like, you've got to eat and you've got to drink during the match. So I win the semifinal. It was a difficult match at the U.S. Open. And I'm in the final. And the next day before my final, I'm sitting at a diner as I had before every match, having my breakfast with my coach. And front page of the New York Times is my father's picture of holding a banana. And it was so striking that I was a teenager at the time getting to my first U.S. Open final. And I couldn't believe that a journalist would have this angle of a story to write about. So that was— And they had it correct. They wrote about your dad reminding you to— Reminding me, right.

27:51Fuel and hydration. But saying that there was more to that. Like he was saying, like he was giving me a game plan because at the time you couldn't coach from the stand. So they thought that by him showing me a banana and like telling me to drink water that he was telling me to serve to the forehand. on an important point. And there were many times throughout my career where I thought, with this journalist, if this journalist has a daughter, is this the way that, is this the type of question that at a dinner table he would ask his daughter or his son? And most of the times I said, no, I don't think they would.

28:29I think this is a really harsh way to ask a question. This is a really harsh piece on someone that deserves better credit. But I would hope that the world of sports coverage has gotten a little more sensitized to, right, the needs of young people and as they, you know, as they navigate these careers. Yeah. It feels a little bit better to me now just listening to some of the press conferences. But I hope a little compassion goes a long way. There's also now a little more space on before there's certain requirements. So the expectation that you had as an athlete, you had to show it before every match, you'd had to do something with the press and after.

29:13And now there's a little bit more range in how much you can commit depending on what is going on in your life and how you feel, like the reality of being an athlete and the ups and downs. And sometimes you're just, you're not mentally available to face difficult questions. And I think having the permission from a league or a team to say, if you're not with that today, that's OK. We'll accept that. And that's something that I think in your role, you have the ability to change and implement. Yeah. And it's it has been it's been interesting to watch. I'm incredibly impressed at the way our players manage the press conferences afterwards.

29:53I'm kind of blown away. Tell me more. I'd love to. I also feel like athletes have matured. Yes. So much. And they've grown up with it in a different media environment and have developed those skills, I think, at much younger ages. But I watch these young women and they're incredibly poised. They're incredibly thoughtful. They're incredibly patient. They don't get irritated with, you know, questions that, you know, another era of athlete would have expressed great annoyance at. And they're articulate. and just incredibly thoughtful in how they answer right after having finished a match and not being recovered, replenished, and in the space that, you know, as you described, to maybe do this at your best.

30:43I've been kind of blown away by how good they are at it. Growing up on the job. Growing up on the job. It's so exceptional. Growing up with a very new reality on the job. It's almost like media training in real life. Oh, it is. Absolutely. And there's something about, you know, being in a moment where it feels so hard, but I always look back at those tougher moments. And perhaps you can relate and feel like, I don't want to be here. I shouldn't be here. I don't deserve to be here. But as I look back on those moments, knowing that I got through them and that I felt the challenge within my body and my bones, it actually made me a stronger human being.