With US TV debut, women’s pro ice hockey hopes to cash in big

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Ana Faguy

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Jaime Bourbonnais of the New York Sirens during a game against the Ottawa Charge

Kate Hoos remembers watching in awe from her living room as women’s ice hockey players skated on Olympic ice for the first time in 1998.

But it would take another four years until women’s ice hockey aired on national television again.

This time, the wait won’t be anywhere near as long.

When the puck drops on the ice at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit, Michigan, on Saturday, Hoos and thousands of fans will be watching in real time as access to women’s ice hockey expands to television screens across the United States.

Saturday’s game between the New York Sirens and Montreal Victoire will be the first nationally televised Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) game in US history, made accessible to more than 126 million US households, the league said.

“There are a lot of people who could be seeing it for the first time, just flipping through the channels,” Hoos said. “It’s great exposure.”

For a league that has only existed for three years, being broadcast on US television is a massive step.

This debut is part of the next wave of expansion for women’s professional sports. Across the board - from the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) to the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) to the women’s March Madness tournament - more people are paying attention to and paying to watch women’s sports than ever before.

“Everything in women’s sports starts with visibility; we have to be able to see it, to be fans of it,” said Thayer Lavielle, the managing director at The Collective, a think tank focused on female athletes.

The momentum for women’s ice hockey comes off the back of a gold-medal victory for the US team at the 2026 Olympics against their arch-rival, Canada.

More than five million people watched the US face Canada in the gold medal game last month, making it the most-watched women’s hockey game in US history.

The team received even more attention after the game, when President Donald Trump made a joke that seemed at the women’s team’s expense while speaking with the US men’s ice hockey team.

That spotlight will hopefully carry over, players say.

“For as long as I can remember, women’s hockey went silent after the Olympics,” Kendall Coyne Schofield, Minnesota Frost player and US Olympic gold medalist, said while speaking on the Welcome to the Party podcast.

Coyne Schofield said following the Olympics, fans would ask where they could next see a game and the lack of an answer meant the sport lost fans.

“Now there’s no more ifs, ands or buts, it’s coming back,” she said. “The awareness, the visibility, it matters. Women’s hockey isn’t silent anymore.”

Kate Hoos/ Hannah Judson

Kate Hoos and Hannah Judson

A growing fan base

It has long been assumed that women’s sports were money losers. But recent data shows that is not the case.

A McKinsey & Company analysis found that between 2022 and 2024, revenue from women’s sports grew 4.5 times faster than that of men’s sports.

That same analysis found there is even more room to grow.

While the broadcast of Saturday’s game is a one-time deal, a recurring television deal could bring in big dollars, that same McKinsey analysis found.

Women’s sports could generate at least $2.5b (£1.87b) in value for rights holders in the United States by 2030, a 250% increase from the $1b generated in 2024.

“The demand is there, once the PWHL realise the potential market they’re sitting on, they will be able to make money hand over fist and as a fan, I will gladly give it to them,” Hannah Judson, a New York Sirens season-ticket holder, said.

Women’s sports games are selling out arenas and big games and special moments are attracting a surge of first-time fans to women’s sports, Kate Lebel, a University of Guelph professor focused on the sport business landscape and gender equity, said.

“We’ve got a growing number of proof points now to show demand is no longer hypothetical,” she said.

Upcoming PWHL games at Madison Square Garden in New York and TD Garden in Boston have sold out, and thousands are expected at Saturday’s game in Detroit.

“Revenues are growing, especially from sponsorship and media,” Lebel said of women’s sports. “Profitability tends to follow once leagues are able to build deeper, more consistent fan loyalty, and that’s the phase many women’s sport franchises are now entering.”

Small business owners see the growing fandom for women’s professional sports first-hand.

Alex Douglas, an artist who makes and sells portraits of professional athletes, saw a boom in business after he started creating portraits of female ice hockey players.

“I would say they out-sell the guys four to one,” he said.

And on the consumer level, people feel it, too. Mikayla Morgan, a Sirens fan, has been trying to get her wife, a Victoire fan, a jersey from her team.

“Every time they go on sale, boom, then they sell out,” she said.

Alex Douglas

Alex Douglas creating portraits

Entry onto the big screen

Appearing on a national broadcast deal is an imperative and promising step for the PWHL, fans and experts said.

Scripps Sports will broadcast Saturday’s historic game between New York and Montreal on ION in a one-time deal that many fans hope will become permanent.

“The first-ever national broadcast is a truly historic moment for our league,” Amy Scheer, the PWHL executive VP of business operations, said in a statement. “We are continuing to fuel this rocket ship that is the PWHL, as we expand the reach and exposure of our league to new fans.”

The PHWL already has national broadcast partners in Canada, which make the games accessible for Canadian fans.

But for American fans, the options to watch are YouTube or, if you live in one of the four US markets, to catch a game on a local affiliate that has chosen to air it.

“When you’re limited to a 17,000-person venue, only 17,000 people can see the game,” Lavielle, the think-tank executive, said. “When you’re opening it up to millions more people to watch, it creates viability, sponsor awareness. It’s an entirely new set of variables for the sport that weren’t there before.”

And while fans like Morgan worry about one day having to pay to watch games on cable or streaming, Hoos said that regular nationally televised games will be a sign the league is going in the right direction.

“Trust me, having to pay for this is going to be a good thing,” Hoos said. “One of the missions of US hockey is growing the game and how you do that is you get eyeballs on it and have easy access to it, being able to turn on the TV and see women’s hockey on, will really open it up a lot.”