The PWHL is rising, and the success of girls’s hockey within the Olympics could also be simply what it wanted

The 2026 Milan Winter Olympics, which culminated in a U.S.-Canada gold medal sport that set viewership information throughout the U.S., thrust ladies’s hockey into the highlight prefer it hasn’t been earlier than. The Skilled Girls’s Hockey League has spent a lot of the final three years positioning itself to capitalize on the momentum to construct a sustainable ladies’s hockey league.

“Each Olympic yr, there could be some enhance in pleasure and curiosity across the ladies’s sport,” mentioned Jayna Hefford, government vice chairman of hockey operations for the PWHL, who received 5 Olympic medals taking part in for Workforce Canada. “Once I take into consideration the place we at the moment are, it is type of exponential from that.”

Regardless of the current success of girls’s sports activities and leagues just like the WNBA and NWSL, ladies’s hockey leagues have struggled to discover a related footing, and that’s even with the Olympic success of the U.S. and Canadian groups. Since ladies’s ice hockey was launched as an Olympic sport in 1998, Canada has received 5 of the eight gold medals, with the U.S. successful the opposite three, together with a 2-1 extra time win on the 2026 Video games.

A number of earlier makes an attempt to launch ladies’s hockey leagues in North America have failed, usually resulting from monetary difficulties. Whereas the WNBA is partially owned and sponsored by the NBA, the NHL has not traditionally offered monetary help for a ladies’s league, and plenty of of these organizations have struggled to pay gamers sustainable wages. In 2019, lots of the high ladies’s gamers boycotted the prevailing skilled leagues in a struggle for higher assets.

However that panorama shifted in 2023 with the launch of the PWHL. The league is privately funded by Mark Walter, the billionaire Guggenheim Companions co-founder and CEO, who over the previous few years has turn into one of many largest sports activities buyers with controlling stakes in MLB’s Los Angeles Dodgers, the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers, the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks, and motorsports group Andretti International. Walter, who acquired the rights of one other ladies’s hockey league as a part of the PWHL’s launch, additionally introduced on tennis legend Billie Jean King and her companion Ilana Kloss as members of the PWHL’s advisory board.

Regardless of a brief timeline (the league was introduced in August 2023 and performed its first sport on Jan. 1, 2024), the PWHL has seen success over its first three seasons. The now-eight-team league has drawn followers throughout North America, set a number of attendance information, attracted main sponsors, and, maybe most significantly, was a platform for the most effective ladies’s hockey gamers on the planet as they ready for the 2026 Winter Olympics.

The league ready for the stage the 2026 Winter Olympics would offer.

“We understood it was going to place a digicam on our league, in contrast to the rest,” mentioned Stan Kasten, Los Angeles Dodgers president and CEO and a member of the PWHL advisory board.

When the Olympic rosters had been introduced, 61 of the league’s roughly 184 gamers had been named to nationwide groups, with 39 of these gamers showing within the gold medal sport.

“Proper then, we talked about it: it is going to require further funds, it is going to require further folks, let’s get a facility in Milan and put together to take sponsors, buyers, and a world of assembled media who’re all seeing the foremost ladies’s hockey league on the planet for the primary time,” Kasten mentioned. “We considered it as a launch pad for our subsequent wave of curiosity. I’ve to let you know, like with a variety of issues from the primary day we began this league, I couldn’t have predicted it could end up this nicely.”

The Olympic momentum has carried over into arenas. The PWHL set a brand new U.S. enviornment file with 17,335 followers on the first-ever sellout of Local weather Pledge Area in Seattle on Feb. 27, marking the third time the league set a brand new attendance file this season alone. The primary weekend the league returned to play, it set a brand new league weekend attendance file with 49,343 followers.

In whole, attendance via 71 video games of the 2025-2026 PWHL season was at 616,795 followers, a median of 8,687 and a 20% improve in comparison with the earlier season.

In the course of the month of February, merchandise gross sales had been up 101% in comparison with the gross sales previous to the Olympics. The PWHL noticed its video views on YouTube, the place it predominantly broadcasts video games, improve 200% over the Olympics interval. It additionally noticed visitors to its web site develop by six instances in the course of the Olympics interval, with 73% of web site visitors coming from new customers.

“It is nice to see the numbers at this time, however the arduous work truly begins now,” mentioned Amy Scheer, PWHL government vice chairman of enterprise operations. “We have got these followers, we have got these new followers, we have got this consideration, now what can we do with it?”

For Scheer, who was named to the 2026 CNBC Changemakers checklist alongside Hefford, which means serving to the league take its subsequent huge steps on the industrial facet, pushing for larger valuation sponsorships and main media rights offers. “We’re trying to strike whereas the iron is sizzling, and the worth proposition has modified for us,” she mentioned. The league has greater than 75 company sponsors now, and the PWHL not too long ago signed a partnership with Oak View Group to assist it safe extra offers.

In March, the PWHL signed a take care of Scripps Sports activities to broadcast the league’s Walter Cup Finals on Ion, which can mark the primary time will probably be aired throughout the U.S. on a linear community. Ion additionally aired a sport on March 28, marking the league’s first nationally televised sport. Scheer mentioned the league is in talks with a wide range of companions over potential media rights offers for subsequent season, declining to supply extra particulars.

The rise in reputation helps the league fill larger and larger arenas, and in cities the place there may be not a PWHL staff. Because it launched, the PWHL has used a “Takeover Tour” barnstorming technique to play some video games outdoors of dwelling arenas to check new markets or attempt to replenish bigger arenas.

That technique shall be on show on Saturday when the New York Sirens, who usually play on the Prudential Heart in Newark, dwelling of the NHL’s New Jersey Devils, will play at Madison Sq. Backyard versus the Seattle Torrent. The sport has already been marked as a sell-out of the greater than 18,000-seat enviornment.

The league has additionally offered out a scheduled sport at TD Backyard in Boston on April 11 between the Boston Fleet and the Montreal Victoire. That enviornment seats greater than 17,800 folks.

Scheer mentioned that on earlier stops of the league’s Takeover Excursions, upwards of 60% of the followers attending had by no means been to an NHL sport at these arenas. That’s informing the league’s enlargement technique, with plans so as to add as many as 4 new groups subsequent season.

“The checklist of cities that need us is so long as any checklist you could possibly have,” Kasten mentioned. “The issue we now have, significantly in American cities, is that essentially the most acceptable venue for us is not the 5,000- or 6,000-seat enviornment; it is the massive venues, they usually do not have dates for us. I’ve talked to the NHL groups in these buildings, and the house owners of these buildings, and discovering dates is our greatest subject now in cities.”

All of this stuff add up because the PWHL appears to be like to be a sustainable – and finally worthwhile — league. Kasten mentioned the league has outpaced its expense projections every season, however that “it has all the time matched the expansion in income, so it turned out to be price it.”

“The income development has been constant, and subsequent yr it is going to take one other bounce,” he mentioned. “We’re nonetheless within the crimson once more, however that is what we deliberate for, and the hole is closing.”

The league signed a CBA with its gamers via 2031, and it hopes to be worthwhile by that time.

Kasten mentioned there are not any present plans to promote groups to particular person house owners, however there was some current speak about bringing on extra buyers, particularly as extra folks method the league on the lookout for engaging sports activities alternatives.

Hefford mentioned that as she’s watched the league develop, “it is a lot completely different than something that is ever existed earlier than, and other people perceive that.” Hefford herself performed in earlier skilled ladies’s hockey league iterations and in addition served as a commissioner, and he or she mentioned the PWHL has the chance to supply gamers and followers one thing these different leagues hadn’t.

“For a very long time, it was all the time in regards to the nationwide groups, and now I feel we’re seeing a shift the place there is a loyalty in the direction of the PWHL groups and the communities,” she mentioned. “Nationwide groups will all the time be an unbelievable alternative, however there’s simply a lot extra now that they are often enthusiastic about as nicely.”

When Laura Stacey returned from the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing after taking part in for Canada, she mentioned she needed to ask herself a tricky query.

“You come again, it is like, ‘What’s subsequent? The place do I’m going? Do I maintain going for an additional 4 years?” she mentioned. “It is this four-year cycle state of affairs of gamers considering if they’ll afford to proceed taking up an Olympic dream.”

Stacey mentioned that the Olympics have all the time been the “pinnacle” for ladies’s hockey gamers, a dream that she’s been in a position to dwell 3 times, together with successful two gold medals.

“The truth that now we get to play all yr lengthy, each single yr in an unbelievable league, after which each 4 years, gamers who’re on the high of their sport get an opportunity to symbolize their international locations on the Olympics after which come again and nonetheless have this skilled league behind them, it is simply unbelievable,” she mentioned.

Nonetheless, there may be work to do. Stacey, who’s the president of the gamers’ affiliation, mentioned the gamers are working intently with the league to verify amenities and different facets of the participant expertise stay excessive because the league expands. The gamers additionally need to see salaries develop because the league does – league common salaries are roughly $55,000, in line with the CBA.

Kasten mentioned the league is pushing for extra visibility and protection. At the moment, the league’s scores aren’t highlighted on ESPN’s app or its web site.

Scheer mentioned whereas she not has to teach potential sponsors about what the PWHL is or why ladies’s hockey is a sexy alternative, the dialog is now shifting to asking supposed supporters to “put your cash the place your mouth is.”

Hefford mentioned whereas the league has launched a number of initiatives encouraging younger ladies to play hockey, there may be nonetheless lots to do to encourage the subsequent technology of PWHL stars and followers.

Nonetheless, Stacey mentioned it’s not misplaced on her or the gamers that the PWHL has already made important progress.

“We have had each model [of a league], they usually all haven’t labored out for a lot of varied causes till now. However none of that was even near the place we’re at now,” she mentioned. “So for us, it is like we’re right here. We have made it. This has been created now. We have to do no matter we probably can to be sure that that is larger, higher, stronger once we all go away.”