Tonight, the Professional Women’s Hockey League
will draft 72 players to join its ranks. Among a record 235 players who have declared for the draft are five new U.S. Olympic gold medalists. As a bonus attention-grabber, fans were simultaneously watching to see where the sport’s biggest star, Hilary Knight (who led the U.S. Olympic team to their gold medal and then appeared on
Saturday Night Live) would end up as the league expands; yesterday, it was confirmed she’s
moving from Seattle to Detroit. Overall, the surge of attention is a high-water mark for women’s hockey and a league that is only three years old—but figuring out how to capitalize on its Olympic boost.
Unlike other leagues, the PWHL has a single-owner structure. That means one owner—Mark Walter, the Guggenheim Partners billionaire who owns the Los Angeles Dodgers and recently bought a majority stake in the Los Angeles Lakers—owns the league and all its teams. The format has its drawbacks, but it’s less complicated when building from scratch than negotiating with a dozen team owners as is necessary in the WNBA or NWSL. The league has taken a divergent approach to other decisions as well; rather than holding out for media deals, it started streaming all its games for free on YouTube to build fandom (with the hope that media deals would follow). It launched some teams without names, choosing speed over perfection.
Leading all of this is Amy Scheer, a true sports vet. Over almost 40 years, she’s worked across the New York Liberty (when it was still under Jim Dolan’s ownership at Madison Square Garden); the Brooklyn Nets; Major League Soccer’s New York Red Bulls; the WNBA’s Connecticut Sun; and just before joining the PWHL, the NFL. “It’s the biggest challenge I’ve had,” she says. “You’re building not just a singular team, but a league and teams.”
After the Olympics, Scheer says viewership on YouTube grew 200%. Its regular games averaged 9,000 people attending. The sport set a new all-time record for women’s hockey attendance in the U.S., and then broke its own record with 18,006 fans at a sold-out Madison Square Garden. Its star players gained new name recognition and social media followings. “We put ourselves in a position to really be ready to take advantage of what might come out of it,” Scheer says.
Scheer says the PWHL has earned the support of stakeholders necessary to grow the sport. During its “tour takeover” games in larger venues like MSG, anywhere between 35% and 80% of people attending had never been to an NHL game in that building. While those arena-size venues are unlikely to host entire seasons, the ability to reach new audiences makes them interested in having women’s hockey back.
Now was that boost due to people watching the women win gold in Milan—or a surge of support after President Trump
joked at the players’ expense? “The situation with not being invited to the White House or whatever locker room situation happened, do I think that had a role? Sure, I do think it had a role, but I think the impact was there already,” Scheer says. “I don’t know whether it was outrage just for outrage or it brought more fans in, but I’m most proud of our players acting like adults.”
Scheer’s years of experience in sports give her a clear-eyed view of the challenges ahead. “Marketing and selling women’s sports is hard every day,” she says. But new fans are discovering the PWHL and seeing what women’s hockey has to offer.
Emma Hinchliffeemma.hinchliffe@fortune.comThe Most Powerful Women Daily newsletter is Fortune’
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