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Just Women's Sports founded 2020 in Los Angeles ~$13M raised from athletes & investors Kevin Durant, Billie Jean King & Abby Wambach among backers 75M+ users reached during 2023 Women's World Cup Founder Haley Rosen: Forbes 30 Under 30 Athlete-hosted podcasts: O'Hara, A'ja Wilson, Dawn Staley ~1.9M TikTok followers & 1M+ on Instagram Just Women's Sports founded 2020 in Los Angeles ~$13M raised from athletes & investors Kevin Durant, Billie Jean King & Abby Wambach among backers 75M+ users reached during 2023 Women's World Cup Founder Haley Rosen: Forbes 30 Under 30 Athlete-hosted podcasts: O'Hara, A'ja Wilson, Dawn Staley ~1.9M TikTok followers & 1M+ on Instagram
Just Women's Sports logo
Company Profile / Sports Media

Just Women's Sports

A digital media company that decided women's sports deserved their own front page - and built it. News, athlete-hosted podcasts, video, a newsletter and merch, all in one place.

Est. 2020 Los Angeles, CA ~36 employees Seed-funded

The JWS mark, small and square, the way it sits on a phone screen - the surface where most of these fans actually find the game.

The Story

A 4% coverage problem, treated as a business

In 2017, a soccer player named Haley Rosen retired from the pro game because of injuries, moved back to the Bay Area, took a job in tech, and then tried to do something that should have been simple: look up the score of a women's game. She couldn't easily find it. Not the score, not the schedule, not much of anything.

This is the kind of small, specific annoyance that most people accept and move past. Rosen did not. She had noticed the same thing everyone in women's sports had noticed - that women's sports receive roughly 4% of all sports media coverage - but she framed it in a way that turned out to matter. The 4% number, she reasoned, was not a measure of how many people wanted to watch. It was a measure of how little was being shown to them. That is a supply problem, not a demand problem, and supply problems are the kind you can fix by building something.

So in January 2020 she started Just Women's Sports. The pitch met the reception you'd expect. As she has recounted, people told her, more or less, "Why don't you make it a charity? This isn't a real business." It is a revealing objection, because it assumes the conclusion: women's sports can't be a business, therefore covering them can't be either.

Rosen had data suggesting otherwise, and a useful stubbornness. The first check - $400,000 from Ovo Fund's Eric Chen - arrived that same month. What followed was less a media outlet than a fan utility: a website and newsletter to answer the "what happened" question, then podcasts, video highlights, YouTube programming, live events and merchandise stacked on top.

The through-line is that Just Women's Sports is not trying to convert skeptics with a manifesto. It is trying to make the daily experience of being a women's sports fan easy and fun - the newsletter you open, the highlight you share, the podcast you queue on the walk. Media businesses are won on habits, and habits are built by showing up every day with the thing people actually wanted.

The results have been loud enough to answer the "real business" question on their own terms. During the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup the company reached more than 75 million users and generated 250 million-plus social impressions. During March Madness in 2024 it drove 185 million cross-platform impressions. Those are not charity numbers.

By The Numbers

The scoreboard

2020
Founded in LA
~$13M
Total raised
75M+
Users, 2023 WWC
~1.9M
TikTok followers

"People told her, 'Why don't you make it a charity? This isn't a real business.'"

- On the early reception to Just Women's Sports
What You Can Do With It

Five front doors, one fanbase

Just Women's Sports is built so a fan can arrive however they like - by inbox, by feed, by earbuds - and land in the same place. Here's what's on offer.

Editorial

News & Scores

Original articles, previews, athlete profiles, live scores and schedules across the WNBA, NWSL, NCAA, LPGA and WTA.

Audio

Podcast Network

Athlete-hosted shows: The Players' Pod with Kelley O'Hara, Tea with A & Phee, Snacks, and NetLife with Dawn Staley.

Email

The Newsletter

A regular digest that keeps fans current on scores, stories and the events worth watching this week.

Video

Highlights & Series

Social-first highlights, YouTube programming and premium video built for the feed and the moment.

Retail

JWS Merch

Direct-to-consumer apparel including JWS Essentials and the Legends Collection - fandom you can wear.

IRL

Live Events

Fan gatherings and activations that turn the biggest women's sporting moments into shared ones.

Cap Table

Who's writing the checks

A notable feature of the JWS cap table: a lot of the money comes from athletes putting their own capital behind coverage of their own sports. When the players invest, it tells you where they think the game is going.

Jan 2020
$400K · Pre-seed
May 2021
$3.5M · Seed
Jun 2022
$6M · Series A
May 2026
~$1M · Seed

Athlete & angel backers

  • Kevin Durant - via Thirty Five Ventures
  • Billie Jean King - tennis icon & equal-pay pioneer
  • Abby Wambach - USWNT legend
  • Elena Delle Donne, Arike Ogunbowale - WNBA
  • Kelley O'Hara, Sam Mewis - USWNT

Institutional leads

  • Will Ventures - led the 2021 seed
  • Blue Pool Capital - Joe Tsai's firm, led the 2022 round
  • Ovo Fund - Eric Chen wrote the first check
  • Michele Kang, Allyson Felix, Sam Kerr - later backers
  • Apolo Ohno, Paul Rabil - among the roster
Timeline

How it came together

January 2020
Haley Rosen founds Just Women's Sports; Ovo Fund writes the first $400K check.
July 2020
The podcast launches - Kelley O'Hara's first guest is USWNT teammate Alex Morgan.
May 2021
$3.5M seed round led by Will Ventures, with Kevin Durant and a slate of athletes.
November 2021
Rosen named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list.
June 2022
$6M round led by Blue Pool Capital; Billie Jean King and Abby Wambach join the cap table.
Aug 2023
Reaches 75M+ users during the FIFA Women's World Cup, with 250M+ social impressions.
March 2024
Drives 185M cross-platform impressions during March Madness.
May 2026
Reports additional seed capital as investor interest in women's sports media keeps climbing.
Watch & Listen

Interviews & product

See the platform in motion - the YouTube channel, the podcast feed, and the founder talking through the mission.

▶ JWS on YouTube ▶ Podcast Network ▶ Haley Rosen interviews ▶ Product tour