Sheryl Swoopes and long-time sports activities journalist Terrika Foster-Brasby have joined iHeartMedia’s … [+] Ladies’s Sports activities Audio Community because the co-headliners of the media platform’s latest ladies’s sports activities collection referred to as, “Ranges To This with Sheryl Swoopes and Terrika Foster-Brasby.”
In 1997, Sheryl Swoopes turned the primary participant to be signed to play within the WNBA, and in 2000, she gained her fourth WNBA Championship with the Houston Comets. In 2011, Swoopes was acknowledged as one of many 15 biggest gamers in WNBA historical past, and in 2016, she was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Corridor of Fame.
Quick ahead to 2024, and Swoopes continues to trail-blaze in ladies’s sports activities; this time within the podcasting area. Swoopes and long-time sports activities journalist Terrika Foster-Brasby have joined iHeartMedia’s Ladies’s Sports activities Audio Community because the co-headliners of the media platform’s latest ladies’s sports activities collection referred to as, Levels To This with Sheryl Swoopes and Terrika Foster-Brasby.
Ranges To This goals to function actual conversations – primarily with ladies – about what it takes to excel on the highest degree of their respective fields. As soon as per week, Swoopes and Foster-Brasby will focus on the exhausting work and obstacles that come together with being on the high of their sport, and can dive into their private highs and lows. The inaugural episode of the present centered on the subject of motherhood, discussing being pregnant, stepmotherhood, and Swoopes’ journey as a mom and an expert feminine athlete.
“For me, it is necessary that folks get to see a unique facet of me. I feel numerous occasions when folks have a look at skilled athletes or film stars or celebrities, they do not assume we’re human,” stated Swoopes. “My hope is that when folks tune in and so they hear, they will join. They will join with myself, they will join with Terrika.”
iHeartMedia Continues To Make investments In Ladies’s Sports activities
Levels To This with Sheryl Swoopes and Terrika Foster-Brasby is a part of the newly shaped Women’s Sports Audio Network (WSAN), which is the first-ever audio platform completely devoted to ladies’s sports activities. Earlier this yr, iHeartMedia and Deep Blue Sports activities + Leisure shaped a strategic partnership to create WSAN with the objective of leveraging the iHeartMedia community to scale ladies’s sports activities protection throughout broadcast radio, podcasts, streaming and occasions. The dedication to ladies’s sports activities is a part of iHeartMedia’s technique to each capitalize on and support the expansion of girls’s sports activities. Different exhibits within the WSAN embrace Good Game with Sarah Spain and In Case You Missed It with Khristina Williams.
IHeartMedia’s funding in ladies’s sports activities comes at a time when the recognition of girls’s sports activities is at an all-time excessive. In accordance with Deloitte, elite ladies’s sports activities are at present anticipated to turn into a $1 billion industry in 2024, representing a 300% improve in simply three years.
“It is smart to spend money on ladies’s sports activities as a result of it is simply fairly naturally what any good enterprise particular person would do,” stated Foster-Brasby. “You need to attraction to what’s standard, however you additionally need to simply spend money on people which might be actually doing wonderful issues? Nobody’s doing extra wonderful issues proper now than ladies athletes.”
Thus far, Capital One, e.l.f Cosmetics, and e.l.f SKIN have all been introduced as monetary sponsors of the Ladies’s Sports activities Audio Community.
Closing The Gender Hole In Sports activities Protection
Terrika Foster-Brasby has been masking ladies’s sports activities for over a decade. Greatest generally known as the co-host and co-creator of ESPN’s WNBA present Across the Rim, Foster-Brasby has labored to supply protection, particularly of girls’s basketball, even earlier than mainstream media acknowledged leagues just like the WNBA as newsworthy.
For many years, ladies’s sports activities have acquired simply 4% of complete sports activities media protection. Final yr, a brand new study carried out by The Collective at Wasserman revealed that the proportion of complete ladies’s sports activities media protection has grown to fifteen% – nevertheless, conventional and linear media nonetheless stays at simply 5%.
“From a media perspective, the protection remains to be unbalanced, the funding remains to be unequal,” stated Foster-Brasby. “I feel that with ladies’s sports activities, you must be prepared to take that likelihood and take that threat. As a result of as we’re seeing right here most lately, that return on funding is completely taking place.”
Foster-Brasby and Swoopes hope that Ranges To This will assist fill in a few of the gender gaps that exist in sports activities media protection.
“We chortle, we cry, we curse, we share tears, we joke. It is a secure area, and a very good area for anybody who’s searching for actual conversations,” stated Swoopes.
New episodes of Levels To This with Sheryl Swoopes and Terrika Foster-Brasby are launched by iHeartPodcasts and the iHeartRadio app each Thursday.
