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As fans and funds flow toward women’s sports this year, where is the interest in football competitions? Well, on Sunday night, it was in Frisco, Texas.
Hours after the WNBA’s Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese commanded national attention on ESPN—and NWSL action followed on ESPN2—the Mississippi Lady Panthers won the fifth annual Women’s National Football Conference championship game in front of several thousand fans at the Dallas Cowboys’ Ford Center.
New sponsorship and digital media deals have helped the league grow in recent years, but CEO Odessa Jenkins is still fighting for investment to ensure the WNFC capitalizes on an opportunity that might not come again.
Women’s football isn’t new. Like softball, the sport drew thousands back in the 1930s, with another league popping up in the 1970s. Yet as men’s football grabs an ever-larger share of sports fan attention, women largely remain on the sideline, even with other physical sports—rugby, lacrosse and hockey, for three—establishing places for female competitors. The WNFC is among several growing groups changing that fact.
The Flag Factor
Women’s tackle football does face unique challenges. Team size and equipment demands make it far more resource intensive than other activities. Quality field access alone has been a challenge. Then there is the physicality issue, which has turned off some parents of boys as well.
Flag football, on the other hand, faces few of those limitations. And it’s exploding. Women’s flag will debut alongside the men’s game at the 2028 Summer Olympics, further propelling interest.
According to USA Football, the number of 6-to-12-year-old girls playing flag football has increased by more than 200% since 2014, crossing 100,000.
“What we’ve seen across all levels, from youth all the way up, is that girls and women want to play the game,” USA Football high performance and national teams managing director Eric Mayes said.
Next month, the NFL and ESPN are teaming up to air a new NFL Flag Championship competition in Canton, Ohio. It will feature more than 280 teams with players ranging from 9 to 18 years old, somewhat like football’s version of the Little League World Series. ESPN says it plans to air girls’ play as frequently as the boys on its networks.
“I’m really excited for the opportunity for people across the nation and people in other countries to see what flag football looks like and to see how competitive and elite these players are,” new NFL VP and head of flag football Stephanie Kwok said.
More than 25 states have made girls’ flag football a sanctioned high school sport, or are running pilot programs before doing so, with efforts ongoing to achieve NCAA recognition as well. The number of girls playing on high school teams jumped 86% from 2019 to 2023. At the participation level, the sport has already broken out. And at the pro level, the American Flag Football League has plans to launch a women’s competition in 2025.
“For young girls, it increases participation when they see that clear pathway,” DAZN co-CEO for women’s sports Esmeralda Negron said. “They’re like, ‘Oh, I can go to college, I can play in high school.’ It fosters that passion and development and commitment to the game.”
The WNFC has embraced flag, too. The league announced a partnership with Gridiron Football in May and hosted a flag championship hours before the tackle teams faced off Sunday.
“Flag has changed everything for us,” Jenkins said. Her goal now? “To build the full pipeline, from a 3-year-old flag player to a 12-year-old tackle player to wherever you want to go,” she said.
Others, however, fear that flag’s growth could stifle the development of women’s tackle football. Limiting women to the newer version of the sport might put a ceiling on spectator potential. Tackle football would also provide more roster spots at the college level, where Black women remain underrepresented.
Sam Gordon appeared in an NFL commercial during the Super Bowl as a 9-year-old back in 2012 after playing against all-male tackle teams. But without a clear development pathway available, Gordon ultimately focused on soccer, playing collegiately for Columbia University.
In 2017, she and her father sued Utah’s high school activities association, arguing that it violated Title IX rules by not offering girls’ tackle football as an interscholastic sport. Three school districts reached a settlement in the case in 2023, promising to promote girls’ sports—including tackle football—and survey students on potential activities of interest.
“I’m not gonna give up my fight for tackle football,” she said in an interview.
In the meantime, Gordon has worked with Under Armour as an ambassador and camp leader on the flag side.
“It’s really cool to see this investment from these major companies, where beforehand we were just fighting for anything at all,” she said. “It’s awesome to see other people care about it … people outside of ourselves wanting to push football for women forward.”
Tackling Investment
Women’s tackle football backers have looked at the millions of dollars spent on an alphabet soup’s worth of fledgling men’s tackle leagues—the AFFL, USFL, XFL, and so on—and wondered when they might get the chance to test their hypothesis that fans would rally around high-level women’s athletes.
“One of the holdups with football is that it is so concretely a men’s game—it has been that for a really long time,” Gordon said. “I think we’ve started to break down those barriers.”
Jenkins is open about the league’s interest in adding funds. An “Invest in WNFC” banner lives at the top of the league’s website, linking to a two-page pitch sheet asking for $1.5 million in seed money while putting WNFC up against other recently launched leagues such as LOVB, the PLL, and the PWHL.
“We’re like any other business: You run on a cash basis for five years, your back starts to itch, you have cold sweats,” she said. “It’s not like we’re gonna go out of business if we don’t get the investment. But we are absolutely going to miss a wave, and I think it’s crazy to miss the wave in women’s sports right now.”
In the meantime, she continues operating the league on a tight budget. Players are not yet paid, and the league office is made up of eight executives. WNFC’s creative director and head of brand marketing, Erin Harville, also works for the Portland Trail Blazers. The league’s president is Elizabeth Jenkins, a former Charles Schwab leader who is also Odessa’s wife.
“Every dollar that comes to this league is getting redistributed into the cost of the teams,” Odessa said. “None of us take a salary, none of that stuff.”
Many of the 16 teams operate as nonprofits, with a for-profit arm owning intellectual property. Adidas has supported the league since its founding in 2019, while streaming platforms Caffeine and DAZN have signed deals more recently. The pitch sheet cites $800,000 in 2023 revenue.
Jennifer Moody, the owner of the Tampa Bay Inferno franchise in another tackle league, the Women’s Football Alliance, has long done similar budgeting math. A former player herself, Moody founded the team after moving to the area in 2009.
Funding the program has been increasingly difficult though, given increased travel and operations costs in the current economy.
Moody, who also works as a YMCA director of administration, said her main motivation has been the physical and mental benefits the Inferno provides its players. But she also hopes the team will become a financial asset.
“There’s a large number of us now who have put 20-plus years of just personal and financial time and investment into the sport,” Moody said. “Would it be nice to have some return investment on that? Absolutely.”
Watching money flow into other young sports leagues has been exciting for Moody. ”But there’s also the frustration and a little bit of jealousy there too,” she added.
With financial backing, she believes the sky is the limit for women’s tackle football. For now though, Moody and other believers are left focusing on the grass in front of them.