Read the "Rep Her" report

Klarna, the AI-powered global payments network, is renowned for its commitment to enhancing the consumer shopping and payments experience. When they identified a gap in the marketplace through their work in women's sports, they knew action was necessary. Klarna partnered with Sports Innovation Lab to address this issue, leveraging their extensive expertise. This collaboration wasn't merely about understanding the problem; it was about leading the industry in finding equity and driving innovative solutions.

We, while not a women's sports agency, play a crucial role in this mission. As a fan insights and intelligence company, we use data to model the actions and behaviors of the sports industry’s most valuable future fans - the Fluid Fans. By analyzing billions of transactions from over 80 million U.S. consumers, we identify trends and uncover opportunities. It’s this meticulous data analysis that led us, in partnership with Klarna, to focus on women’s sports as a significant growth opportunity.

In 2021, the potential of women’s sports became clear through our data. The fan intelligence revealed a strong upward trajectory. So convinced were we of this potential, we released a groundbreaking report, The Fan Project, with Klarna's support. This report has since become essential for justifying new investments in women's sports sponsorships, teams, leagues, and media across the industry.

Now, Klarna and Sports Innovation Lab are elevating the Fan Project series to new heights. Our latest focus? Women's sports merchandise. With Klarna's innovative shopping and payment solutions, we're empowering consumers and the industry to ride it. Together, we're shaping the future of women's sports, one insightful data point at a time.

The business opportunity is clear. The report you need to read is titled: Rep Her: Revealing the Unmet Demand for Women’s Sports Merchandise. In the report, Sports Innovation Lab again dove into our transactional dataset of more than 80 million individual U.S. consumers to identify the massive shift in consumer spend. We balanced this analysis with 3rd party data and proprietary surveys to size the rapidly-growing women’s sports merchandise market: it’s huge.

We estimate Women’s Sports Merchandise is a $4 Billion annual opportunity.

Four Billion a Year: This isn’t just about supporting a cause—it’s about seizing a major business opportunity.

The report details consumer demand, and highlights the opportunities that exist if certain barriers to growth are addressed. This market value gets unlocked much faster if the industry works to create a more seamless shopping experience and starts to provide the same variety, style, and availability that exists with men’s sports merchandise.

Key findings from the report include:

• Fans Are Hungry for Options: 79% of surveyed respondents reported they would purchase more women’s sports merchandise if there were more options available to them, while 28% reported they could not find a style they liked

• Fans Are Demanding Inventory: More than 60% of fans who searched for and intended to buy women’s sports merchandise did not make a purchase because it was not in stock

• Fans Are Seeking Out Retailers: 32% of women’s sports fans cannot find a retailer that carries merchandise related to their favorite teams and athletes

• Merch is an Onramp To Fandom: 67% of sports fans have purchased women’s sports merchandise without ever attending a live women’s sporting event

Our data clearly shows consumer demand for Women’s Sports Merch.

The roadmap we’ve outlined provides a vision for unlocking massive value.

We’ve got one huge $4Billion carrot in front of us - what are we going to do about it?

Download the full report here and let’s get going.