A few months after Angel City FC announced its controlling equity stake sale, a likely contender for club control has emerged — former Milwaukee Bucks owner Marc Lasry’s Avenue Sports Opportunities Fund. Following its October launch, a new Sportico report indicates the fund has already raised $445.1M as it targets rising sports properties like Angel City.

Business is booming through the first month of the WNBA’s 2024 season. On yesterday’s episode of The GIST of It, co-host Ellen Hyslop put its early wins into perspective of how long the league has been here and where it’s headed next. Here are a few key metrics released by the league that prove the W has entered a whole new era.

The Northern Super League (NSL), Canada's new professional women’s soccer league, is coming in hot. Yesterday, it announced a multiyear media partnership with Bell Media’s TSN/RDS and CBC/Radio-Canada, the nation’s top English and French networks, making the league accessible across Canada in its two official languages.

The Team USA Olympic 5-on-5 women’s basketball roster was announced this weekend, and Indiana Fever rookie Caitlin Clark didn’t make the cut. It’s a reality check that despite Clark’s rapid ascent, there’s still levels of the game she’s not quite ready for. And while Clark may have an edge in popularity, this U.S. squad will definitely draw a crowd — and marketing dollars.

The U.S.’ Olympic women’s volleyball roster just dropped, and there’s a lot of love for League One Volleyball (LOVB). Nine of the 12 starters and two alternates on Team USA have already signed deals with LOVB Pro, an impressive feat considering the new pro volleyball league won’t begin play until November, well after the Games.

Sponsorship insight platform SponsorPulse recently published its Sport Team Sponsorship Value Guide, which estimates and ranks the value of NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, MLS, and WNBA teams’ brand partnerships. While no WNBA team cracks the top 50, the report contains key insights about the league’s potential value.

Good news, softball fans — there’s a new pro league rounding the bases. Athletes Unlimited’s (AU) pro softball arm will now include Athletes Unlimited Softball League (AUSL), a traditional-style softball season set to launch in 2025 that represents a major development for a game that has spent decades building to a sustainable pro league.

Everything is bigger in Texas…even pickleball. This weekend, Dallas hosted the CIBC Texas Open, which included both amateurs and Professional Pickleball Association Tour pro players. Last Tuesday, The GIST spoke with Twisted Pickle — a Dallas-based pickleball marketing agency co-owned by Ashlee Erickson Blakley and Suzanne Greever — about the sport’s explosive growth.

With the popularity of sports like soccer and baseball throughout Latin America, men’s sports leagues like La Liga and MLB are investing heavily in marketing toward Latinx fans in the U.S. It’s also a strategy the NWSL and franchises with sizable Latinx communities like L.A.’s Angel City FC have been in on since the get-go.

As the NWSL considers charter flights, it’s worth noting that private travel in pro sports produces an enormous carbon footprint. As sports become increasingly global and women’s sports secure more resources, a new report from the UK women’s soccer space found that 95% of players think the beautiful game must reduce its carbon footprint.

Unrivaled — the 3x3 pro women’s hoops league launched by WNBA stars Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier — rolled out some game-changing announcements yesterday. The league confirmed an oversubscribed seed round of all-star investors, which enables Unrivaled to offer a six-figure salary that will be the highest in pro women’s sports league history.

Last week, Nike hosted its first-ever Coach The Dream event at its world headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon. The goal was to highlight the impact of coaching on the next generation of athletes and discuss how the sports ecosystem can evolve to keep kids in the game through conscientious coaching, which could lessen the gender gap in youth sports.