Mm-hmm

...

there is the hardcore club scene, travel teams, all that sort of stuff.

That's a whole different animal.

What we want to really emphasize is that there should not be anybody forcing you to go the club route.

If you just wanna have fun, if you just wanna play with your girlfriends or just be a part of a high school team and not be so singularly focused and driven by the wins and the trophies and the medals and the championships, that is great.

Do it.

Mm-hmm.

So, you know, showing that, you know, not only for Nyjerie, but for, for any of the women who might be watching.

Well, you know, Rachel, that's actually a great point that you bring up 'cause we do hope to be able to, in some way, tackle the dropout rate.

Now, there are, there, there are certain aspects of the why that we can't do anything.

Let's face it, you know, playing sports is expensive, and so sports can be cost-prohibitive.

Transportation issues can often be a challenge.

But there are a couple of different categories under the why that we can address.

Number one, girls who love playing sports, but they realize, okay, it's time-consuming, and I'm not gonna get a scholarship.

But w- when you look at what you're producing, what do you think or what do you hope people will take away from watching these women?

What are you guys doing?

Yeah, so The Champion's Edge is a weekend show on ABC, and it's a series of profiles that... shining a light on successful women from all different industries.

And their common link is that they played sports.

And why that's important is the research.

And I love that this is a research-based show.

So there's been a ton of research guys over the last several years making this really powerful connection between participation and career success for women.

And the stat we love to share is that 94% of female C-suite executives played sports, which is an insane number.

Of course, we know Bonnie forever from her decades covering sports and could help the Bay Area crowd out tomorrow, right, on ABC? Is that right?

What are you guys doing?

Yeah, so The Champion's Edge is a weekend show on ABC, and it's a series of profiles that... shining a light on successful women from all different industries.

And their common link is that they played sports.

And why that's important is the research.

And I love that this is a research-based show.

So there's been a ton of research guys over the last several years making this really powerful connection between participation and career success for women.

And the stat we love to share is that 94% of female C-suite executives played sports, which is an insane number.

Of course, we know Bonnie forever from her decades covering sports and could help the Bay Area crowd out tomorrow, right, on ABC? Is that right?

Wow

... love hanging our hat on.

And more than half of those women played college sports.

And it's just, when I saw the data, it was so personal to me, 'cause I was a, I was an athlete growing up, and obviously playing sports and staying in sports, you have this level of awareness.

But I didn't realize that it transcended what we learn through sports for doctors and lawyers and women in finance, women in technology.

And so while we do profile some women in sports, like we've got Jessica Mendoza, and yes-

And on top of that, she's a great talker.

I'm so glad you brought that up, John, because this week's episode is with a woman by the name of Seyiun Adigun.

And like you said, there's different audiences, different demos, and recognizing the different demo for each audience and then, you know, adjusting your content for that platform, I think it's a mistake that a lot of teams, leagues, media companies make that they don't realize this is really special for each platform.

Yeah, you're exactly right.

Uh, the fact of the matter is it's the easiest thing to do to take one piece of content and slap it on whatever platform, but if you do, it, it to a certain degree is potentially to your peril.

Because if you don't understand the audience, and to even take it [laughs] one step further, if you don't understand how SEO is different, search engine optimization is different for each one of these platforms...

I'll give you a perfect example.

So we're getting ready to launch, Ginger Zee, uh, was our first episode that aired this past Saturday on ABC.

The podcast companion to that will be launching this week.

Right

What have you kind of learned through this project and making sure that you're telling these stories in the way that they need to be told?

Well, I think every time I sit down with somebody, it affirms the hunch that I've always had, which is we've got all of this data, but there hasn't been a platform dedicated to telling the stories.

And so we always talk about in business, two of the keys to being able to build a successful business, number one, identifying a white space in the marketplace, and number two, solving for a problem.

what we're doing with both the Champions Edge TV show and the Athlete Effect podcast is we're checking both of those boxes.

So we've got the data, but there wasn't a platform.

So we are filling that storytelling wide space.

And then in terms of solving the problem, you know, I think we are all so excited about the historic participation levels in girls sports.

What did women's sports coverage look like when you began your career and how was it out there at the big corporations?

Tell everybody what it is, why you wanted to do it, and how they can get it with their bagels this weekend.

Okay, so The Champion's Edge premieres on ABC on Saturday.

You've got to check your local listings because it kind of all depends.

I'm pretty sure in New York it's on at noon in the lead-up to the WNBA countdown pregame show.

So The Champion's Edge is a series of profiles about successful women from all different industries whose common link is that they played sports.

And what I love about it is that it's research-based.

So I had seen the last several of years all of this data coming out around the connection between between sports participation and career success, particularly for women.

So what do you hope that Champions Edge does as far as representation is concerned?