Women's Sport Globally Is Growing a Second Revenue Leg. India's Is Still Looking for Its First.

Global women’s sport revenue has gone from USD 692 million to USD 3.04 billion in four years, and matchday has gone from 11% of it to 30%. India has the demand — 500 million watched the World Cup. Its women’s football league has never published an attendance figure.

The dataset

This is not a story about sponsorship declining. Commercial revenue grew by more than USD 250m in absolute terms between 2025 and 2026 alone — more than matchday's USD 163m rise. It is shrinking only as a share, because something else grew faster. That something is people buying tickets.

Matchday went from 11% of global women's sport revenue to 30% in four years. That is the second leg. It is the one India does not have.

Around it, the asset values moved. The Women's National Basketball Association's (WNBA) media deal is now worth USD 200m a year, four times the previous one. Fifty-plus WNBA games drew over a million viewers. Expansion fees have gone USD 50m for Golden State in 2025, to USD 125m for Portland, to USD 250m each for Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia — a fivefold rise in roughly a year. The Golden State Valkyries' inaugural-season revenue exceeded USD 78m against a USD 50m expansion fee. Private equity deals in sport went from 50 in 2018 to 192 in 2025. (Franchise values and the Valkyries figure are Goldman's, reported via Fortune, 28 October.)

And Deloitte uses India as evidence, not as a counter-example. The 2025 ICC Women's World Cup in India drew nearly 300,000 stadium attendees and almost 500 million viewers, 185 million on JioHotstar for the final alone. Ticket sales for the 2026 T20 World Cup rose 171% in the week after India's win, and 265% for India fixtures.

The demand is proven. The revenue line is not built.

Capri Sports — the Indian operator with the most at stake

Capri Sports is not a separately incorporated company. It is the sports vertical of Capri Global Holdings Private Limited (CIN U74110MH1995PTC095112, incorporated 8 December 1995, Mumbai), the family-office arm of the Rajesh Sharma group. Four existing holdings were consolidated in mid-2023 and the brand launched in November 2023. No external funding round — this is promoter capital. No Capri Sports revenue or profit-and-loss statement is filed or published anywhere.

The senior named principal is Jinisha Sharma, daughter of founder Rajesh Sharma. Leadership includes Apurv Gupta and Kshemal Waingankar.

The portfolio is the largest single commitment to women's sport by any private Indian operator.

And the tender itself tells you what Indian women's football is currently worth. Package A, the men's rights, went to Genius Sports at INR 64.39 crore in Year 1, against at least two bidders. Package B — all of Indian women's football — went to Capri Sports at INR 4.54 crore, 7.1% of the men's bid, on a single bid. It had drawn exactly one bid in the earlier standalone process of December 2025 too.

In Capri's favour, and worth saying plainly. Jinisha Sharma called the UP Warriorz purchase a "calculated risk" and put season-on-season profitability at five to six years from March 2024 — roughly 2029-30. That is a named Indian women's-sport owner putting a date on break-even. Almost nobody else does.

What it would take to build a second revenue leg in India

Five things, and the evidence points to each of them.

1. Somebody has to publish an attendance figure. The IWL has never published one. Matchday is 30% of global women's sport revenue, and India's women's football league does not count its crowd. You cannot build a revenue line you do not measure.

2. The clubs have to play at home. The 2026-27 IWL runs 13 November to 23 January as a centralised tournament across Kolkata, Jamshedpur and Bengaluru — eight clubs, 56 matches, a format chosen to control cost. A league played away from its clubs' home markets structurally cannot build the paying local support that matchday revenue is made of.

3. The pay floor has to move. INR 3.2 lakh (USD 3,357) a year, for a minimum of ten Indian players per club, set at the AIFF Executive Committee of 17 April 2023. We could find no revision since — three and a half years in which global women's sport revenue roughly quadrupled.

4. The prize money has to mean something. The last verifiable IWL figures are from 2022: champions INR 10 lakh, runners-up INR 5 lakh, about INR 16.25 lakh in total — less than the INR 25 lakh an I-League club received for finishing fourth. Current prize money: NOT FOUND. Meanwhile East Bengal's single AFC Women's Champions League group-stage win in November 2025 earned USD 120,000 (INR 1.08 cr) — more than a third of their entire reported INR 3 crore annual salary budget. The money is coming from outside India.

5. The leagues have to survive. The counter-example is hockey. The Women's Hockey India League had Odisha Warriors and their replacement Ranchi Royals terminated over unpaid player salaries and franchise dues, waived its INR 2.5 crore women's franchise fee to keep teams in, and had India internationals including Salima Tete and Navneet Kaur publicly appealing for the league to be saved — in August 2026.

The structure is at least pointed the right way. The IWL rights agreement sends 30% of central match inventory to participating clubs, gives the AIFF 20% of AIFF-procured sponsorship, and obliges the rights holder to top the AIFF up if 5% of gross revenue exceeds the guarantee. Whether any of that turns into money is the thing to watch.

NOT FOUND: the Lxme title sponsorship value and term; any IWL 1 broadcaster for 2026-27; any prize money or club payment under the Capri deal; any IWL attendance figure, ever; Tata's WPL title sponsorship value; any WPL franchise's published revenue.

The unasked question

Global women's sport built its second revenue leg out of people in seats. India's women's football league has never published an attendance figure in its life. Which number does the IWL plan to grow?