We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Haley Rosen. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Haley below.
Haley, appreciate you joining us today. What’s something you believe that most people in your industry (or in general) disagree with?
I don’t think legacy platforms are a long-term solution for women’s sports leagues. Simply put, these platforms have built their audience, their strategy, and, crucially, their rights agreements around men’s sports. They might incrementally cover more games each year, but they’ll never be a place where women’s sports are the main priority. There’s only so much they can do to support this space. I understand why industry stakeholders celebrate the big TV numbers when they come out, but for women’s sports to reach their full potential, it seems obvious to me that we’re going to have to build our own media ecosystem, rather than simply ask for a growing but still minority share of the old media landscape.
Haley, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
My initial dream was to be a professional soccer player. I played at Stanford and then professionally both in America and abroad before injuries put an end to my career. It was only after I retired and tried to keep up with my friends still actively playing that I realized just how hard it was to follow women’s sports. Every once and a while, there’d be a game on TV. But there was no one who made it easy to follow these leagues and teams on an everyday basis.
Just Women’s Sports was created to solve that problem. We started as an Instagram account and quickly grew into a cross-platform outlet that’s dedicated to being a daily, one-stop shop for the women’s sports fan. Our goal is to make it easy and fun to be a women’s sports fan. That starts with providing round-the-clock coverage across social and editorial of the biggest stories in women’s sports. We layer original content on top of this, from an in-studio World Cup show to podcasts, digital series and more. And then we also throw events like the official NWSL Championship Weekend party, as well as sell merch.
I’m most proud of the brand we’ve built, and an ethos that has stayed consistent since day one. We’ve reset people’s expectations around what successful women’s sports content looks like. Historically, other companies have focused on what athletes do off the field. They’ve focused on what makes female athletes great models, rather than what makes them great and compelling athletes. We celebrate these athletes as athletes and lean into everything that makes sports so captivating and fun. And because of that, we’ve grown into the largest and most-engaged women’s sports media outlet. And we’ve done it all without relying on a men’s sports partner or surrounding entity.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
I think you need to be firm in your brand and flexible in your strategy. For us, that means never diverging from our core company ethos of treating these athletes like athletes. At the same time, we’re extremely analytics-driven when it comes to the strategy around our programming and packaging. Analytics are how our audience talks to us. And we use them to constantly improve.
How do you keep your team’s morale high?
You have to find a way to normalize feedback. For us, that means making feedback a regular part of our weekly process. By making it regular and consistent, you avoid it feeling arbitrary or personal, and people are more willing to buy in and honestly reflect on the things we’ve done well and the things we can improve.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://justwomenssports.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justwomenssports/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/justwomenssports
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/haleyrosen/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/HaleyRosen
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@JWS