Laura Stacey #7 of the Montréal Victoire celebrates her objective with teammates in the course of the third interval in opposition to the Seattle Torrent at Place Bell on March 19, 2026 in Laval, Quebec, Canada.
Minas Panagiotakis | Getty Pictures Sport | Getty Pictures
The 2026 Milan Winter Olympics, which culminated in a U.S.-Canada gold medal sport that set viewership data throughout the U.S., thrust ladies’s hockey into the highlight prefer it hasn’t been earlier than. The Skilled Ladies’s Hockey League has spent a lot of the final three years positioning itself to capitalize on the momentum to construct a sustainable ladies’s hockey league.
“Each Olympic yr, there can be some increase in pleasure and curiosity across the ladies’s sport,” mentioned Jayna Hefford, govt vice chairman of hockey operations for the PWHL, who gained 5 Olympic medals enjoying for Crew Canada. “Once I take into consideration the place we at the moment are, it is kind of exponential from that.”
Regardless of the current success of ladies’s sports activities and leagues just like the WNBA and NWSL, ladies’s hockey leagues have struggled to discover a comparable footing, and that’s even with the Olympic success of the U.S. and Canadian groups. Since ladies’s ice hockey was launched as an Olympic sport in 1998, Canada has gained 5 of the eight gold medals, with the U.S. successful the opposite three, together with a 2-1 additional time win on the 2026 Video games.
A number of earlier makes an attempt to launch ladies’s hockey leagues in North America have failed, usually as a result of monetary difficulties. Whereas the WNBA is partially owned and sponsored by the NBA, the NHL has not traditionally supplied monetary assist for a ladies’s league, and plenty of of these organizations have struggled to pay gamers sustainable wages. In 2019, most of the high ladies’s gamers boycotted the prevailing skilled leagues in a combat for higher assets.
However that panorama shifted in 2023 with the launch of the PWHL. The league is privately funded by Mark Walter, the billionaire Guggenheim Companions co-founder and CEO, who over the previous few years has turn into one of many largest sports activities buyers with controlling stakes in MLB’s Los Angeles Dodgers, the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers, the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks, and motorsports group Andretti World. Walter, who acquired the rights of one other ladies’s hockey league as a part of the PWHL’s launch, additionally introduced on tennis legend Billie Jean King and her associate Ilana Kloss as members of the PWHL’s advisory board.
Regardless of a brief timeline (the league was introduced in August 2023 and performed its first sport on Jan. 1, 2024), the PWHL has seen success over its first three seasons. The now-eight-team league has drawn followers throughout North America, set a number of attendance data, attracted main sponsors, and, maybe most significantly, was a platform for the perfect ladies’s hockey gamers on the earth as they ready for the 2026 Winter Olympics.
Billie Jean King and Jayna Hefford stroll to middle ice for the ceremonial puck drop earlier than Toronto performs New York of their PWHL hockey sport on the Mattamy Athletic Centre on January 1, 2024 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Mark Blinch | Getty Pictures
New followers and extra income post-Olympics
The league ready for the stage the 2026 Winter Olympics would supply.
“We understood it was going to place a digital camera on our league, not like the rest,” mentioned Stan Kasten, Los Angeles Dodgers president and CEO and a member of the PWHL advisory board.
When the Olympic rosters have been introduced, 61 of the league’s roughly 184 gamers have been named to nationwide groups, with 39 of these gamers showing within the gold medal sport.
“Proper then, we talked about it: it’ll require further price range, it’ll require further folks, let’s get a facility in Milan and put together to take sponsors, buyers, and a world of assembled media who’re all seeing the foremost ladies’s hockey league on the earth for the primary time,” Kasten mentioned. “We thought of it as a launch pad for our subsequent wave of curiosity. I’ve to let you know, like with loads of issues from the primary day we began this league, I couldn’t have predicted it could end up this properly.”
The Olympic momentum has carried over into arenas. The PWHL set a brand new U.S. enviornment report with 17,335 followers on the first-ever sellout of Local weather Pledge Area in Seattle on Feb. 27, marking the third time the league set a brand new attendance report this season alone. The primary weekend the league returned to play, it set a brand new league weekend attendance report with 49,343 followers.
In complete, attendance by way of 71 video games of the 2025-2026 PWHL season was at 616,795 followers, a median of 8,687 and a 20% improve in comparison with the earlier season.
Throughout the month of February, merchandise gross sales have been up 101% in comparison with the gross sales previous to the Olympics. The PWHL noticed its video views on YouTube, the place it predominantly broadcasts video games, improve 200% over the Olympics interval. It additionally noticed visitors to its web site develop by six occasions in the course of the Olympics interval, with 73% of web site visitors coming from new customers.
“It is nice to see the numbers at present, however the arduous work truly begins now,” mentioned Amy Scheer, PWHL govt vice chairman of enterprise operations. “We have got these followers, we have these new followers, we have this consideration, now what can we do with it?”
Followers greet Abby Boreen #22 of the Vancouver Goldeneyes as she takes the ice previous to the workforce’s first ever PWHL sport in opposition to the Seattle Torrent at Pacific Coliseum on November 21, 2025 in Vancouver, Canada.
Wealthy Lam | Getty Pictures Sport | Getty Pictures
In March, the PWHL signed a take care of Scripps Sports activities to broadcast the league’s Walter Cup Finals on Ion, which is able to mark the primary time will probably be aired throughout the U.S. on a linear community. Ion additionally aired a sport on March 28, marking the league’s first nationally televised sport. Scheer mentioned the league is in talks with quite a lot of companions over potential media rights offers for subsequent season, declining to offer extra particulars.
Filling greater arenas round North America
The rise in recognition helps the league fill greater and larger arenas, and in cities the place there may be not a PWHL workforce. Because it launched, the PWHL has used a “Takeover Tour” barnstorming technique to play some video games outdoors of dwelling arenas to check new markets or attempt to replenish bigger arenas.
That technique will likely be on show on Saturday when the New York Sirens, who usually play on the Prudential Middle in Newark, dwelling of the NHL’s New Jersey Devils, will play at Madison Sq. Backyard versus the Seattle Torrent. The sport has already been marked as a sell-out of the greater than 18,000-seat enviornment.
The league has additionally bought out a scheduled sport at TD Backyard in Boston on April 11 between the Boston Fleet and the Montreal Victoire. That enviornment seats greater than 17,800 folks.
Scheer mentioned that on earlier stops of the league’s Takeover Excursions, upwards of 60% of the followers attending had by no means been to an NHL sport at these arenas. That’s informing the league’s growth technique, with plans so as to add as many as 4 new groups subsequent season.
“The listing of cities that need us is so long as any listing you can have,” Kasten mentioned. “The issue we’ve, notably in American cities, is that probably the most acceptable venue for us is not the 5,000- or 6,000-seat enviornment; it is the large venues, and so they haven’t got dates for us. I’ve talked to the NHL groups in these buildings, and the homeowners of these buildings, and discovering dates is our largest difficulty now in cities.”
All of these items add up because the PWHL appears to be like to be a sustainable – and in the end worthwhile — league. Kasten mentioned the league has outpaced its expense projections every season, however that “it has all the time matched the expansion in income, so it turned out to be value it.”
“The income progress has been constant, and subsequent yr it’ll take one other leap,” he mentioned. “We’re nonetheless within the pink once more, however that is what we deliberate for, and the hole is closing.”
The league signed a CBA with its gamers by way of 2031, and it hopes to be worthwhile by that time.
Kasten mentioned there are not any present plans to promote groups to particular person homeowners, however there was some current speak about bringing on extra buyers, particularly as extra folks method the league in search of engaging sports activities alternatives.
Hefford mentioned that as she’s watched the league develop, “it is a lot totally different than something that is ever existed earlier than, and other people perceive that.” Hefford herself performed in earlier skilled ladies’s hockey league iterations and likewise served as a commissioner, and she or he mentioned the PWHL has the chance to supply gamers and followers one thing these different leagues hadn’t.
“For a very long time, it was all the time in regards to the nationwide groups, and now I believe we’re seeing a shift the place there is a loyalty in the direction of the PWHL groups and the communities,” she mentioned. “Nationwide groups will all the time be an unimaginable alternative, however there’s simply a lot extra now that they are often enthusiastic about as properly.”
What’s subsequent for the league and its gamers
When Laura Stacey returned from the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing after enjoying for Canada, she mentioned she needed to ask herself a troublesome query.
“You come again, it is like, ‘What’s subsequent? The place do I am going? Do I preserve going for an additional 4 years?” she mentioned. “It is this four-year cycle state of affairs of gamers pondering if they’ll afford to proceed taking over an Olympic dream.”
Stacey mentioned that the Olympics have all the time been the “pinnacle” for ladies’s hockey gamers, a dream that she’s been in a position to dwell 3 times, together with successful two gold medals.
“The truth that now we get to play all yr lengthy, each single yr in an unimaginable league, after which each 4 years, gamers who’re on the high of their sport get an opportunity to characterize their nations on the Olympics after which come again and nonetheless have this skilled league behind them, it is simply unimaginable,” she mentioned.
Nonetheless, there may be work to do. Stacey, who’s the president of the gamers’ affiliation, mentioned the gamers are working intently with the league to verify amenities and different elements of the participant expertise stay excessive because the league expands. The gamers additionally need to see salaries develop because the league does – league common salaries are roughly $55,000, based on the CBA.
Kasten mentioned the league is pushing for extra visibility and protection. At present, the league’s scores usually are not highlighted on ESPN’s app or its web site.
Scheer mentioned whereas she not has to teach potential sponsors about what the PWHL is or why ladies’s hockey is a beautiful alternative, the dialog is now shifting to asking supposed supporters to “put your cash the place your mouth is.”
Hefford mentioned whereas the league has launched a number of initiatives encouraging younger women to play hockey, there may be nonetheless a lot to do to encourage the following era of PWHL stars and followers.
Nonetheless, Stacey mentioned it’s not misplaced on her or the gamers that the PWHL has already made important progress.
“We have had each model [of a league], and so they all haven’t labored out for a lot of varied causes till now. However none of that was even near the place we’re at now,” she mentioned. “So for us, it is like we’re right here. We have made it. This has been created now. We have to do no matter we presumably can to guarantee that that is greater, higher, stronger after we all go away.”
