Stop. Take Ten Minutes and Do This One Thing for Women Today.

Today is National Girls and Women in Sports Day, and also the day I may have peaked in my career. Today my company Sports Innovation Lab launched The Fan Project, an initiative dedicated to proving the demand for women's sports, and driving a material increase in investment and media coverage. I've been part of a lot of women's and CSR programs, but this is different.

Here's the deal: broadcast networks, investors, and brands decide which sports teams and leagues to invest in (for media rights, for ownership, for sponsorship) based on data. But guess what? Their data SUCKS. It's your typical linear Nielsen ratings, it's ticket sales, it's watching what other brands do first. It misses all of the non-traditional channels. It misses the fervent fandom on social media. It misses the highlights on YouTube, the merchandise sales (anyone try and buy an orange hoodie last year?!), and the up and coming storm of Gen Z outlets for consuming athlete direct and shoulder sports content.

So the vicious cycle continues, and women's sports continues to be marginalized. Until today.

The way to convince executives and investors to spend more in women's sports is to make the business case. Speak their language. Show them there is tremendous revenue opportunity behind each women's team and athlete, and it's not just charity, it's savvy business to invest in women's sports. And the way we make the case: better data.

That better data lives in your social media archive. Your social media archive is a record of just about everything you've ever done on social media. It's what Facebook and Twitter use to make all their money. And it's yours. You own it. Thanks to GDPR legislation users have the right to download their archive file from these sites and do with it what they please.

So here is my ask: Join The Fan Project and share your social media archive. I'm not going to sugar coat it, it will take about 10 minutes to request your download, and depending on the size of your file another couple of minutes (or even hours) until the download is available. Then you upload it to The Fan Project. Don't worry UNLIKE Facebook and Twitter which are using your personally identifiable information to make money, The Fan Project strips and deletes all PII from the file for our analysis, so it's completely anonymous. And did I mention you get a very cool free tee too??

Your data along with hundreds and thousands of other files from fans will be analyzed and we're going to write a hard hitting report and punch executives and investors in the face with it (well, we'll probably email it, but you get the point).

This is how you make a difference. If girls can't see women in sport, they can't be those future athletes. Find the time. Join The Fan Project. Message me direct for more info or to get involved.