Leading women's sports news breakers are joining forces to create the ultimate 'women's sports content network'

• Only a small fraction of all sports media coverage is devoted to reporting on women's games.
• Two of the biggest players in women's sports media are joining forces to change that metric.

Even despite the seemingly exponential growth of interest and investment in women's sports, only 4% of all sports media coverage is devoted to the women's game.

The dearth of reporting in the space has created a disparate sports ecosystem: a world where several men's sports leagues command 24-hour news cycles of their own while women's sports fans struggle to find fresh content.

But now, two of the most influential publications in the space are embarking on a partnership that seeks to close that tremendous gap in coverage. The Next — a premier WNBA and women's college basketball newsroom from The IX — and leading women's soccer outlet Equalizer Soccer are joining forces to give fans "an opportunity to engage with women's sports as obsessively as anyone who wants to do that on the men's sports side has been able to for years," says Howard Megdal, founder of The IX and editor in chief of The Next.

"The idea behind it is it gives people an all-in-one women's sports network," Megdal told Insider. "They're gonna have the opportunity to get six different women's sports every week from The IX, 24/7 coverage of women's soccer from Equalizer, and 24/7 women's basketball coverage from The Next."

"It's the type of women's sports content network that just isn't available anywhere else," he added. "There's never been anything like it."

The new relationship between the publications gives subscribers of one outlet the chance to subscribe to the other at a 50% discount. And by pooling their editorial resources, the newsrooms will have even greater means to create the quality journalism that's made them mainstays in the women's sports space.

That means more reporters showing up at games and "doing the work every single day" to "hear, see, notice, understand, follow up, and break that news," as Megdal explained.

From in-depth features analyzing how Angel City FC and US Women's National Team superstar Christen Press puts so much power behind the ball to breaking the news of Diana Taurasi's 2021 WNBA Finals door-punching outburst and analyzing how Christie Sides' transformational defensive efforts with the Atlanta Dream led her to the front of the bench for the Indiana Fever, the work The Next, The IX, and Equalizer Soccer have produced for years is set to become even more accessible to women's sports enthusiasts.

"Ideologically, we come from similar standpoints of knowing the kind of hard work that has to go into it," Jeff Kassouf, Equalizer Soccer's founder, told Insider. "And as much as we, like most people in this space, want to see [women's sports] succeed, both of us recognize that you can be critical within that. I think that's where we align really well —reporting this like a sport — like so many other sports."

"It's the fact that we are there, we show up, and we have developed the relationships that go along with that; that's how you are able to break news in this space from the people who recognize that," Megdal added. "Honoring independent, shoe-leather reporting is so fundamentally important. It's something that has been taken for granted on the men's side and, on the women's side, too often has simply not existed."