The $1.5 billion effect Australia’s female athletes want to cash in on

There’s been a billion-dollar boom in women’s sport, and Australia’s premier female athletes want to capitalise on it.

As the social media profiles of individual athletes such as rugby’s Ilona Maher and basketball’s Caitlin Clark surge in popularity, cricketer Phoebe Litchfield isn’t the only one wondering who can do the same here.

Ahead of their respective world cups, Pheoebe Litchfield takes a selfie with Tia Hinds, Annabelle Codey, Ashleigh Gardner, and Desiree Miller at North Sydney Oval.Credit: Getty Images

“I’m thinking who’s the Ilona? Who’s the cricket version, and I can’t picture anyone,” Litchfield said. “Same with Caitlin Clark … I don’t have the personality for it, but it would be cool to grow the sport in that scene.”

Besides generating million-dollar sponsorship deals, a Sports Illustrated cover, a spot on Dancing with the Stars, and likely being the highest-paid women’s rugby player in the world, Maher has also brought unprecedented wealth to the women’s game. Last year, the Bristol Bears moved their season opener to a larger stadium to accommodate her fans.

The Athletic estimates that Caitlin Clark has delivered as much as $1.5 billion to the WNBA after spending little more than one year in the league.

When the Wallaroos play the US in the group stage of the Women’s World Cup in England next month, they’ll play against Maher. Wallaroos player Annabelle Codey has already seen the impact of her enormous profile.

“I think the Ilona Maher effect’s been huge,” she said. “I’m all about it, I think a few of the girls are getting around it as well. I think anything that can amplify our game and put female athletes on the world stage is great.”

Despite being enthusiastic about the overflow benefits of Maher’s social profile on women’s sport, Codey, like Litchfield, is reluctant to become the face of Australian women’s rugby. She knows, having seen it on her own team, that the downsides of a large profile can overshadow the good.

Cricketer Ashleigh Gardner has grown used to the bulging crowds that follow the Indian Women’s Premier League (WPL), the same fans likely to greet her and the Australian team when they begin their own World Cup campaign there in October.

With the growth that’s come via the WPL, the comments sections of Gardner’s social media pages have been increasingly frequented by an uglier kind of spectator.

“I’ve copped it online many times because I haven’t played the way that someone else wanted me to play, and I didn’t win them a bet they probably put on me,” Gardner said.

“It’s one of those things where there’s plenty of good that comes out of social media and the platform that you can create from it as well ... So it’s probably [about] utilising that when you can and really leveraging that platform when it’s necessary.”

With both the Wallaroos and Australian women’s cricket team to compete in respective world cups later this year, some of them might utilise the lessons from players like Maher.

As Codey puts it, “there’s been a few more TikToks getting made”.

News, results and expert analysis from the weekend of sport sent every Monday. Sign up for our Sport newsletter.