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Theres a lot of momentum around womens sports right now, as ad spending doubled in 2024 and the largest dedicated female sports fund recently announced it has expanded from $150 million to $250 million. While these leaps and bounds are notable, more progress is needed to ensure this isnt a fleeting momentbut rather the beginning of transformative change. Of course, more money always helps, too. Women’s sports is skyrocketing and it’s because we are more visible, more than ever, right now, Stef Strack, founder and CEO of Voice in Sport, said during a panel discussion at the Fast Company Grill at SXSW. Investors are looking at women’s sports as a growth opportunity, not a charity, and that is a really key moment. Deals flow to professional volleyball And investors are putting a lot of money behind womens sports. League One Volleyball (LOVB), a new professional womens league with teams in six cities, raised $160 million through investors, according to Rosie Spaulding, the leagues president, which also has a youth-to-pro ecosystem with 60 youth clubs across 23 states. Whats more, to have a brand like Adidas partner with LOVB for a multimillion-dollar, multiyear deal is a sign of change, she said. When we first started League One Volleyball, I thought women’s sports were on the rise back in 2020, Spaulding said. I think now we can all say that they’re on fire. Another really, really awesome development is that professional athletes are able to build a brand and benefit from sponsorship deals from more brands that are interested in partnering with women in sports, added Logan Eggleston, who plays on the LOVB Austin team in the leagues inaugural season. Shes a partner with CELSIUS, maker of energy drinks, and thats an added benefit to making a living playing the sport she loves. I didn’t know that professional volleyball was a thing when I was younger, Eggleston said. To be able to show those young athletes what they can potentially be one day, and then also provide resources and mentorship for them, is so incredible. A long way to go But all three panelists noted that more change is neededfrom the level of investment to media attention to addressing pay inequity to policy changes (and enforcement) around Title IX to an improved focus on the athlete experience. We’ve seen a ton of momentum, but right now we still have so much more progress to make, Strack said. There’s a lot of discrimination built into the current system, so we have to look fundamentally at everything in the ecosystem and think about, how do we reengineer it? Strack rattled off various stats that show that more change is needed, including: only 10% of sports sponsorship dollars go to women athletes, no women landed in the top 100 list of highest-paid athletes, and that 93% of schools at the collegiate level arent complying with Title IX, the federal civil rights law prohibiting discrimination based on sex in education programs or activities. We have to think about what do we do at the grassroots level, what do we do at the professional level, and then what do we do on the federal policy side to really change things for girls and women in sports, Strack told the audience. Even more basic changes matter, Spaulding added, like giving womens sports prime time slots or providing uniforms that actually fit women or fan gear thats made for women. Yes, there’s been more media, more investment through media, through private equity, through partnerships, et cetera, she said. But there’s a long way to go, and it’s all in the details. Why fan support matters And buy-in from the fans is also important, Eggleston said. They need to show up for women’s sports, they need to learn about the sports, educate themselves on the sports, get to know the athletes, the players that they’re getting to watch. And while equal pay would be amazing, Eggleston said if more female athletes become household names like Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese have in womens basketball, that also moves the needleand particularly if young boys grow up with female athletes as their favorite players. That would be so cool to see, said Eggleston, who said shes already experiencing the perfect time to be an athlete in womens sports. It’s so cool to be starting a league right now when the momentum is really, really just being driven forward. And I just can’t even imagine what’s going to be happening in the next five years.
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E-Commerce
Technology Transformation Services (TTS), a high-tech consulting group housed within the General Services Administration (GSA), is tasked with helping agencies modernize their internal systems and public-facing websites. In the past, the group has had the resources and personnel to create innovative new solutions: for example, building Login.gov, a single sign-on system for secure access to government services, along with Cloud.gov, the governments cloud hosting environment. But now, with Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) at the helm, the group faces a rapidly shrinking headcount and mandate, says a source within the GSA. Two DOGE operativesGSA acting administrator Stephen Ehikian and TTS director Thomas Sheddheld a demo day last Friday where TTS technologists demonstrated the projects theyre working on to the larger organization, says a source within the GSA who spoke on a condition of anonymity. The source says Shedd has been evangelizing to TTS staffers that shipping and delivery of projects is the only focus of the group, echoing a common tech industry ethos. Shedd earlier commented that he believed the deep tech talent and government experience within TTS would be very useful in bringing new efficiency to the government. Shedd, who worked as a software engineer at Tesla for eight years before joining Musks DOGE, told staffers that he needs wins to demonstrate TTSs value to DOGE leadership, the source says. Last week Shedd held an all-hands in which he read a statement saying that DOGE still intends to cut TTS staff by at least half. TTS staffers have been forced into an uneasy “waiting for the other shoe to drop” mode, according to the GSA source. Blanket cuts across an organization rarely lead to increased efficiency, says Kate Green, a former U.S. Digital Service engineer. When you cut people in large groups, institutional knowledge is lost, those left have to rethink how they work, and there’s a significant loss in trust. This isn’t a recipe for quick wins. Meanwhile, Shedd and Ehikian have kept TTS staffers busy continually submitting project status reports. But they are not setting new agendas or redirecting the efforts of TTSs technologists. The only agenda they really are driving is cutting costs for the most part, the source says. We haven’t received any clear guidance on what the goals of the organization are supposed to be after all the cutsor even what they can be with so many cuts past the bone to the marrow, the GSA source says. TTSs scope will likely narrow to a handful of statutorily required projects, including Login.gov; FedRAMP, which standardizes cloud security for federal agencies, and Cloud.gov, a hosting environment for government digital services.. But the line between essential and nonessential projects has yet to be defined or explained, the source says. The uncertainty around the products that will remain active is making it very difficult for organizations that depend on TTS products to be able to plan, Green says. For instance, state governments and other agencies that use login.gov are very concerned about how the product will evolve and they have data privacy concerns. DOGE already completely eliminated one technology group under TTS, 18F, firing about 70 people including engineers, designers, and procurement specialists. The move was announced during the early morning hours of Saturday, March 1. (DOGE didnt respond to Fast Companys request for comment.) The federal government struggles to adopt more efficient technologies partly because of a risk-averse culture, and partly because of layers of policies and regulations that must be satisfied. A charitable interpretation is that DOGE has in mind a destroy to create approach to modernizing government systems. But, based on the groups actions so far, and on the fact that its presidential mandate expires on July 4, 2026, it seems more likely that DOGEs real agenda is just the destroy part. In other words Musk is trying to do the same thing to government that he did with his takeover of Twitter. “Maybe thats fine in private industry where the tools that youre working with are Twitter or Tesla and the impact to the public is not as great and lives are not lost, says Itir Cole, a U.S. Digital Service staffer who recently left the government rather than becoming part of DOGE. But when you do this for a federal program, if it fails at any point there could be lives lost.”
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E-Commerce
The only thing more American than baseball and apple pie might be the Statue of Liberty. Its a universally identifiable bit of iconography, appearing on stamps, currency, and Planet of the Apes movies since time immemorial. The blue-green, toga-clad Lady Liberty is a sturdy symbol of democracy, independence, and the land of opportunity. And in 2025, an official from the country who gifted America the statue has asked for it backthe latest sign that America, the brand, is becoming toxic. A French Member of European Parliament may have been joking at a recent party meeting when he said, Were going to say to the Americans who have chosen to side with the tyrants, to the Americans who fired researchers for demanding scientific freedom: Give us back the Statue of Liberty. He might have also been dead serious. Either way, hes certainly not alone in reconsidering his views about what America has to offer the world these days, and vice versa. Global backlash hits U.S. brands Boycotts of U.S.-made products have broken out in Canadawhere some cafes have taken to calling Americanos “Canadianos“along with France and Sweden, where a Facebook group geared around boycotting the U.S. has swelled to nearly 80,000 members. In addition to a grassroots boycott push in Denmark, where Trump annexation-target Greenland technically resides, the countrys largest grocery store operator has added a black star on price tags for European products, to make it easier for customers to avoid purchasing American goods. And even without explicitly boycotting American products, fewer people around the world stand poised to buy them in the near-term. Between supply chain disruptions and an unmistakable aura of economic uncertainty, Tesla is unlikely to be the only American company that sees its global sales plunge this year. (Canada has already removed Jack Daniels products from store shelves, as a retaliatory measure for Trumps tariffs, while Beyond Meat recently shared fears of its revenue suffering from anti-American sentiment.) Since Donald Trump resumed office on January 20, hes alienated America from much of the rest of the world. His run of omnidirectional trade wars has antagonized U.S. allies with hefty tariffs, and confused many with their incoherence and inconsistency. He has acted with imperialist hostility, threatening to annex the U.S.s Northern neighbor and largest trading partner, along with the Panama Canal and Greenland. He has paradoxically portrayed Ukraine as the aggressor in Russias invasion of the country, and withheld military support for the region on the condition of receiving rare minerals for Americas efforts. His administration has cut off 90% of funding from USAID, which a New York Times report claims may lead to 1.65 million deaths from AIDS this year, and his domestic crackdown on dissent has made it unclear whether America is still meant to be a beacon of democracy. When hockey fans at Montreals Bell Centre last month booed the Star Spangled Banner in multiple games against the American team, it was clearly about more than just hockey. And it might have also been just the beginning of a worldwide backlash. Opposing the U.S. wins elections Leaders in several countries have lately learned that opposing the U.S. is now likely to bolster domestic support. The next election in Canada once seemed like a surefire victory for the Conservative Party, with late-2024 polling showing the Liberal Party down by 26 points. But as the Liberals newly elected PM Mark Carney has taken a strong stance against Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, the two parties are now locked in a dead heat. (In his recent victory speech, Carney referred to the U.S. as a country we can no longer trust.”) Similarly, Jens-Frederik Nielsen’s Demokraatit party won a March 11 election in Greenland, partly due to the popularity of Nielsens resistance to Trumps ongoing threats to absorb the country. And in France, Senator Claude Malhuret’s recent speech savagely dunking on the U.S. turned him into a viral sensation. (Washington has become the court of Nero, he said, kicking off the fiery diatribe. An incendiary emperor, submissive courtiers, and a buffoon on ketamine tasked with purging the civil service.) As those leaders have had difficulty working with the U.S., some of them now seem to be searching for a workaround. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer convened a meeting with the heads of 18 countries earlier this month, with the goal of building a coalition of the willing in Ukraines defense. The U.S. was apparently not invited. Nor was it invited to a top security summit in France last Tuesday with military leaders from more than 30 NATO member nations. And just this week, Canada PM Carney put forth the idea of his country trading more with the UK, France, and Europe if America continues to look inward. Americas fading appeal Canadian tourism to the U.S. is down, with reports indicating a 20% year-over-year decline in new bookings to U.S. destinations since February 1. Travel-hesitance is spreading beyond Canada, too. According to the Washington Post, International travel to the United States is expected to slide by 5% this year, contributing to a $64 billion shortfall for the travel industry. Considering the horror stories coming out now about international visitors being detained for specious reasons, and subjected to awful conditions, the U.S. is bound to strike vanishingly fewer global citizens as a beckoning travel destinationeven just for conferences. All that hostility toward the U.S. has started boiling over into the streets as well. Anti-American protests have lately broken out in Panama, in response to Trumps threats to reclaim its namesake canal, while at least 120 Stand Up for Science events have taken place outside of the U.S., drawing attention to recent DOGE cuts in research funding. Other international critics have instead focused their distaste with the U.S. entirely around DOGE-master Elon Musk, vandalizing signage around the UK and destroying 12 cars in a Tesla showroom in France. Last August, about half of Western Europeans polled by YouGov had a favorable view of the U.S. Since Trump resumed office, only 37% of British, 34% of French, 32% of Germans,and just 20% of Danes now hold a positive opinion of the United States. Its not the first time Americas brand has been in tatters, of course. Its not even the first time recently. A cycle of rise and fall The U.S.s global reputation has been on a roller coaster throughout the entire 21st century. After 9/11, America held much of the worlds sympathiesand then promptly squandered them with the Iraq War, which proved so unpopular, it inspired mass protests in over 600 global cities. During those years, crafty entrepreneurs even started selling Canadian kits to Americans, so they might pass as mere North Americans while traveling overseas, and avoid getting yelled at. Years later, the stars and stripes made a comeback. The Obama years seemed to restore global faith in U.S. leadership, especially after America joined the Paris Climate Accords in 2015. Then under Trump, confidence in U.S. leadership fell to a historic low of 30%. Maybe this is just how it will always gothe U.S. brand losing some of its luster and then re-polishing it to a shiny gleam again every four to eight years. (In 2023, 59% of respondents around the world gave the U.S. a favorable rating in a Pew Research survey.) When the U.S. brand is strong, the words Made in America ring out around the world as shorthand for quality, durability, and freedomeven when its just a cheeseburger or a pair of jeans. As long as this administration drags that brand through the mud, though, Made in America will likely translate in any language to caveat emptor: buyer beware.
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E-Commerce
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