Investing in Women's Sports | Alexis Ohanian on A Bit of Optimism #Podcast

14 Nov 2024 · 1 min

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YouTube interview (A Bit of Optimism podcast) in which Simon Sinek and Alexis Ohanian discuss Ohanian’s support for women’s sports. Ohanian says he is directing funds to his alma mater’s (UVA) women’s basketball program — framing the gift as both a donation and an "investment" in the athletes’ futures — and argues market signals (social-followers/popularity) show college women’s basketball deserves more institutional support.

Questions this video answers

The University of Virginia (UVA) women’s basketball team.

He says it’s not really an investment financially — it’s a donation — but frames it as investing in the young women’s futures.

What women's sport are you investing in next?
I've been waiting to do something in basketball, and it's not a WNBA team at the moment, but my alma mater, uva, has an amazing women's basketball program, and so I'm putting some dollars toward the UVA women's basketball team. You got assholes like me tweeting for years now that if you just looked at their follower accounts, the women of college basketball were way more popular than men. And now you're not making a case about, you know, equality or feminism or social justice. You're just simply saying, like, the market's spoken, like, ncaa. If you're not supporting these women, you're bad at your jobs. I've been just excited to be able to do this, investing in these young women in the program, and hopefully it'll scale. It's not really an investment because obviously it's donations, but still, it's investing in these young women.
Not all investments have financial returns. It's still an investment.
That's right.
We invest in education, we invest in the future, we invest in our children. And you're investing in college, women's sports.
That's an infinite roi.