On this episode of McKinsey Talks Talent, McKinsey talent experts Brooke Weddle and Bryan Hancock join Global Editorial Director Lucia Rahilly for a conversation with Jason Wright, managing partner and head of investments at Project Level and former president of the NFL’s Washington Commanders. Together, they explore how women’s sports is scaling rapidly—and what it takes to build an industry with lasting economic and social impact.

The following transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

Lucia Rahilly: Jason Wright, welcome to McKinsey Talks Talent.

Jason Wright: Thank you so much. It’s always nice to come home.

Lucia Rahilly: Jason, it feels like the blink of an eye, but it’s been several years now. When did you abandon us for the Washington Commanders?

Jason Wright: I jumped ship in 2020. What a wild four and a half years it’s been.

Lucia Rahilly: Well, tell us about it. Since January, you’ve been in this super cool role at Ariel Investments. Talk to us about Project Level and what its mission is.

Jason Wright: Project Level is a private equity fund that is focused on leveling the playing field in women’s sports and taking advantage of the once-in-a-generation economic opportunity that is now behind women’s sports. For a long time, we’ve all known that the performance of women on the pitch, court, and field has been at a high level.

I think we’ve all idolized various female sports stars, whether it be Serena Williams, Billie Jean King—the list goes on and on. The economics of the sports industry have not supported women’s sports in the way they’ve supported men’s sports over time. But there is now a generation of folks who have grown up with more gender parity in participation in youth sports and greater exposure to female athletes in their local environments. There is now a built-in fan base that is willing to spend real money on women’s sports going forward. And we’ve seen the explosion of talent like Caitlin Clark in college basketball. The WNBA has catalyzed that share of wallet toward women’s sports in a way that it always could have and is now the sustainable reality for the next three decades.

We want to take advantage of that. One goal is to have great returns for our investors, but we also want to bring the relational and intellectual capital to the full ecosystem of women’s sports so that this moment lasts. The goal is that these businesses grow faster—not just the ones we’re invested in, but the whole industry, because it’s the right way to support this great talent that’s been on the field for so long.

Brooke Weddle: What encouraged you personally to take on this role?

Jason Wright: Women’s sports were part and parcel of our household growing up. My sister was a really talented athlete. She played softball, basketball, volleyball, and she ran track. She was as active as I was in sports. So we had up-close proximity to girls’ sports and what it could mean to bring a family together and have great leadership development and character molding the same way it does for men’s sports.

At the next step, pro sports tickets and men’s sports were really expensive, and they are even more so now. When I was with the Commanders, we did pricing exercises that showed we could almost perpetually increase pricing every year and still not see demand fall off. You start to price out the everyday family. That’s good for the economics and the P&L [profit and loss] of those franchises, but it changes the value proposition of the gathering place for the everyday family. That still exists in women’s sports today.

For me, there was never any difference between a professional female player and a professional male player because I knew the work ethic and investment was the same, especially as my career progressed. So, it is personal in that regard, especially to make sure the economics afford these women the same opportunities to jump-start their careers and their future the way a much less-decorated NFL career did for me.

Turning momentum into long-term business strategy

Bryan Hancock: How have you seen women’s sports evolve from your time watching the Los Angeles Sparks to now? It feels like there is more coverage, from a media standpoint, for mainstream sports, but it also seems that there are other three-on-three leagues and other opportunities for women’s sports that are popping up.

Jason Wright: You nailed it. What’s happening right now is that there’s both scale and innovation happening within women’s sports. Take, for example, the NWSL [National Women’s Soccer League], where we’ve invested in the new franchise in Denver. Viewership from 2023 to 2024 was up 95 percent year over year. These are the types of numbers that exist across each and every marketplace. At the NCAA tournament this year, the women’s tournament ad sales were up 200 percent.

Brooke Weddle: Incredible.

Jason Wright: At the same time, we’re seeing innovation. Unrivaled, a three-on-three women’s basketball league, is a synergistic complement to the WNBA that allows us to see the talent on display in a different way, and creates storylines that will carry into the WNBA season, which draws more attention to the sport.

We’re seeing new leagues emerge. We invested in League One volleyball, which is a new professional women’s volleyball league. They had their first season this year, and they’re situated in cities that have a history of NCAA championships in volleyball. So, they have a built-in fan base, and it has been rad to see them have sellouts in their first season because of that smart strategic decision. They’ve got a youth business involving 20,000 or so people built underneath this league. That creates fans and advocates of the game. So you’re seeing things in this space that not only are good, solid business ideas but also draw more people in, making the tagline even more true that everybody watches women’s sports.

Lucia Rahilly: Is that true? When you’re talking about growth and opportunities to scale, we have seen this surge in popularity. Who are women’s sports fans?

Jason Wright: This is maybe the biggest evolution in women’s sports to date. It used to be almost a mission-driven and activist viewership group that wanted to invest in women’s sports. It is now a much broader swath of folks. It skews toward Gen Z and Gen Alpha, whose attention some of the more mature leagues have struggled to capture.

Applying a playbook for operational growth

Brooke Weddle: What are you taking away from leading the Commanders into Project Level and trying to really strengthen that pipeline of talent for women’s sports?

Jason Wright: We believe that the relationships, frameworks, and approaches that we had to break down and rebuild the Commanders will also have an outsize value in women’s sports because they haven’t had the intellectual and relational connections that the major men’s sports have. At the Commanders, the business side is where the learnings are even more relevant. We had to completely overhaul the organization. We turned over 85 percent of the workforce, set a new business strategy, and we increased local revenue by over 50 percent. Then we worked on margin expansion, and we grew EBITDA ninefold. Then we sold the team to the new ownership group, stayed on to oversee the transition, and got an important stadium deal done. All of those components are really important in women’s sports that are at a more nascent stage as organizations. They often don’t have access to the tools that are common on men’s teams.

The historical narrative of these women’s franchises and leagues is that they can’t run profitably, that they’re going to be money losers that have to be subsidized, and then you get a nice valuation exit. That does not have to be the case. We see a very clear ramp to profitability in Denver, and just by deploying our relationships, we’re seeing impact on the P&L.

Bryan Hancock: What is the ownership model when you all go in to own a team, and how do you communicate that?

Jason Wright: It varies from league to league. The NWSL and WNBA have caps on how much of a team a private equity firm can own and how many teams you can be a part of. Our goal is to invest up to the cap in each one. We really want to be able to lean in as operators, link with principal owners who want that expertise and that help to run the franchise in the black, and have the kind of growth trajectory I just described.

Then we want to be multiple team owners across the mature women’s leagues over time, which to us is the NWSL, the WNBA, and the Women’s Super League in Europe. We’re looking at youth sports, which also has the impact of standardizing the approach, making it more safe for kids, and having better outcomes for the type of families that are in it. Then we want to invest in supporting businesses and the infrastructure of sports that support all these franchises, like professional services firms, talent firms, data analytics firms, real estate investments, and supporting businesses.