Alexis Ohanian's Next Big Bet: Women's Sports

Alexis Ohanian is not a fan of pickleball. He has ample reason not to be, of course. The 41-year-old co-founder of Reddit and the venture firm Seven Seven Six is married to Serena Williams, one of the greatest tennis players of all time. In recent years, the two sports have increasingly found themselves at odds with one another, competing over everything from court space to sponsorship dollars. But his specific criticism is more revealing. “Can the atomic unit—can its fundamental highlights—go viral?” Ohanian said. “Until I see a pickleball highlight go viral, I don’t think it’s a real sport.” The remark is a throwaway jab, the kind of gentle ribbing familiar to any sports fan. But it is also laced with the logic of someone who has an intuitive understanding of how culture—and athletics—function in the digital age. Ohanian, who leads the 2024 class of ADWEEK's Brand Genius honorees, has built his entire career on his ability to understand how communities behave online. He co-founded Reddit in 2005, then spent 15 years transforming the platform into one of the internet's most essential websites. He left the platform in 2020 in an act of protest, compelling its board of directors to shutter a number of hateful forums and fill his board seat with a Black executive. He now has limited explicit influence on the company and is instead focused on his venture portfolio, which has invested in startups ranging from MrBeast’s snack brand Feastables to the reusable rocket firm Stoke Space. But in recent years, the so-called front page of the internet has flourished. As generative AI threatens to drown the web in commodity content, the value of Reddit and its logged-in, question-answering user base has risen in conjunction. Alexis Ohanian walked into this Waffle House near his alma mater, the University of Virginia, in 2005 as an aspiring law student and walked out committed to tech. After entering the public markets in March, Reddit stock is up 15% from launch, while year-over-year revenue and adjusted earnings are up 20% and 23%, respectively. A September 2023 update to the Google algorithm gave Reddit heightened visibility in search results, nearly tripling its traffic in just over a year. And in February, the company struck a $60 million content licensing agreement with Google. Ohanian was not at the helm as these events unfolded, and he is quick to credit current leadership for the recent success. But after decades of underperformance, the narrative around Reddit has lately undergone a profound shift. Rather than trailing behind, it appears instead that the platform simply needed the rest of the internet to catch up. It was this same sense of prescience that led Ohanian to embark upon his latest, and arguably most ambitious venture: building out the universe of women’s sports. Like Reddit, the world of female athletics has, until recently, been defined by underappreciation, both in terms of its cultural impact and commercial potential. Ohanian, however, considers this oversight his advantage. Free from the hidebound traditions that govern men’s sports, women’s athletics have the opportunity to reconsider every element of sport and optimize it for the digital age. Nothing embodies the audacity of this concept more than Athlos, a first-of-its-kind track competition created by Ohanian that aims to reimagine the oldest sport in the world—in part by placing women athletes at its center. Like Reddit, the venture is a gamble on the future, a thesis whose returns—if they materialize at all—could be decades in the making. “In sports, so many decisions are determined by past precedent, doing things the way they have always been done,” Ohanian said. “In the world of tech startups, if you think that way, you fail. With Athlos, we are questioning every element and building the best version of the product possible.” Growing the infrastructure Interest in women’s sports has risen dramatically in the past few years. Deloitte forecast that the industry will generate more than $1 billion in revenue in 2024, a 300% increase from its 2021 valuation—but Ohanian was early to the opportunity. In 2019, after seeing Reign FC, the Seattle outpost of the National Women’s Soccer League, sell for just $3.5 million, Ohanian realized how undervalued NWSL franchises were. Reign’s star athlete, global sensation Megan Rapinoe, was probably worth $3 million just on her own, he figured. The next year, Ohanian became a founding investor in the Los Angeles NWSL team Angel City FC on the assumption that it would mature in value. This July, the investment paid off: Disney chief executive Bob Iger and his wife Willow Bay, a dean at the University of Southern California, acquired a controlling stake in the team, valuing it at $250 million. Ohanian was a founding investor in the Angel City FC soccer club. The windfall spurred further investment. In April, through Seven Seven Six, Ohanian invested in the Portland, Oregon women’s sports bar The Sports Bra, with plans to franchise the concept across the country. This summer, during the Paris Olympics, he and rapper Flavor Flav even helped cover rent for the American discus thrower Veronica Fraley. But his biggest venture in the space is undoubtedly Athlos, the wholly original track competition that will debut in New York City on Sept. 26 at Icahn Stadium. The one-night event fundamentally reimagines the concept of a track meet, a result of Ohanian taking a “first principles” approach to the experience. Unlike traditional track-and-field competitions, Athlos will feature only six races—a 100-meter hurdle, as well as 100-, 200-, 400-, 800-, and 1,500-meter sprints—with six athletes each. All of the athletes will be women, including Olympians Gabby Thomas and Alexis Holmes. Alexis Ohanian is launching a new kind of track event called Athlos. The event will be soundtracked by DJ D-Nice, who will spin records between heats and soundtrack each athlete with a walk-out song. At the end of the night, rapper Megan Thee Stallion will perform. The purse at stake will also dwarf what track athletes typically stand to make from single events. Every runner in every race will take home prize money, ranging from $2,500 for sixth place to $60,000 for first. Sponsors for the inaugural Athlos include Tiffany & Co., which will provide winners with custom crowns, as well as Strava, Therabody, and Bandit. The event is audacious in its ambition. Unlike women’s soccer or basketball, which have popular men’s precedents, track has little mindshare in the American conscience, regardless of gender. Ohanian is not trying to make popular a female version of a historically male sport; he is trying to put track on the map, period. And he is doing it by reconsidering every element of the competition, building an event designed from the ground up for virality. The live music, alongside programming decisions like hosting teen athletes at the finish line, aim to foster a festive atmosphere that will draw in notable attendees, similar to Formula 1 in Miami. And track, with its easily consumable format and dramatic personalities, is perfect fodder for social sharing. “The silver lining of women’s sports being so underinvested was that they were so easy to invest in,” Ohanian said. “You can try anything you want. There is no way that things have been done before.” Women drive culture The bet on Athlos is a calculated one. Women—particularly teenage girls—drive online culture, a reality Ohanian witnessed while building Reddit, and one he is banking on to fuel the rise of women’s sports. According to a May survey from marketing agency Gale, 83% of people who have a teenage girl in their lives rated their influence on culture as moderate or high. Likewise, 66% said teenage girls have moderate to high influence when it comes to media and entertainment, fashion, food, health and wellness, and technology. Indeed, many of the most defining trends, consumption patterns, and tentpoles of American culture are set by young women. Consider the impact of the Taylor Swift fandom on the National Football League, for instance. The effect is only compounded by social media. According to the study, the more social platforms a person uses, the higher they rate teenage girls’ level of cultural influence. Ohanian was a fixture in the stands during his wife Serena Williams' reign on the tennis court. “Social content is driven by women,” Ohanian said. “Every platform that has become a success in social media—Instagram, Snap, TikTok—it’s usually because teen girls make it a thing.” This pattern extends to the world of sports, where female athletes generate massive social followings and outsized engagement compared to their male counterparts. Female athletes boast a 14% higher social media following than men, according to a 2023 report from World Athletics. Female college athletes generate four times the total audience engagement of male athletes and seven times more engagement per deal, according to 2022 data from SponsorUnited. Last year in the world of college basketball, of the 20 players in the Final Four with the most social media followers, 16 were women, including the top seven, according to analysis from Sportico. Among the four No. 1 seeds in the men’s and women’s draws, six of the top 10 players with the most Instagram followers were women. “This is the Reddit guy talking, but online community in 2024—that’s the tip of the spear,” Ohanian said. “I care way more about where people are organizing online around sports than I do about the big media rights deals that shock everyone. Those are important, but they’re trailing indicators.” Despite their outsized social footprint, most female athletes get paid far less than their male counterparts and have far fewer opportunities. This inequality, ironically, often makes them much more motivated to succeed, easier to work with, and savvier storytellers of their own narrative. From a strategic perspective, then, investing in women is the smarter move, according to Ohanian. In marketing parlance, the return on investment is undeniable. “The internet is the free market of attention,” Ohanian said. “Follower counts don’t care about your feelings. Every day you have to wake up and fight for attention, and where is it online? It’s on the women.” The reality TV venture: Off Season FC Ohanian’s investment in the world of women’s sports also extends into entertainment. Financed by Seven Seven Six and soccer star Midge Purce, the upcoming reality television series Off Season FC follows 11 NWSL soccer players as they train, live and party together for two weeks in Miami. The six-episode program was co-produced by 32 Flavors and Box to Box Films, the firms behind Bravo's Vanderpump Rules and the Netflix series Formula 1: Drive to Survive, respectively. Off Season FC aims to blend the drama of reality television with the intrigue of a sports docuseries. The first season, which has not yet premiered, will stream exclusively on X, part of the platform’s broader push into hosting premium video. Its second season, which is already slated for production, will air on an unnamed network, according to Ohanian.

Brand Genius

Alexis Ohanian's Next Big Bet: Women's Sports

The Brand Genius honoree revolutionized online communities with Reddit. Can he do the same for women's sports?

Mark Stenberg

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Mark Stenberg