Show Her the Money

Female-founded businesses struggle to attract private investment but seem to attract more within the sport industry. The purpose of this exploratory study was to examine this discrepancy and determine what factors contribute to private funding of female-owned sport businesses. This study examined 440 female-founded sport-related businesses with a founding date between 2010-2020 from the Crunchbase database. There was $2.21 billion invested into 207 female-founded sport companies during the identified period. Using multiple logistic regression and signaling theory, results of the study suggest that female founders in sport should focus capital acquisition efforts on revenue-generating business models and successfully pitching investors, as this leads to greater funding. Social network analysis indicates that the investing environment for female sport businesses is loosely connected with a potential role for start-up accelerators. This study helps to further understand the investment environment surrounding women-owned businesses in sport.