Hello, welcome back to full-time with Megalindahan. You are listening to a show all about women's soccer on the Athletic Podcast Network.

I'm Meg, your host, and I'm a national staff writer at The Athletic, covering the NWSL and the U.S. Women's National Team.

I will be at the two U.S. Women's National Team send-off games in Connecticut this weekend, technically Thursday, today, and Monday.

So, you know, the joys of driving to

Connecticut twice in the span of a few days, plus the Gotham FC game, assuming the weather

cooperates.

We've also had some wild NWSL action with the Orlando Pride, still at the top of the standings

through June and a ton of other news to boot.

On today's episode, Katie Donovan of the Sports Innovation Lab is here to talk through their new report at The Fan Project, which asked fans to send in their social media data from Twitter and Facebook, and the team anonymized that data and compared it to other industry data and trends.

And recently they released a major report detailing how to best invest in women's sports.

There's a lot to dig into.

This episode is hopefully helpful if you have read the report or not.

But I feel like if you are listening to this podcast,

you at least have a passing interest in the future of women's sports. Data like this is definitely crucial to figuring out the next steps. Again, you've heard me talk a lot about that

at The Athletic. Again, we've just hired a second full-time women soccer writer. Part of that

is because of the data.

So before we get into all of this, again, your reminder to subscribe to The Athletic at

theathletic.com slash full-time. We have so much in the works on so many different fronts,

but with the Olympics coming up, we've got a ton planned and we'll be working closely with

our UK desk

to bring as much coverage of the women's tournament to you as possible. It is July. It's the

perfect time to subscribe if you haven't already. Theathletic.com slash full time. Let's start with

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