What FanVerse and women’s sports can teach other industries about sidelining women
By Chris Hogg
DIGITAL JOURNAL
September 22, 2025
FanVerse creates sports experiences designed for women and turns those moments into data that brands and teams can use. - Photo courtesy FanVerse
Every founder is taught the same rule: know your total addressable market (TAM). The bigger your TAM, the bigger your chance to grow.
Now consider this: women make up nearly half of sports fans, yet too often the industry still acts as if they are an afterthought.
That gap is not unique to sports. From car safety tests based on male bodies to financial products built for male investors, industries repeatedly design around a “default customer.” The bias is rarely intentional, but it is built into systems, holding back both participation and growth.
The lesson applies far beyond stadiums. Every sector has users who sign up but never stay, customers who are present but overlooked, or workers whose needs are not factored into how systems are built.
Ashima Chopra saw this flaw up close in sports, and talks about it starting early in her life. She says growing up as an immigrant kid, she played soccer, ran track, and long-distance running, and was often the only girl on all-boys teams.
“I was always relegated to defence,” she recalls.
Later in law, venture capital, and consulting, she was again the only woman in the room. Those experiences made the gap impossible to ignore. What she saw in boardrooms echoed what she felt on the field. Women were there, contributing and invested, yet the system wasn’t built with them in mind.
Despite higher brand loyalty and purchase intent among women, sports marketing and engagement still centers male audiences, she says. Her company FanVerse grew out of that recognition. It is designed to turn casual fans into connected communities and build the data to show brands how.
The company offers a case study in a larger business problem: when companies design for the default, they don’t just miss people, they miss growth.
FanVerse creates sports experiences designed for women and turns those moments into data that brands and teams can use. - Photo courtesy FanVerse
Every founder is taught the same rule: know your total addressable market (TAM). The bigger your TAM, the bigger your chance to grow.
Now consider this: women make up nearly half of sports fans, yet too often the industry still acts as if they are an afterthought.
That gap is not unique to sports. From car safety tests based on male bodies to financial products built for male investors, industries repeatedly design around a “default customer.” The bias is rarely intentional, but it is built into systems, holding back both participation and growth.
The lesson applies far beyond stadiums. Every sector has users who sign up but never stay, customers who are present but overlooked, or workers whose needs are not factored into how systems are built.
Ashima Chopra saw this flaw up close in sports, and talks about it starting early in her life. She says growing up as an immigrant kid, she played soccer, ran track, and long-distance running, and was often the only girl on all-boys teams.
“I was always relegated to defence,” she recalls.
Later in law, venture capital, and consulting, she was again the only woman in the room. Those experiences made the gap impossible to ignore. What she saw in boardrooms echoed what she felt on the field. Women were there, contributing and invested, yet the system wasn’t built with them in mind.
Despite higher brand loyalty and purchase intent among women, sports marketing and engagement still centers male audiences, she says. Her company FanVerse grew out of that recognition. It is designed to turn casual fans into connected communities and build the data to show brands how.
The company offers a case study in a larger business problem: when companies design for the default, they don’t just miss people, they miss growth.
FanVerse creates sports experiences designed for women and turns those moments into data that brands and teams can use. – Photo courtesy FanVerse
Turning solo fans into loyal communities
FanVerse is built on a straightforward idea: create sports experiences for women and track what happens next. The company stages community events that make it easier to participate, then turns those experiences into data that brands and teams can use.
FanVerse began when Chopra entered and won the inaugural Toast AI Hackathon, a competition that drew 75 women. What started as a simple plug-in concept has since evolved into a company building data-backed tools to help teams and brands engage fans in new ways.
Research from The Collective, Wasserman’s women-focused advisory arm, found distinct segments among women’s sports fans, including those who engage solo and those who prefer more connected experiences
.
Chopra saw the business case in the fact that so many women were showing up alone, without the community that sustains long-term engagement.
“Ninety-five percent of the women who came to our activations had either never watched a game before or they came solo,” she says. “When women feel like they belong, they spend more, share more, and return often.”
FanVerse’s activations are designed to create that sense of belonging.
In Toronto, a crawl through women-led businesses ended with a reserved section at a soccer match.
In New York, events hosted in community-focused spaces drew women who had not previously attended live games. At one gathering, Instagram engagement reached more than 79,000 views in 10 days and every RSVP converted into attendance.
The events are deliberately low barrier; a bingo night with a beverage partner or a candid conversation about menstruation as a performance disruptor offers an entry point that feels accessible.
“Bro culture is out, belonging is in,” says Chopra. She sees FanVerse as a way to create spaces where women feel invited, connected, and seen. That sense of belonging becomes the starting point for stronger and more sustainable engagement.
Chopra saw the business case in the fact that so many women were showing up alone, without the community that sustains long-term engagement.
“Ninety-five percent of the women who came to our activations had either never watched a game before or they came solo,” she says. “When women feel like they belong, they spend more, share more, and return often.”
FanVerse’s activations are designed to create that sense of belonging.
In Toronto, a crawl through women-led businesses ended with a reserved section at a soccer match.
In New York, events hosted in community-focused spaces drew women who had not previously attended live games. At one gathering, Instagram engagement reached more than 79,000 views in 10 days and every RSVP converted into attendance.
The events are deliberately low barrier; a bingo night with a beverage partner or a candid conversation about menstruation as a performance disruptor offers an entry point that feels accessible.
“Bro culture is out, belonging is in,” says Chopra. She sees FanVerse as a way to create spaces where women feel invited, connected, and seen. That sense of belonging becomes the starting point for stronger and more sustainable engagement.
With FanVerse, each activation is designed as a test.
The company tracks why people show up, what they choose to spend on, and what makes them come back. That information feeds a data platform she calls “data with depth,” moving beyond surface metrics like attendance or merchandise sales to a more detailed picture of identity, belonging, and conversion.
FanVerse is still early but Chopra says she has begun talks with the Women’s National Basketball Association, the Women’s Tennis Association, and brand partners ranging from lifestyle companies to sportswear companies.
The company is now raising a $1 million pre-seed round to turn passive followers into passionate fans via a platform that unites media, community and intelligence to connect fans and brands.
“I hope women feel more seen, celebrated, and valued,” she says. “This is not charity work. This is smart business. Tapping into women is not a nice-to-have. If you really want to grow, it’s a must-have.”
Chopra isn’t the first to notice women’s role in sports, but her model works differently.
Rather than focusing only on visibility or representation, FanVerse is built on segmentation, belonging, and conversion.
The principle reaches beyond sports.
In software, it might be users who log in but never adopt advanced features. In healthcare, patients who register but skip follow-up appointments. In finance, clients who open accounts but avoid higher-value products.
Companies often treat these people as wins because they are present in the system. In reality, they are the most fragile part of the base.
Left alone, they drift. Designed for, they multiply.
That is the larger point FanVerse underscores: growth comes from converting the underserved, not just adding new people.
Why whole sectors shrink when women are overlooked
The gaps Chopra is exposing in sports is a systemic problem.
Chopra argues that women should be treated as reference customers, not edge cases. Designing for them, she says, expands the market.
Ashima Chopra (left) speaks at an event. – Photo courtesy FanVerse
That perspective is echoed in broader research. Gaps show up through financing, product fit, or leadership pathways, but the pattern is the same: women are in the system, yet design and structure limit engagement.
Look at the data —
In agriculture
Women operate farms at meaningful rates, but equipment design, inheritance patterns, and financing norms reduce day-to-day adoption and scale.
According to Farm Credit Canada (FCC), women will make up nearly one third (31%) of farm operators by 2026, but their farms bring in less revenue on average. FCC links that gap to structural barriers rather than effort.
Women operators are less likely to inherit land, which means they often begin with smaller operations or less equity. They report more difficulty accessing financing and are underrepresented in succession planning, according to the BC Institute of Agrologists. Equipment is often built for men, making adoption less straightforward.
If barriers were removed and if women earned the same on average as men, Canadian agriculture GDP could increase by as much as $5 billion.
Inside the energy industry
Women work across energy, but they’re not offered roles that have influence over how technologies get adopted.
The 2024 industry census from Careers in Energy shows women make up nearly 20% of Canada’s energy workforce but hold just 11% of senior management roles, a share that has barely moved in two decades.
That underrepresentation matters because companies with more gender-diverse executive teams are 39% more likely to outperform financially. Recent research also links higher female board representation to lower corporate carbon emissions.
If more women were included in leadership and strategic decisions across the energy transition, firms could expect stronger financial performance and improved emissions outcomes that support faster technology adoption.
Within entrepreneurship
Plenty of women are in the pipeline, but intent rarely converts into funded companies because of gaps in capital and networks.
As Digital Journal previously reported, if women started companies at the same rate as men, Canada would have more than 700,000 additional entrepreneurs.
Women often don’t because of systemic barriers: lower access to financing, weaker investor networks, and underrepresentation in high-growth industries. Since 2014, only 10% of Canadian venture capital deals have involved women founders, says The51.
The lost output from this participation gap is valued at $150 to $180 billion in GDP each year. The Women Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub reports that majority women-owned SMEs are already generating more than $90 billion in annual revenue and employ nearly one million people, showing how much potential is being held back.
Removing barriers would mean more firms scaling, stronger job creation, and greater resilience in Canada’s innovation economy.
In financial services
In finance, the blind spot is built into the products themselves. Most advice and offerings are still designed with men in mind.
VersaFi reports that women investment advisors across Canada continue to face systemic barriers including bias, limited sponsorship, and inequitable succession planning, which restricts how women grow within the industry.
Women are poised to control nearly half of Canada’s financial assets over the next few years, largely due to inheritance from boomer and silent generation parents and spouses, alongside rising incomes and a narrowing wage gap.
An estimated $4 trillion will transfer to women in Canada by 2028, and 80% of women will change advisors within a year of inheriting wealth. That means that firms failing to adapt will lose clients at the very moment the market is expanding.
Treating women as core clients rather than secondary would help firms capture this shift and expand the overall market for financial services.
That perspective is echoed in broader research. Gaps show up through financing, product fit, or leadership pathways, but the pattern is the same: women are in the system, yet design and structure limit engagement.
Look at the data —
In agriculture
Women operate farms at meaningful rates, but equipment design, inheritance patterns, and financing norms reduce day-to-day adoption and scale.
According to Farm Credit Canada (FCC), women will make up nearly one third (31%) of farm operators by 2026, but their farms bring in less revenue on average. FCC links that gap to structural barriers rather than effort.
Women operators are less likely to inherit land, which means they often begin with smaller operations or less equity. They report more difficulty accessing financing and are underrepresented in succession planning, according to the BC Institute of Agrologists. Equipment is often built for men, making adoption less straightforward.
If barriers were removed and if women earned the same on average as men, Canadian agriculture GDP could increase by as much as $5 billion.
Inside the energy industry
Women work across energy, but they’re not offered roles that have influence over how technologies get adopted.
The 2024 industry census from Careers in Energy shows women make up nearly 20% of Canada’s energy workforce but hold just 11% of senior management roles, a share that has barely moved in two decades.
That underrepresentation matters because companies with more gender-diverse executive teams are 39% more likely to outperform financially. Recent research also links higher female board representation to lower corporate carbon emissions.
If more women were included in leadership and strategic decisions across the energy transition, firms could expect stronger financial performance and improved emissions outcomes that support faster technology adoption.
Within entrepreneurship
Plenty of women are in the pipeline, but intent rarely converts into funded companies because of gaps in capital and networks.
As Digital Journal previously reported, if women started companies at the same rate as men, Canada would have more than 700,000 additional entrepreneurs.
Women often don’t because of systemic barriers: lower access to financing, weaker investor networks, and underrepresentation in high-growth industries. Since 2014, only 10% of Canadian venture capital deals have involved women founders, says The51.
The lost output from this participation gap is valued at $150 to $180 billion in GDP each year. The Women Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub reports that majority women-owned SMEs are already generating more than $90 billion in annual revenue and employ nearly one million people, showing how much potential is being held back.
Removing barriers would mean more firms scaling, stronger job creation, and greater resilience in Canada’s innovation economy.
In financial services
In finance, the blind spot is built into the products themselves. Most advice and offerings are still designed with men in mind.
VersaFi reports that women investment advisors across Canada continue to face systemic barriers including bias, limited sponsorship, and inequitable succession planning, which restricts how women grow within the industry.
Women are poised to control nearly half of Canada’s financial assets over the next few years, largely due to inheritance from boomer and silent generation parents and spouses, alongside rising incomes and a narrowing wage gap.
An estimated $4 trillion will transfer to women in Canada by 2028, and 80% of women will change advisors within a year of inheriting wealth. That means that firms failing to adapt will lose clients at the very moment the market is expanding.
Treating women as core clients rather than secondary would help firms capture this shift and expand the overall market for financial services.
FanVerse creates sports experiences designed for women and turns those moments into data that brands and teams can use. – Photo courtesy FanVerse
What leaders can take from FanVerse
FanVerse is a testing ground for what makes participation meaningful. Each activation produces signals leaders can use to understand how growth really happens. That structure turns belonging into something measurable, and it gives leaders a model they can apply beyond sports.
Designing differently isn’t a side project and FanVerse offers a glimpse of what that shift can look like. The company is showing that when systems evolve to serve people who have long been overlooked, participation grows and new forms of value are created.
For leaders, the message is straightforward: growth follows the choices you make about who counts as a customer. The companies that widen that definition will expand their markets and shape them.
Final shots:The real growth story isn’t in adding more people. It’s in finally seeing the ones already there.
Markets are only as strong as who they’re built for. Expand the definition, expand the future.
Designing for belonging isn’t charity. It’s the difference between a customer who drifts and a customer who stays.
Written ByChris Hogg
Chris is an award-winning entrepreneur who has worked in publishing, digital media, broadcasting, advertising, social media & marketing, data and analytics. Chris is a partner in the media company Digital Journal, content marketing and brand storytelling firm Digital Journal Group, and Canada's leading digital transformation and innovation event, the mesh conference. He covers innovation impact where technology intersections with business, media and marketing. Chris is a member of Digital Journal's Insight Forum.
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