Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Melinda French Gates pledges $250 million to women’s health nonprofits, Shari Redstone weighs in on a CBS editorial decision, and Lakers owner Jeanie Buss has a career path in mind for female athletes.
– In the ring. Sports is in Jeanie Buss’s DNA. The daughter of longtime Los Angeles Lakers owner Jerry Buss, she entered the family business four decades ago and now leads the Lakers as the team’s controlling owner, bringing talent like LeBron James to L.A.
Amid a boom in women’s sports, Buss looked for her own way to get involved. The Lakers once owned the Los Angeles Sparks, the city’s WNBA team, but sold the franchise in 2006. (“I feel like it’s still in the family,” Buss says when asked if she’d ever get back into the WNBA business.)
In 2017, she became a co-owner in Women of Wrestling, or WOW; her business partner is David McLane, who founded GLOW, the women’s wrestling franchise that was dramatized in a Netflix series. The sports entertainment franchise for female wrestlers (or “promotion,” as it’s called) films 52 shows a year, with a distribution partnership with Paramount. Its matchups are syndicated, airing at different times in different markets. Buss has said she’s invested a “couple million dollars” in the business.
Buss sees women’s wrestling as a path for female athletes whose sports don’t come with much opportunity in the pros. “If you’re athletic enough to participate in a college sport, then you have the athleticism and the skill. We’ll teach you how to be a wrestler,” she says.
While wrestling is more explicitly about entertainment over competition compared to professional basketball, with its costumes and manufactured storylines, Buss says the same principles translate. “It boils down to, you’ve got to be able to sell tickets, sell sponsors, you’ve got to have a good platform to show your games, whether it’s streaming or cable or YouTube—whatever works for your sport to get attention and create a fan base,” she says.
Whether in women’s wrestling or women’s basketball, Buss says she’s “a believer in slow growth.” “Sports attracts a lot of investors who are looking to make a quick buck,” she says. “That’s irresponsible and that doesn’t belong, especially in women’s sports. Women deserve investment and the time and resources to grow and build something lasting.”
Buss says that sports offers a unique benefit to its fans and investors. “I love that every year is a new season. There’s the disappointment of losing, but there’s a chance to go back and retool and win the whole thing,” she says. “And when you have personalities that are intriguing, it’s as good as any television show.”
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
The Broadsheet is Fortune’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. Today’s edition was curated by Nina Ajemian. Subscribe here.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Open call. Melinda French Gates will give $250 million to women’s health nonprofits with an open call to apply for funding. This pledge is part of French Gates’ commitment to donate $1 billion to support women and families over the next two years. AP
- Still working. As big-business donors voiced their support for Kamala Harris with the caveat that she should remove Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan from her role, Khan remained unfazed. “It’s no surprise to me personally that monopolists, and executives associated with monopolies, would prefer that the anti-monopoly cops just go away,” she says in this profile. Bloomberg
- Controversial interview. Shari Redstone, chair of CBS parent company Paramount Global, disagreed with CBS leadership’s conclusion that CBS Mornings co-host Tony Dokoupil violated network editorial guidelines in an interview with author Ta-Nehisi Coates, during which the anchor pressed Coates on his opposition to Israel. Her objection was a rare example of the chair weighing in publicly on news or editorial decisions. CNN
- Coach club. Jessica Campbell, the first female assistant coach in the NHL, was introduced on Tuesday at the Seattle Kraken’s season-opener home game against the St. Louis Blues. “I definitely understand that the magnitude and the importance of this moment is really important for our game,” she said. USA Today
MOVERS AND SHAKERS
Dallas Mavericks CEO Cynthia “Cynt” Marshall is retiring at the end of the year. When Marshall took the role in 2018, she became the first Black female CEO ever in the NBA.
The Society for Human Resource Management named Anuradha Hebbar president of CEO Action for Inclusion & Diversity. Previously, she was partner, executive managing director at Kincentric.
Recurly, a subscription management platform, named Priya Lakshminarayanan chief product officer. Most recently, she was VP of product management, growth, monetization, and risk at Brex.
Essence Ventures, the parent company of ESSENCE Communications, appointed Michele Ghee as chief content officer. Previously, Ghee founded Expectant Media.
Stensul, a marketing creation platform, added Tzi-Kei Wong as senior vice president of product and Angela Han as senior vice president of customer success. Previously, Wong was chief product officer at Yext and Han was chief customer officer at Upside.
ON MY RADAR
Sheryl Sandberg: Fawzia Amin Sido should never have spent a decade in captivity Time
How Glossier CEO Kyle Leahy got the beauty brand to turn a profit Fast Company
Billie Eilish has grown up Vogue
PARTING WORDS
“My children don’t get 100% of all of me. But within that [30%] allocation, they get 100%.”
— Thasunda Brown Duckett, president and CEO of TIAA, on work-life balance being a lie
