Whoopi Goldberg has launched the world’s first global women’s sports channel. On an episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon last week, Goldberg, 68, described the AWSN (All Women’s Sports Network) channel as a home for live women’s sports from around the world.
“Everything from soccer, basketball, tennis, cricket, curling, you name it — if a woman is playing it, we’re showing it,” she said.
AWSN has partnered with CommonSpirit, a Chicago-based Catholic hospital chain who, according to Goldberg, “really promote women’s health.”
The channel has already launched in parts of Asia (including India), the Middle East, and is set to launch in the US this week, broadcasting both live and past women’s sporting games.
Goldberg, who is a co-host of The View and is currently on broadway playing Miss Hannigan in the musical Annie, revealed during her interview with Fallon that she was always an active sports player, but that her gender prevented her from being encouraged to pursue it.
“Ever since I was a little kid, I always wanted to play sports,” she explained. “My brother could play. He played baseball, he played softball, he played basketball, he played everything And they would say, ‘Oh, hi little girl.’”
“It always pissed me off. So, for years, I’ve been talking to people and saying, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we could go around the world, start getting young athletes in high school so that we can grow with them and grow up with them? And we can have baseball cards, with our favourite young athlete.”
“I feel like that will help us show that athletics, when they’re done brilliantly…it doesn’t matter who’s doing it. We don’t really have that relationship with women’s sports.”
The world of professional women’s sports has gradually gained traction over the past few years, with record-breaking TV audience for women’s sport in 2023, the rise of women’s professional teams, lucrative sponsorships and businesses that promote and normalise women’s sports viewership, such as The Ladies League in Darlinghurst, which opened in August.