Action On The Rise With Women's Sports Betting

Sportsbooks in North America are reporting significant PWHL action, and with the regular season winding down, PowerPlay.com, for example, is describing the league as “a key market in Canada.”

PowerPlay.com had the Montreal Victoire leading at +280 to win the Walter Cup, and the Toronto Sceptres at +320 (it’s like the NHL in the 1950s).

The PWHL is reported to be averaging 7,365 fans per game, up from 5,500 last season, and soon expects to surpass more than a million fans in total since its inception.

The empty seats you see during broadcasts are being blamed on teams playing in inappropriately large venues, which does not seem like an insurmountable problem.

FanDuel Partners With PWHL

FanDuel recently announced a new partnership with the league, becoming an Official Sportsbook Partner and exclusive In-app Streaming Partner in the U.S., with the book streaming as many as 90 regular season and playoff games on the FanDuel app.

Offerings include player prop bets, novelty markets and Same Game Parlays.

“FanDuel is proud to partner with the PWHL and support the league’s incredible athletes,” Dale Hooper, General Manager of FanDuel Canada, said in a release. “This partnership is about creating a new era of fan engagement—one that brings hockey closer to fans while helping grow the visibility of women’s professional sports.”

There’s no indication that Caitlin Clark plays hockey in addition to golf, soccer and basketball, so it’s hard to directly credit her with the increased eyeballs being focused on the PWHL, but it’s inarguable that she has opened eyes to women’s sports.

Last WNBA season, BetMGM reported that betting on the league rose by 108 per cent, a figure roughly equivalent to the percentage increase in women putting down bets on Caitlin’s games (and occasionally others).

Indiana Fever games accounted for six of the top eight most-bet games at the book, and while Chicago Sky rookie Angel Reese was the second most-bet player, Clark attracted five times as many prop bets.

For the 2025 season, the defending champion New York Liberty have been installed as the favorites, with odds of +175 to +200, while the Las Vegas Aces are +230 to +250.

Minnesota is +330 to +350, while Indiana, +850 to +900, seem destined to attract considerable action.

Tight Race for WNBA MVP

BET MGM seems to consider this season’s MVP to be a two-woman race, installing three-time winner A’Ja Wilson at +180 and Clark at +240.

A repeat for Wilson would make her the only four-time winner of the MVP in league history.

While there is increased betting on women’s sports, and betting on sports by women in North America, one other major sporting country has a distance to go to achieve greater equitability.

In Australia, an academic study by Ph.D. candidate Rohann Irving at the University of Queensland looked into “the history behind why nearly 9 out of 10 regular sports bettors were men, and what betting companies were doing to draw in women,” reports the Journal of Australian Studies.

"Historically, sports betting has been restricted to venues like… the betting areas of pubs, which are largely male-dominated spaces, but technology such as smartphones has made gambling far more accessible to women," Irving said, adding that the reasons for the gender divide in the country could stem from colonial Australia's gambling practices.

Men Dominate Betting In Australia

"Historically men controlled the household's economic means, restricting women's access to gambling," he said. "The first legislation allowing for the licensing of bookmakers in 1906 made it an offense to take a bet from a woman. And while women have for many years been welcomed at racetracks, historically they have been treated as objects of decoration at racing events."

(Hmm, does that remind you of a super-popular annual event anywhere in the U.S.? Like Kentucky?)

But Irving concluded that the prevalence of smartphones could play a role in changing Australia’s gendered nature of sports betting.

"In one sense, this shift represents women gaining access to a gambling practice from which they've historically been excluded," he said. "However, this also reflects women being at greater risk of suffering from the many harms caused by Australia's betting culture. Sports betting companies targeting women, and the strategies they employ in doing so, is a shift that should be treated with scrutiny."

However, Irving, who works with the Australian Gambling Research Center, found that Australia's fastest growing form of gambling – sports betting – is still supported by 90 per cent men.