The next time you watch a sports broadcast (pick a sport, any sport), pay attention to who’s talking and let the Betchdel Test guide you. Are there two women on the show? Are they talking to each other? Are they in the studio or the booth, or are they relegated to the sidelines? These are the questions Betches wants you to consider as you watch football on Sunday, Monday, Thursday, Friday, or Saturday. Okay, yeah, there’s too much football.

Betches, the iconic women’s media brand, started in 2011 as an anonymous blog called Betches Love This and has grown into a massive presence via its Instagram account (9.1 million followers), as well as podcasts and articles. Aleen Dreksler told Slate that the company strives to take women seriously and their interests seriously, whether that’s politics, celebrity culture, the Bravoverse or, increasingly, sports.

The company recently launched Betches Sports, a cross-platform effort to serve not just women’s sports, but women as sports fans. That’s where the Betchdel Test, a microcosm of the media criticism inherent in the launch, comes into play. At a time when traditional media is beginning to recognize the value of women’s sports and women’s sports fans, Dreksler says she wants to get it right. Slate spoke with Dreksler about Betches’ new sports vertical, the company’s evolution and the underlying criticisms of mainstream sports media.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Why did you decide to launch a sports segment now?

It’s been in the back of our minds for a while, against the backdrop of the women’s sports landscape that has become so, so popular in recent years. It’s so great that it’s really captured the zeitgeist. It’s not just within the sports industry, but it’s really in pop culture now, and people have no choice but to look away, which is really, really great.

But it really opened my eyes to the fact that women, not just as athletes but as an audience, have been ignored for a long time. There really isn’t a single women’s media brand that’s focused on women as fans, not just for women’s sports but for all sports. And what we really want to do is redefine the experience for women’s sports fans. So Betches Sports isn’t really about women’s sports, we’re going to pay equal attention to it, of course. But it’s really about sports for women.

How have you seen traditional media deal with women’s sports and female audiences? What leaves a sour taste in your mouth?

It’s not a sour taste. It’s more just seeing that there’s a real white space for the audience and there’s really no destination for women. Sports media is predominantly male-centric, through their branding, through their representation. Whether they mean to or not, it feels a little bit like a boys’ club. That’s not to say that there aren’t plenty of female fans who follow ESPN, who follow every sports media site and platform that there is, but there really hasn’t been anything that exists as a place where it’s not so daunting to follow. You don’t have to be a superfan. You can go into Betches Sports as a casual fan. You’re here to see what celebrities are at a game, or you’re in multiple fantasy leagues and have 12 parlays for whatever game you’re watching. You can be any type of fan, but it’s really about a place that’s for women as fans, and that’s what we’re striving for.

How do you strike the right tone in a conversation with both the casuals who might be watching the Chiefs game to see Taylor Swift and, let’s say, the diehards who went to Bills games as kids?

Well, first of all, the tone is always going to be fun. Sports is entertainment. It’s supposed to be fun. It’s about taking a break from your life and your day and escaping and doing something that you really, really care about or just want to escape for a little bit. What Betches is about is realizing that women are a lot of different things. You can care deeply about the news and being an activist and being political, but you can also care deeply about what’s happening on Bravo. That’s just being a person, and we apply that same ethos to sports. You can watch one game and care deeply about what Taylor Swift is wearing, but also care deeply about what happens in the game and who wins and if your fantasy team wins. So it’s really both.

I know Betches has evolved since you co-founded it in 2011. When did sports come onto your radar and when did you realize this was something you had to cover on purpose?

I think it’s both a product of the evolution of the brand as it grows, but also a reaction to the world. You can’t ignore women’s sports right now. It’s amazing what’s happening. I’m a millennial. I started Betches when I was 21, and I’ve really grown up with my company, but we’ve also brought in younger demos, so we span millennial and Gen Z women.

I’m also a first-generation American. I didn’t have American football. I had the English Premier League on TV, so I didn’t grow up with American football, but I know all about Arsenal. I also watched tennis. That said, living in America, I always felt like there was such a barrier to American football. I didn’t know who to cheer for. I didn’t know how to be a fan. As a woman, I felt like you had to dumb yourself down to pay attention.

But for Betches, our ethos is again very much about making fun of ourselves and commenting on the world by making fun of ourselves and our part in it. So now, looking back on it, that was really a symptom of the problem. The reason why the feeling of being a sports fan was more exclusive to men is because, again, there wasn’t a destination that was tailored to us, that allowed us to join without being quizzed on who had the most points in any given season. So, Betches Sports is about lowering or raising the barrier for people who are interested in sports but want to feel like it’s a fun community and it’s not so scary – it’s not so daunting to be a sports fan.

The reason Betches has been so successful over the last 13 years is because we really know our audience and when you look at the timeline of what’s happening in pop culture and sports media, there are certain things that can’t be ignored. Like in 2022, Serena Williams’ US Open final was the most-watched tennis match in ESPN history with 4.6 million viewers. Caitlin Clark was in all the headlines. The 2024 NCAA women’s basketball final broke records with almost 19 million viewers. Bob Iger just acquired Angel City FC for $250 million. All of those things just can’t be ignored and of course the Super Bowl last year had the highest female viewership in history. So again, I don’t want to say we’re just doing it because people are talking about it now, but it just feels like the right time — why not now?

You mentioned that you know your audience. I’m curious to hear what you hear from your audience and how you make this decision and how you approach the messaging.

Every time we talked about sports on our main account there was a lot of interaction, so we definitely saw interest.

And so we start a brand within Betches. We start talking about it when it feels really relevant, and when we see that there’s really a lot of interest, we have to do a little bit of research and then we decide: is this something that makes sense for us? Is there a white space? And all of those boxes were checked and there was definitely a need, and we really wanted to answer that at the right time.

What do you notice about traditional media capitalizing on this moment of increased interest in women’s sports? Does it feel opportunistic?

Regardless of the effect of glomming or not, I think it’s ultimately a really, really good thing. Female athletes work so, so hard, and they get paid so much less than their counterparts. And the media has a really, really big responsibility, because media coverage is crucial to the future of women’s sports. It increases visibility. I mean, women’s sports were getting less than 4 percent of the media coverage three years ago, and now it’s going to be 15 percent by 2024. So, whether people are opportunistic or not, it really doesn’t matter. It’s great for women’s sports.

In order to invest in the stakes of the game, you have to know what the storylines are. You have to know what’s going on. And in order to know that, you have to read about it. You have to hear about it. And it’s the job of the media to share that with you. And the more that happens, the more people care, the more people want to watch, and the more the athletes become relevant, pop culture fandom, and the more we care about them. And it’s also so inspiring to see female athletes do their thing from the Olympics onward. If you think about it, over the years – I mean, when I was a young girl, I was a huge tennis fan. I loved Martina Hingis. She was so good, and it was really inspiring. I play tennis now. I love it. I’m obsessed with Serena Williams. And because of that representation, I felt like – obviously I never thought I would go pro, but I felt like: It was great that women had a place there, but that’s not the same for all other sports. And now, since this year, you can see how many more female athletes have become famous. It’s not just one or two, it’s multiple. There’s Ilona Maher, Simone Biles, Angel Reese. And again, whether that’s opportunistic or not, net, it’s super positive and I’m excited about it.

I think we’re delivering something that’s been a need for a while, and I believe Betches is really the one to do that. We’re an entertainment powerhouse. Sports is a cornerstone of entertainment in culture, and it’s right up our alley. And my goal is for Betches Sports to be one of the largest sports media brands for women globally. I know that’s a big vision, but I had the same vision for Betches as a brand, and here Are.