Interview: Ashley Hart, Co-Founder of She Plays, Women's Fantasy Sports

Lindsay Gibbs interviews Ashley Hart, the CEO and co-founder of She Plays, the first US fantasy sports site dedicated exclusively to women's sports. They discuss how fantasy leagues can help expand the fanbase for women's sports as well as the hurdles to developing a fantasy sports app, including sourcing stats for women's sports.

This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our social media and website specialist. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network.

Transcript

Lindsay: Hello, hello, hello, flamethrowers. Lindsay Gibbs here, and this week for our interview I'm so excited to be joined by Ashley Hart. She is the CEO and co-founder, I believe is the proper title, of She Plays sports. And she's gonna tell us all about her company and how she got it off the ground, and the company itself is all about women's fantasy sports. So, I think you're going to really love this conversation and I'm excited. Ashley, thanks so much for finally being on Burn It All Down. We're so excited to have you. 

Ashley: I'm so excited to be here. I'm a big fan of the podcast in general, and so it's kind of surreal to actually be a guest. But yeah, thanks for having me. I'm super excited. 

Lindsay: So, tell me, I mean, just give us the origin story, right? So, first of all, She Plays is kind of the only space dedicated solely to fantasy sports in women's sports. Like, that's the whole mission behind it. How long has it been around? Where did the idea for this come? How did this blossom?

Ashley: Yeah. So, I'll try to keep the story a little brief, but back in 2018 actually I was leaving my career that I had had for 10 years, wanting to do something that still would make a difference and impact, but had no idea what that would look like. I've loved sports growing up. I was an athlete, still a huge fan of sports. And so, you know, always toyed with the idea of like, oh, it'd be really cool if I could do something in sports, but what could that be? And I was actually at the beach with my family. So, in North Carolina, trying to find the Orlando Pride soccer game – you know, this is 2018, the huge success of the US women's national team. They'd won the World Cup in 2015, and it was still like, I couldn't find the game. It definitely wasn't on TV, the stream was not great quality, and it just kind of was like, why is this still the case? I think in my adulthood it finally became like, wow, the inequality is so big here, still, after all the success that the women had been having.

It kind of just evolved from there of like, oh, okay, so there is like inequality here. Let's do some research. So then found the 4% stat, right? That women only get 4% of sports media coverage, even though they're over half of the athletes in the country, professional athletes, you know? And then I actually did my own test going into Barnes & Noble where they have the magazine sections and I would go into stores and be like, all right, let's look at all the sports magazines and let's see how many women are on the cover. It would be like one out of 34 – if one, you know? So, it kinda just became an idea of like, okay, that'd be really cool to help give them more exposure, and what's still missing that does exist and is popular in the men's sport side? And it came down to fantasy sports. At the time I knew so much about the NFL just because I played fantasy sports, and I was like, how cool would it be for someone to know, you know, the 11th player on the Portland Thorns by name just because they've been playing fantasy?

And so it stuck around as an idea in my head for like six months, and then I asked some college friends to help me get it going in 2019, February, 2019, we officially became a company, did some games for the World Cup in 2019, and then we're on the waiting dock for an app to launch in March, 2020 when COVID hit. So, things had to pivot a bit, but we're excited to again be at that place where we've got an app coming out that we're really excited about.

Lindsay: That's so exciting. I cannot wait for the app. I know we've been talking about this, you know, for a while, and you've got already on the She Plays websites there are games and leagues and everything that you can join and follow. I mean, you're already making so much progress in this space. First of all, so, I'm not a huge fantasy person myself, and just in case there's somebody who is listening who knows maybe even less than I do – what are fantasy sports and what draws you to them? Like, why, when you're playing like the NFL fantasy or something, why is that something like you really enjoy? 

Ashley: Yeah, great question. I think it one, it's like a little bit of the competitiveness, right? You want to kind of beat all your friends and family for sure, and if you have head-to-head games that you're playing. But I think too, it lets you get to know players a little bit more, like you actually do get to learn about, because if let's say you're going to play fantasy NWSL, you know, you'll have a roster of 11 people that have to come from a few different teams, and so it's really not just my team and my loyalty. I know all those players, you do get to know a lot of different players around the league. You know, for the nerdier folks of the sports world, it's fun to look at the stats and like really dig deep into those if you want to.

For some people it's just, again, it's the fun of…This is another part of community, you know? You’re in this group of like 10 to 12 people for a season, and whether you're trash talking or encouraging, whatever you want to do, whatever vibe you want to get out of it, it's just another way to connect with people, but through sport.

Lindsay: Yeah. So, I mean, essentially it lets everyone kind of play GM, right? Like, I know I did do a couple of years of fantasy sports, fantasy football with some of my cousins and we would, you know, there was a draft and everyone picks a quarterback and picks everything. And then there are certain level of points given to your team based on the players' individual performance that week. So, it separates it. And you know, it can be really fun. So when you first started thinking about fantasy sports and women's sports, what did you find? Were you able to find even any women fantasy games for women's sports?

Ashley: In the realm that I was looking for, which was not paid games, so just like your typical pure friends drafting a team and playing throughout the whole season, not a thing. And I was so shocked, again, at the success that soccer has here, but also the WNBA being at that point, it was, you know, over 20 years old. So, you know, there's been some success for these leagues for forever. There is some representation on like Draft Kings for WNBA now. In the past, you could only win like tickets or merchandise. Now it's like the same as the boys, you can win money from it. But yeah, I was shocked. I'm still shocked. I mean, it still blows my mind. Until I know what you have to do to make fantasy sports happen – and we can get into that if you want, the stats portion of it, because the games rely on individual players’ performances.

So, like you said, you do get to be the GM, you get to pick the players that you want, and then every week you get to be the coach and put out your lineup. You get to pick who on your bench you're putting in. And then yeah, how those individuals do, you can tally the scores and that's your score for the week and you're playing against one other person in your fantasy league. So, long story short, I found nothing.

Lindsay: Yeah. Which is staggering, because it's such a huge, booming part of men’s, and leagues seem to really embrace it, like, leagues and sports sites and all these other stakeholders in men's sports seem to really engage with fantasy because they know that it breeds interest, right? Like, investment in this means more people engaging with the sport, getting to know the athletes and you know, ultimately be good for ratings and good for viewership and just good for the growth of the sport. So, take me through, like, let's say with the NWSL, because I know that was the league you were the most obsessed with. So, I'm guessing there are fantasy soccer games out there that kind of already have established maybe a framework for how to do the point system and how to game-ify this, is that correct? 

Ashley: Yeah. Yeah. Premier League, and there's some MLS.

Lindsay: Yeah. So that kind of structure is done. But then on the back end, what goes into it from you in order to try and get that game onto She Plays?

Ashley: Yeah. So this is…And I feel like there's so many parts of this. You probably know this too, being in the sports industry, but there are pockets of inequality I find all over the place, and stats coverage…It still blows my mind how little investment there is in the women's leagues. I mean, there's one stats provider that could provide stats for the NWSL soccer league. Well, that's redundant, but the NWSL, where you could have like a real-time game like this. Other companies, which are great, but like, they'll give you yellow cards or goals or whatever, and that's like a pretty boring game, right? No one wants to play that kind of fantasy game. I can do that on Google sheets. But you know, the kind of stuff that you want to like really have to think about, okay, how is this player you're going to perform?

There's only one company that I know of that can provide that. And there are so many stat companies out there. I mean, if I wanted to start a fantasy app for, I mean, guaranteed any men's league you can think of, I can start it tomorrow because the stats are there. The APIs are there for any people who are, you know, in the know on that stuff. The way that you say, hey, I need to know how many minutes this player played, send out a call to that. And then, you know, through the formula, it sends it back to you. That's how you calculate scoring in fantasy games. So yeah, there's been hardly any investment from the stat companies that we all know of into women's sports, because it does take people to watch the game. It takes people to look back over film and make sure that they've gotten the stats right.

It is an investment. But it's hampering women's sports. I mean, the amount of side projects, side businesses, side channels that could come about just with great statistics…There’s a whole world there that could be very profitable for all of these leagues. So, it's disappointing for sure. But I think people are starting to see that we need that and that fans want that. So, I hope it's the beginning of a change in that direction. 

Lindsay: So, this is an area I don't know much about, so I'm very interested. Is it the leagues themselves that pay for the stats monitoring or is it independent companies? Like, like how does that work? Like, let's just say for the NBA, right – does the NBA hire people to monitor stats? Or is it independent companies who have people monitoring all the games and counting on their own? Is it both? How does that work? Let's say not even for women's sports, but just, you know, in a well-funded sport, let's say like the NBA?

Ashley: Yeah, and I will preface this by saying I'm not entirely sure, but the understanding that I have is that they've partnered with independent companies. So, leagues will partner with stat companies and then together I think they share a profit of selling the API fees, that kind of thing. 

Lindsay: Gotcha.

Ashley: And usually leagues have a preferred stats provider. So as far as I know, that's how it works. 

Lindsay: In women's sports, what you're finding is these…I mean, because there are some basic stats, so do they not have like a stats partner? What's the step missing from the leagues themselves? Or do they have nothing to do with this?

Ashley: No, and I think it also varies across the league. So the more well-funded leagues that we have, like, WNBA is covered by all the major stats providers, probably because they're affiliated with the NBA and that's part of the deal that they've made. That being said, WNBA should be able to stand on its own and have that kind of investment. But when you think about what it takes to collect stats, it's either going to be someone watching the games or having someone on the ground taking the stats, reporting them back, and then that gets collected. Well, for a lot of leagues in this country, for women, that kind of money isn't on the table for having those positions per team. I mean, sadly, that's just the reality, I think.

And so, you know, when you need investment across the board, sometimes that gets left off the table. I think as leagues do grow and bring in sponsorship money that attracts stat companies, but the ones who are left to fend for themselves, it's a hard task, and it's one you have to put a little money towards hardware, you know, how are you going to do it? Where does it get collected? All that kind of stuff.

Lindsay: So, you've also partnered with or work with smaller leagues. I know you work with women's professional football and so, tell me, how does that go? Because they're so small, I wonder how did they have any stats available? How does the process of creating a fantasy game for professional women's football, American football, go? Because I mean, most of those players aren't really even getting paid.

Ashley: Yeah. So, that has been a discussion, and that's something that we really tried to…We were working with a company that sadly because of COVID has had to close, but they were actually wanting to invest in women's sports, and so they were working with us where they were going to provide software to leagues who didn't have a centralized stats process. They were essentially going to bring that to the table, which was really exciting. Some of the leagues work with smaller companies, which again, it's there, it exists, it works and they're continually improving. The beautiful thing is they are passionate about wanting to show up for women's sports in this way.

But just again, the human power behind it is limited, I think. It's not someone who is going to watch a game live and be able to track it. It still very much relies on teams submitting stats themselves. But I'm really excited. Yeah. The WNFC, we’ve built a game for their league, which we're really excited about, and just working with the company that they do work with, they're being really innovative. I mean, as I think we've seen of the WNFC all season, like leading up to this season, they're really pushing the boundaries and getting creative. And so we are really excited with where they're headed and what we're going to be able to do with what their stats company is building. So yeah, really excited about that.

Lindsay: That's awesome, and I'm guessing that leagues like that are really probably excited to work with you and very willing to kind of be partners on the ground in developing this app. Is that the case? 

Ashley: Yeah. I mean, we've definitely…I think everyone knows, I think everyone who's aware of fantasy sports is like, yeah, it will only help. It'll only bring attention either from people who are playing fantasy football for men's football…Well, it's the same deal, just there women out on the field. So, you know, I think people get really excited about the idea, and it is kind of, again, oh, we've been waiting for someone to do this. So yeah, we're really happy to be in this space. And I'll be totally honest, like when COVID happened, we had a few games last summer with basketball and soccer that we just ran on our website, but we too had to have like a little bit of a pivot, and so we kind of started getting pretty content-heavy all while trying to build this in the background during the pandemic. So it's been really fun to let us come back to the forefront and to really be like, yeah, this is what we're passionate about and this is what we think can make a big difference and just be really fun for people, to bring in new fans to watch women's sports leagues. Yeah, we're really excited for what's to come.

Lindsay: Yeah, it's supposed to be fun, right? [laughs] It’s supposed to be fun. So, I'm curious, what types of innovation, if you can give us a sneak peek of like with the football, like you said, that you've gotten really innovative with some of the things. Can you give us a sneak peek of what that looks like?

Ashley: Well, and again, this is the stats company that they work with, but just building out some of the infrastructure…And this is like the super nerdy back end stuff–

Lindsay: No, we want it! We want the nerdy. Yeah.

Ashley: It's just the infrastructure that they're building, like, actually taking the data and figuring out a way that we can integrate it just at a faster rate, because again, with fantasy sports, ideally you get a status update every five seconds, or, you know, as a play happens, your score is getting updated, and that's still something that we're going to have to walk through. It's just a reality of some of the leagues that we're in. But just the thought process of how do we speed that up? How do we make it as real time as we can? Yeah, it's just really cool to see, you know, essentially three groups come together and figure this thing out. Just again, because we want to make it as enjoyable and easy to use as possible.

Lindsay: I'm curious what you think about a league like Athletes Unlimited, which of course has kind of built itself on a fantasy model. We've now had their softball league, their volleyball league. They're about to launch lacrosse. We've talked about it some on the main program, but Athletes Unlimited is a real league, like, with real athletes, you know, real playing. But they're not fixed teams. It's very much the scoring is individual and based kind of on a fantasy model. So, what are your thoughts on that and kind of what that brings to women's sports and have you done anything with Athletes Unlimited?

Ashley: Yeah, we've had some player ambassadors with Athletes Unlimited, which was really fun. I love what they're doing. It is so unique. I think for some people in the fantasy world, it's kind of like the dream scenario, right? Because there are no teams to have allegiance to or not. Like for me being a Carolina Panthers fan that I am, I always had a rule in NFL fantasy football that I could not draft any Patriots because I didn't want any reason to pull for them. [Lindsay laughs] And so this eliminates that, because there are no teams, right? Yeah, I think it's super innovative.

I think it's going to be interesting to see if it is meant to be like a six week season when it's normal time again. I don't know what the ideas are there, but I do think it highlights players, which is something that I know they really love because it does get their name out there a lot. I think they've done an amazing job. I mean, it's incredible the partnerships that they've had from the get go, and the team they've built as far as like administrative staff. So, I'm excited for lacrosse, and it is kind of fun to see fantasy-sports-type scoring played out at a total level. That's pretty fun.

Lindsay: Yeah, I agree. So, with this app that you said sometime this summer it's coming out, what can people expect from it? What different leagues, what type of games? Is everything going to be season long? Is there going to be any, like, I don't know, cross-league competition, you know what I mean? Like, what can people expect and what should they be on the lookout for? Do some promotion, do some teasing.

Ashley: Yeah. No, thank you so much. We will have three sports on there. Not official partnerships yet with the leagues, but excited to bring season-long games for WNBA and NWSL and WNFC. And so we know it'll be mid season when they come out, but hopefully that'll just help some folks who are going to be brand new to this, because we're very aware that a lot of fans of these leagues have never played fantasy sports for their favorite leagues, we'll say that. Maybe they've played for others, but a lot of them haven't. So it'll be good for people to see like, oh, this is how this pair has been doing so well. Do I want to take them or not? But yeah, it's going to be season-long.

So again, something that isn't anywhere else And you know, you and 10 to 11 of your other friends and family in this league together. It's really fun. Like, you draft Megan Rapinoe, and you're the only one that gets her. And so we're really excited about that style of game. And then our hopes are definitely to have hockey in the winter, and then just keep adding leagues as we can, as the stats allow, as well. So, yeah, it's going to start with just a few and then hopefully grow every season. 

Lindsay: Yeah. So we talked earlier in this conversation about just some of the barriers of entry to creating an app like this. If you were doing something like this for men's sports, like creating an app, just for soccer or basketball and football, how long do you think it would have taken you to set up?

Ashley: Yeah, it probably would have happened before COVID. I mean, some of it's a stats thing, some of it's the money that it takes to invest in stats, because it's not cheap to get stats access. But no, I've seen people in the trade association and all sorts of stuff that had an idea and six months later, there it is. And so it's definitely way more accessible and, again, and maybe you've seen this too, but there is still just an overall barrier of entry for anyone wanting to highlight women's sports still in like the investment world and the sports world in general. I still get comments that are like, well, you really need to prove that there's an audience for women sports – still. I'm just like, well I have that data! But you're just not choosing to see it, kind of thing. I don't know. I mean, it's a reality. No, I'm not gonna apologize for saying it. It's a reality.

Lindsay: Yeah. You don't have to tippy toe around that here. You know, it's very frustrating to see that, you know, I feel like every other day we're finding out another big ratings increase for women's sports, another big merchandise data-driven thing for women's sports. And yet everybody I talk to behind the scenes is still finding it incredibly difficult to get the investment that women's sports deserve. I think it's so exciting that you are working on that. Where can people follow you so that they can be some of the first to get this app when it comes out and support it and, you know, give you those numbers that are going to help prove this case to build investment? Where can people follow you and find She Plays?

Ashley: Yeah. So, She Plays is she-plays.com. We're on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook @ShePlaysPro, and we would love to have you come be a part of the community that we're building and be the first ones on the app when we launch. We're really, really excited and just think it's going to be just another level brought to the women's sports world that we're excited to be a part of though. Thank you again for all that y’all do, and thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. 

Lindsay: Yeah. Thanks so much for coming, and everyone go get there, because we're gonna have to do some Burn It All Down team stuff with these games when that comes out because yeah, we all got to support each other and we have to support those who are doing the work, right? Because that's the only way change is going to happen. So thank you, Ashley, for all you do. And we're excited to be playing some games this summer.

Ashley: Thanks so much.

Lindsay: All right. Thanks so much for listening, flamethrowers. Remember: we are on a break for the month of June, but you'll have new interviews every week still. So, you're not going to be missing us too much. And of course you can follow Burn It All Down, go to our Patreon page, and you've got our store, Bonfire, where Amira has gotten some great new merch ready for us. And then you know where to find us and give us a little rating and a review. And we look forward to talking with y’all soon.