The IX welcomes a new day in women’s sports coverage — Bella Alarie joins The IX

About a year ago, Ted Leonsis called me and asked me a simple question: had I ever thought about taking on investment in The IX and The Next? In the course of covering the WNBA, I’d gotten to know Ted casually, and certainly knew of his success in the business world. (You know how America is online now? That wasn’t always true!) I told him honestly: we’d had some people approach us, and the nonnegotiables quickly ended those conversations.

What are those nonnegotiables? That The IX and The Next would remain laser-focused on telling the full breadth and in-depth stories of every sport we cover, that we would remain editorially independent to do so, and that we are not building to sell. The intention here has always been to build permanent infrastructure for women’s sports media, and the past five years has only reinforced for me that doing so in the media space is more vital than ever.

We don’t intend to give up control of The IX or The Next — not now, not ever. We have built this as a place where women’s sports stories and the journalists who tell them are valued, and we plan to continue growing this space, surrounded by this team I adore working with every single day, until they carry me out of a press room someday. Hopefully not for many years! I am 45, I eat healthy and I exercise.

What struck me in both my initial conversation with Ted, and all those that followed between our team and his, is that Ted had no interest in interfering with these goals — to the contrary, he sees the value in approaching the work this way. It helps that Ted has been one of our very first paid subscribers. He understands who we are and what we do.

Accordingly, this investment in no way touches our editorial content — a part of the final agreement that Ted raised before I did in our first conversation. (We also share admiration for the way Jenn Hatfield covers his Mystics at The Next.) Instead, this investment allows us to hire a pair of full-time employees to build out our business. At a time when we are on track to eclipse our 2024 numbers, which included more than 30 million readers at The Next and 12 million at The IX, it is time to connect that audience with the companies who understand the mass movement of us who are unwilling to see women’s sports coverage treated like an afterthought anymore.

I am delighted to announce the first of these two hires: Bella Alarie. I first met Bella back in 2019 when I had the opportunity to write about her during her Princeton career absolutely demolishing the Ivy League. In many ways, Bella’s story is the story of women’s sports writ large: a player whose brilliance was undeniable, but a tiny landscape to spotlight women’s basketball excellence meant it took real work just to bring her to the attention of the WNBA, while limited opportunities of just a few years ago in pro basketball sent Bella in search of her next world to conquer.

Obviously, getting to know Bella in the years following my first story about her has been a joy for me. But I did not realize the impact our work together had on her career until she told me this in one of our more recent conversations.

“During my junior year at Princeton, Howard approached me about an article he was writing for the New York Times,” Alarie said in our Slack earlier today. “He took the time to get to know me and craft a story that, without a doubt, helped elevate my career and garnered the attention from the WNBA that I might not have received otherwise. Sportswriters like Howard are the backbone of women’s sports, and their work will always be vital in growing the game into what it truly deserves to be. So, when Howard called me this past year about the opportunity to join The IX and The Next’s business team, it was the easiest yes.”

We will all be better for it. As she completed her sports management graduate degree at Georgetown, Bella and I began discussing the yawning chasm between how women’s sports media (particularly those who provide light, not heat in this space) is monetized and the opportunities to do so — along with what it will mean for the landscape once it happens. To figure out how to make sure that the critical mass of fans thirsty for real, in-depth coverage of the sport they’ve either loved for decades or are just discovering for the first time can access the work we do. To unlock the financial reward for doing so will mean ending the outdated practice of journalists in the women’s sports space being expected to do this work on our own dime forever.

“I am beyond excited to be joining the business team at The IX and The Next as VP of Sales and Marketing,” she said. “I am eager to help build what is now an incredible foundation of women’s sports journalism into a cornerstone of the sports media landscape. This is the perfect next chapter to leverage my experience and passion in an environment that’s pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in women’s sports, and the opportunity to shape the future of this space is one I couldn’t pass up. The sky is the limit for The IX and The Next, and I’m grateful to be part of a team redefining women’s sports media.”

If you’d like to discuss these opportunities with Bella, you can reach her at BAlarie@theixsports.com.

In the coming days, we will be hiring a second, full-time employee to focus on our financial long-term picture. Together, we can make sure that the business potential of The IX and The Next finally keep pace with the work we are doing on the editorial side every day — over 100 reported pieces every month at The Next, six newsletter per week at The IX, six (and counting) podcasts per week through our work at Locked On Women’s Basketball, and countless moments documented, filmed, recorded, analyzed and reported to you, the women’s sports fan who has always deserved this level of service.

For an investment like this to yield the benefit we all desperately seek, it requires us to work together. We must redouble our efforts to elevate our buy-in.

If you read us, we urge you to consider paying for the privilege — it is paid subscriptions that largely fund this work, and the larger that number is, the more and better-paid we can make our staff.

If you already subscribe, consider donating to our general funds at The IX and The Next, which will increase things like our travel budget and ability to do investigative work.

If your company would benefit by connecting with our massive audience and aligns with our mission, we want to hear from you.

An overwhelming show of force by all of us, numbers too big to deny, in the coming months about what women’s sports media is and can be will change the course of how this work is done, who is doing it and the way forward in this industry. Permanently.

It’s time to make this happen, together. And I’m so grateful to all of you here already. The ride ahead is going to be incredible.

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Five at The IX: Atlanta Dream reflections

From today’s podcast, which includes conversations I had Tuesday night with Brittney Griner, Jordin Canada and Te-Hina Paopao of the Atlanta Dream.

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Mondays: Soccer

By: Annie Peterson, @AnnieMPeterson, AP Women’s Soccer

Tuesdays: Tennis

By: Joey Dillon, @JoeyDillon, Freelance Tennis Writer

Wednesdays: Basketball

By: Howard Megdal, @HowardMegdal, The Next

Thursdays: Golf

By: Marin Dremock, @MDremock, The IX

Fridays: Hockey

By: @TheIceGarden, The Ice Garden

Saturdays: Gymnastics

By: Lela Moore, @runlelarun, Freelance Writer