The Growth of Women’s Sport:
Participant to Professional – Challenges & Opportunities
Wednesday 20th August 2025
UWS Hamilton

We return to the magnificent setting of UWS Innovation Centre for our annual conference, looking at the growth of women’s sport and we are delighted to welcome Miss Maree Todd – Minister for Social Care, Mental Wellbeing and Sport, to open this event.  We also extend our thanks to sportscotland for their continuing support of this event as well as UWS.

Whilst we all work hard to ensure equal opportunity for women’s and girls to participate, we must also understand the impact of growth on the infrastructure with the added requirement for more officials, coaches, venues etc. Given the strong growth of football for women and girls, we examine this at the opening of the conference with the Scottish FA.  Shirley Martin, Head of Girls and Womens Football will lead on this.

2024 was the most successful year ever for Scottish Women’s Cricket, capped by a historic first appearance at a World Cup. This success also threw up challenges and we hear from them on how they resolved the issues.

Deloitte recently reported in March 2025 that women’s basketball is now projected to generate more than $1bn of revenue alone in 2025, up 44%. Lisa Palombo of The Caledonian Gladiators will present on ‘The Rise of Professional Basketball- Making It Our Business!’

Finally, before lunch we will hear from a variety of ‘professional’ female athletes to understand the different models of ‘professional’ and what that can mean to the individual.  Ellie Jones, Squash – Kirsty Gilmour, Badminton

This will be followed by a Q&A.

After lunch we will delve into sponsorship, which impacts on finance available to support professional athletes and will hear from Tammy Parlour CEO, The Women’s Sports Trust who will present their recent research and discuss – Beyond the Game: “The Visibility and Commercial Landscape Powering Women’s Professional Sport”.

Just two days prior to the start of the 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup, Hannah Lawrance, Senior Brand Partnership Lead at Centrica will discuss ‘Powering Trust: Scottish Gas and SRU Women on the Road to 2025’.

As always, we invite our afternoon speakers back on stage for a Q&A.

The event will be hosted by Heather Dewar, award-winning journalist, co-chair of Scottish Women in Journalism and SW/S Trustee.

All this as well as an opportunity to network with friends, old and new and of course some fabulous food, courtesy of UWS catering.  Some early bird tickets are available – so register early to get your discount.

Register through the Eventbrite link – https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-growth-of-womens-sport-challenges-opportunities-tickets-1261456924619?aff=oddtdtcreator