Gist, a Toronto based start-up brings sports news for women by women. A Toronto based start-up ‘The Gist’ says it is levelling the playing field by making sports news more accessible for women.
“The three of us co-founders noticed that sports are everywhere. They are a part of our culture. They build relationships. Sports have the unique ability to unite people regardless of age, gender, race or religion and to create community. However, we also found that sports and sports talk can be incredibly exclusionary and that many women, in particular, ourselves included, felt left out of the sports conversations and community,” The company website said.
The co-founders added that the majority of sports media today is catered to men and avid sports fans. This problem stems from a significant lack of diversity in the sports industry with only 4 per cent of sports media coverage being on female sports while only 14 per cent of sports journalists are females and only 0.4 per cent of sponsorship is spent on female athletes.
The Gist aims to change these stats and provides sports-related news in a newsletter format and is sent out thrice weekly.
“We provide sports news, experiences and community that are created by women, for women. Since our launch, The GIST has grown into a community of women around sports, and we’d love you to be part of it,” the site said.
The website and the social media pages of the site are multiplying. Ellen Hyslop, Jacie deHoop and Roslyn McLarty, then working in the financial services sector, created the website to help bridge the gap between women and sports news.
The aim is to build a community of sports fans, predominately made up of female millennials, by highlighting female athletes and using a female voice. Traditional websites can be intimidating for readers new to sports and make assumptions about fans’ knowledge base. The tone of The Gist, which is more conversational than what is produced by more traditional outlets, was particularly relevant to the co-founders, who took inspiration from websites like The Skimm, Betches and Girlboss, and brands they believe have “really connected and resonated with other female millennials,” Jacie DeHoop recently told a media outlet.
Knowing more about Sports could help women build relationships with colleagues and clients, said one of the co-founders, who added that her sports fandom helped her career in many ways.
The Gist includes a section called “Gist U” with guides, glossaries and frequently asked questions about basketball, baseball, hockey, football, golf, soccer, tennis and rugby. This makes it easy for readers to understand things about a sport even if they are not accustomed to playing it or also watching regularly.
