Women’s professional sport leagues: a systematic review and future directions for research

ABSTRACT Women’s professional sport has grown over the last decade and so has academic scholarship investigating it. It is timely to review and consolidate extant scholarship to identify patterns and gaps in research and future directions for research to support continued advancement in women’s professional sport knowledge and practice. This paper presents a systematic quantitative literature review (SQLR) of 57 academic peer-reviewed journal articles researching women’s professional sport leagues and published between 2000 and 2019. We provide bibliographic findings, extend the typical SQLR approach and provide an inductive thematic analysis of article findings to synthesise the knowledge base present in the extant research. Based on our SQLR findings, we highlight four key research directions, including the need for (1) diversity in inquiry and reflexivity by researchers, (2) innovative and enabling theories and conceptual frameworks, (3) transdisciplinary research approaches and (4) sustainable business models for women’s professional sport. We emphasise that to advance our theoretical understandings and sport management practices in women’s professional sport, academics must commit to exploring women’s sport in new and different ways, to achieve new and different knowledge and outcomes. HIGHLIGHTS Research into women’s professional sport leagues is predominantly informed by academics and research contexts from the USA and Australia, and some European countries. Mainstream theories from sports sociology, marketing and management dominate the body of knowledge and most adopt qualitative methods. There appears to be an expectation that women’s professional sport should be an exemplar of diversity, inclusion and social change. Opportunities exist, moving forward, for transdisciplinary research to advance women’s professional sport knowledge and practice.