Take your smartest friends and put them on a set to talk women’s sports. That simple formula makes Roku’s “Women’s Sports Now” work.
The format is not groundbreaking, but the subject matter is. Emmy Award-winning sports reporter Suzy Shuster, former WNBA star and current co-owner of the Atlanta Dream Renee Montgomery, comedian and sports superfan Sarah Tiana and NFL Network journalist Colleen Wolfe lead the discussions on the latest news from the world of women’s sports, featuring interviews with female athletes — both high-profile stars and those who don’t often get the spotlight.
At a recent taping at AT&T’s El Segundo studios, the Toyota Feature segment was devoted to bass fishing champion Kristine Fischer, while the Miller Lite Spotlight focused on pro surfer, marine ecologist and engineer Maluhia Kinimaka; Montgomery excused herself for an insightful segment about the WNBA’s ongoing collective bargaining agreement talks.
Roku partnered with Hello Sunshine, Rich Eisen Prods. and APEX Content Ventures for “Women’s Sports Now.”
But when Shuster, who is also an executive producer for Rich Eisen Prods., was putting together the contributors, she didn’t think of herself as part of the on-camera talent she relates in the show’s prep room, where the women conduct pre- and post-show meetings and can relax.
“I was fighting her,” says Montgomery, who was Shuster’s first hire. “I was like, ‘So who’s on the show?’ And she kept on saying, ‘We’re still trying to find a host.’ And I was like, ‘Why aren’t you hosting? I’m confused.’ Because I feel like she’s like the lady from the ‘The Devil Wears Prada’: Miranda.”
“Miranda Priestly??!!” they all exclaim.
Montgomery says yeah, “Like a boss; she’s the HBIC.”
Tiana dryly notes, “Oh! I thought you meant Miranda from ‘Sex and the City,’” cracking up the whole room.
“We truly got each other from the start, and the only reason why I hadn’t put myself in that position was as the executive producer of the show, I really thought that the person sitting in the chair had to be a women’s sports expert. And I’m not. I’ve covered men’s sports my entire life. But I am really excited about learning, so I think that’s what makes me effective,” Shuster, who is married to Eisen, says.
“It’s so important to me to have an environment in which women respect each other, like each other and support each other,” Shuster says. “It was not like that for me coming up in sports.”
She notes that she got lucky with her mentor, pioneering sports journalist and broadcaster Lesley Visser, who told her that “’there’s enough space in the room for all women,’ but that was not my experience, right? So when I could be in a good position to control the environment, I was going to make damn sure that the women had respect for each other and love for each other, and could take the living piss out of each other, and that’s really what we have here.”
“Suzy is one of those people whose presence and energy lifts up everyone around her. On-camera, behind the scenes, even in the halls of Roku, her ability to connect is inspiring. She brings passion and vision to everything she touches, and her work on ‘Women’s Sports Now’ is just one great example,” says Charlie Collier, president of Roku Media.
The biggest requirement for the show’s hosts was a driving sense of curiosity.
Shuster notes that while Tiana is not a journalist, and doesn’t come from the world of athletics, “She’s just curious.”
Tiana loves sports — particularly baseball — and her background in stand-up comedy actually gives her an insight into the sports figures she interviews. “When you’re a comedian, you already feel like you’re in the minority when you’re a woman, and you always feel singled out on stage. Feel like you’re under a microscope whenever you’re doing something good or bad, like that is embellished by the world or by other people,” she says. “You just feel this huge responsibility on stage to be funny, because if I’m not good, then everyone’s gonna go home and they’re gonna say, ‘Well, see, I told you, women aren’t funny.’ I feel like a kinship to female athletes in that way, because I feel like they’re always under a microscope. They have one bad game and everyone is like, ‘See, I told you, their product is inferior.’ And we’re allowed to have bad games. We’re allowed to get better.
“Everyone else needs to catch up, though, and I think that a big part of this show is us just saying, it’s already here. Just the fact that we just started talking about it doesn’t mean it hasn’t been talked about, everyone needs to catch up.
She says that having to fight against stereotypes at comedy clubs allows her to relate to her interview subjects, like the female tackle football player. “I think as a society we’re taught to respect women and learning to laugh at a woman takes a second, right? So seeing a woman get punched, or seeing a woman get tackled, seeing a woman get in a fight on a basketball court just takes a second for society as a whole to catch up. And like that is really relatable. And I feel like, as the fan, or the silly one on the show, that it’s easy for me to relate to the viewers.”
Her segments with women who are not household names in underreported sports wraps up the show in such a good way every week, Shuster says. “How extraordinary these women are, and how lucky that we are that Miller Lite supported us. Because without that support for that segment, we wouldn’t know who these women are.”
Wolfe credits the show with “reinvigorating my love for sports, because I’m learning so much” before Shuster cuts in: “I needed somebody cute.” The room explodes in laughter. “The truth of the matter is, because I am a mom of three, and because my kids are taking up so much of my goddamn time, I also needed somebody to help me run the show and to be someone who could sit in a chair and drive, and that was Colleen. I think Colleen is better on TV than almost anybody I know. I don’t know how she reads all that copy on the teleprompter, I can’t do it. It’s a talent, but I just wanted your energy. And Colleen and Rich have worked together for decades.”
Montgomery has a podcast, but “what attracted me to the show is that we were going to talk about concepts and besides what has happened every day. Because there’s a lot going on all the time. So for me, that’s what’s interesting.” She’s never without her bedazzled mini basketball, which she continually handles during the show, and even uses it as an exclamation after she makes a particularly succinct point. (“I’m my most comfortable self when I have a ball,” she says. “And so I just started doing it with the shows where I just have a ball. Like, on my podcast, I always have a ball. It’s a different ball. But for this show, I made one specifically for it — it’s a comfort zone, athlete thing.”)
There is a lot going on in women’s sports right now. And the audiences are there for it. Whether it’s podcasts and podcast producers like Wave leaning in to women’s sports or web sites like Just Women’s Sports, there’s a thirst for this content.
Roku is betting on this rise — engagement for women’s sports in 2024 was up 143% year on year on the platform, according to Roku.
Hello Sunshine made a bet on women’s sports about three years ago, when its series “Surf Girls” was picked up by Prime Video and became a hit. “This was with emerging talent, arguably a niche sport, and a light bulb went off that the tides are turning,” says Sara Rea, head of unscripted at Hello Sunshine.
“It’s always something we wanted to do. … Sports are just a space that we love,” notes Rea. “Our mission is to put women at the center of the story. We started the company to change the narrative for women in media and entertainment. And when you look at the statistics behind how advantageous playing sports is for women’s careers, for their self-confidence, for all of these reasons, it was a no-brainer for us to be doubling down in a space that has such positive impact for young girls and women.”
And Hello Sunshine is very committed to women’s sports — it’s behind Netflix hit “F1: The Academy,” plus, “We’ve got a series of docs that we’re working on. We have an Ilona Maher doc series, and obviously ‘Women’s Sports Now.’ So for us, it was an opportunity to really lean into a passion, both personally and professionally. As storytellers, we see sports as a great space.”
She adds: “It’s a saturated market, but there’s still a void when it comes to women’s sports, and we need more of that out there. I believe the stories of women teams and athletes behind the scenes just play differently than men’s and I think it’s a fascinating space that is currently underserved.”
Shuster says, “I find that my boys are learning a lot about it too, which is really cool. We have three kids, and I don’t think that boys are as exposed to women’s sports as they should be. And my kids are now flagging stories for me.”
“Women’s Sports Now” also works because the chemistry of Shuster, Montgomery, Tiana and Wolfe is off the charts — but the four women are also so different.
They credit the production team and especially Emmy-winning producer Don Bui, who worked on the “Rich Eisen Show” for years.
“Why this works and we can be who we want to be is that the control room is chill, and Don and I have known each other for a long time. He’s who I wanted from the very get go,” says Shuster. “He is ice cold back there, and he always makes the right choice. But because it’s so organized and because it’s so calm, we’re able to be who we want to be. And I promise you, that’s a rarity in our business.”
Montgomery echoes that sentiment: “That’s what I’ve noticed, top to bottom, and in the chats, on the calls we have, our weekly meeting … so Don Don Bui — I call him Don Don Bui (everyone chuckles, even Bui) — understands what I would want, but he also understands what Suzy would want, what Sarah or Colleen would want, so it’s not like we’re just one group. Everybody is their own individual. We don’t share information, and he understands the silos, like, this is this person’s lane. It’s kind of like sports, like the way a coach treats a team — I’m not the same as my teammates, so you can’t treat us the same. It’s kind of the same here.”