The ROAR Podcast: WNBA Innovation Summit — The ROAR Podcast

For the first time, co-hosts Adam and Caroline record together — and they do it on location in Chicago at the WNBA All-Star Media & Innovation Summit, sitting courtside on Home Court, the new basketball facility at the Obama Presidential Center. It's a fitting backdrop: a purpose-built venue on a huge piece of developed land, capturing exactly where this show lives — the intersection of sports, real estate, and revenue. That word, purpose-built, becomes the thread through the whole conversation, because the story of women's sports right now isn't only about growth; it's about designing for it from the ground up.

Adam and Caroline dig into why "pink it and shrink it" is the wrong playbook, and what it actually takes to build products, performance centers, and content made for women's sports rather than borrowed from the men's game. They get into the data behind the business case, why AI is still underinvested on the business side, what fans really want from athlete-creators (hint: not always the biggest names), and how you actually budget across talent, production, and research. Caroline brings the fan-and-communications lens, Adam brings the data-and-revenue one, and the line they keep returning to ties it together: this was never charity — it's good business, and the data can finally prove it.

00:00 — Cold open: what this episode is really about
01:37 — Why this is the first combined episode, live on Home Court
02:41 — Obama Center's long road from vision to venue
03:49 — Why the WNBA Summit: the topics worth showing up for
04:44 — Caroline's take: four All-Stars in
05:17 — The data case and the science gap
06:04 — "Pink it and shrink it": why purpose-built beats scaled-down
07:08 — Playing, fandom, and a male-dominated industry
07:53 — Empowerment as business case
08:24 — Women in leadership and the coaching
09:31 — BOA Construction and the women who built Home Court
10:15 — Purpose-built performance centers
13:00 — AI and data: the business case,
16:00 — Athletes as creators
19:00 — Produced vs. organic
23:00 — Beyond the Summit: All-Star week
26:00 — Chicago in the summer