The ROAR Podcast: Thayer Lavielle

When Thayer Lavielle set out to build a research practice around women as fans, athletes, and executives, the problem wasn't interpreting the data. It was that the data didn't exist. She describes searching for insight on women as insurance buyers and turning up a single study from 2003. Six years after launching The Collective in the wake of the U.S. women's national team's World Cup win, that gap has been filled with dozens of proprietary reports, a think tank spanning thirty academic researchers, and — by the organization's own accounting — close to a billion dollars in unlocked investment in women's sport, a figure Thayer suspects is conservative.

In this conversation with host Caroline Valvardi, Thayer traces a career that ran through Paris, a New York newsroom, a French beauty conglomerate, and a NASCAR partnership before it ever touched sports strategy. She unpacks what a 15,000-respondent study across twelve countries revealed about the invisible logistical load women carry when booking live entertainment, why women athletes generate roughly twice the engagement of their male counterparts despite smaller followings, and how a decade of proprietary data is changing what AI can actually do for an agency. She also makes the case that the research itself is the flywheel: more data creates more conversation, more conversation attracts more capital, and more capital funds the next round of proof.

• 00:00 — Welcome and guest introduction
• 00:18 — WNBA All-Star Weekend in Chicago
• 01:20 — All-Star as a convening moment for all of women's sports
• 02:15 — The research gap in women's sports science
• 06:36 — Into PR, then L'Oréal — and the boss who named her gift
• 07:50 — Lancôme: under-qualified, oversized, and figuring it out
• 08:50 — Brands, talent, and the origins of The Collective
• 10:24 — French and religion,
• 12:23 — Launching The Collective in 2019
• 13:20 — Women drive the economy — so why is there no data?
• 14:10 — One insurance study from 2003
• 15:09 — Building the think tank: ten universities to thirty professors
• 15:50 — Reports as a credibility spine
• 17:07 — Has demand for the research actually increased?
• 18:40 — The flywheel
• 20:18 — Nearly a billion dollars unlocked
• 21:45 — AI as thought partner
• 23:30 — A decade of proprietary data meets query
• 24:00 — Double-checking and gut-checking everything
• 24:45 — The live music study
• 25:15 — Cultural nuance from Hong Kong to Singapore to Toledo
• 26:20 — 83% of women do the booking
• 26:45 — Two and a half hours a day of unseen labor
• 28:45 — From cable TV to social
• 29:14 — Connection, comparison, and what we haven't cracked
• 30:34 — Athletes as creators, NIL, and playing to different strengths
• 32:05 — The RBC study
• 32:50 — How the pandemic became a proving ground
• 33:30 — The virtual draft from Kathy Engelbert's living room
• 34:33 — Five new leagues in one year
• 35:41 — Reflecting on a career