PlayersTV Knows Everyone Watches Women’s Sports Beyond the Game
The media platform has spent the last year building a foundation of coverage around the shows and lives of Olympian Chaunté Lowe and WNBA players Monique Billings and Aerial Powers
Women’s sports gave media outlet PlayersTV a playbook for success: Let athletes use their time away from the game to talk about their other passions.
Founded in 2020 by sports media and industry veterans Deron Guidrey and Collin Castellaw, PlayersTV includes more than 70 professional athletes among its ownership group—Kyrie Irving serves as chief visionary officer—and built its brand around shows letting DeAndre Jordan cook, PJ Tucker go deep on sneaker culture, and Chris Paul, Travis Kelce, Michelle Wie West, Allyson Felix, Vernon Davis, and Renée Montgomery welcoming entrepreneurs into their own shark tank. While PlayersTV has delved into women’s sports before, most notably with WNBA and Unrivaled guard Erica Wheeler’s basketball-centric Easy Buckets, roughly a year ago it debuted three shows in the low period between the end of the WNBA and NWSL seasons and the beginning of women’s college basketball March Madness.
Chaunté Lowe, a four-time Olympian and medalist in the high jump, was diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer in 2019 and underwent a double mastectomy and chemotherapy to treat the disease. In her recovery, she became a motivational speaker and appeared on former NFL player and current pediatric neurosurgeon Dr. Myron Rolle’s show discussing her experience. That, she said, led to the debut of her own show—The Lowe Point—which features Lowe speaking with Rolle, fellow Olympians, and her husband Mario Lowe about the experience of diagnosing, living with, and treating cancer.
“It was like worlds colliding,” said Lowe, whose show has already secured a sponsorship deal with Novartis. “Everything came together at the perfect time: What they were looking for as far as elevating female athlete voices on PlayersTV and what I was looking for: Connecting with people who have been through these low points, especially cancer, in their lifetime, and helping them find a way to get out and give them the hope that they could thrive.”
Lowe and the hosts of PlayersTV’s new athlete-led series defined their voices by stepping beyond sports and into topics they’re genuinely passionate about. WNBA free agent Aerial Powers played in the league for 10 seasons and won a title with the Washington Mystics in 2019, but is also a longtime gamer with her own Twitch feed, a regular chess player with her own bot on Chess.com, and a world traveler and foodie with years of experience playing abroad in South Korea, Turkey and China.
Sports may be the vehicle that introduces them to audiences, but it does not define them. Athletes today want to express their creativity and connect with fans in more integrated, bespoke ways beyond the game.
Deron Guidrey, founder, PlayersTV
When she launched her Aerial View show on PlayersTV in late 2025, she brought along her Michigan State teammate and best friend Mariah Harris as cohost and opened up topics including Harris’ recent stint in military officers’ boot camp and guest Dallas Cowboys-turned-Cleveland Browns defender Sam Williams’s days as a much skinnier hooper.
“Aerial View allows me to go beyond my athletic career because I truly believe I’m more than just an athlete,” Powers said. “I’m human, just like you, your cousin, or your best friend, and the show gives me the space to fully be myself.”
Sometimes, being yourself means swapping a basketball for a yoga mat. Monique Billings just finished her ninth season in the WNBA and her first with the Indiana Fever. Between the end of the 2025 season and the start of her first stint in Unrivaled, Billings built upon her dedication to yoga that she documented in her 2023 book—Finding Balance: A Playbook For Wellness—and launched her PlayersTV series Breathe Through It that features Billings conducting interviews during yoga sessions.
Among her first guests on the mats: Ronnie Singh, aka Ronnie2K.
“I’m so passionate about helping people understand who they are outside of what they do,” Billings said. “I feel like that’s been a big journey of mine, being an athlete, but also having so many other passions outside of basketball so it’s something that I enjoy doing, helping people discover their fire, their own passion.”
PlayersTV feels that the hosts’ passions beyond sports—being shared during a women’s sports schedule with few competing events—delineate them from a large and growing segment of sports content producers all vying for fans’ divided attention. Guidrey suggests that these athlete-driven shows can bridge the divide not only between seasons, but between sports fandom and other corners of culture.
As fans and brands begin to invest time and resources into the newly launched programs, they validate PlayersTV’s investment in production value that strips away podcast mics and headphones and the distribution that provides access to 300 million households through YouTube, Amazon Prime Video, Fire TV, DirecTV, Fubo, and Philo—as well as 200 million total ad impressions.
In Guidrey’s view, it’s the visibility that all of his platform’s athletes deserve.
“Athletes are incredible storytellers and creatives in their own right,” Guidrey said. “Sports may be the vehicle that introduces them to audiences, but it does not define them. Athletes today want to express their creativity and connect with fans in more integrated, bespoke ways beyond the game.”
Why they’re buying in
For her first episode, Lowe sat down with Novlene Williams-Mills, a four-time Jamaican Olympian who was diagnosed with breast cancer just before the 2012 Olympics (and won silver in the 4x400-meter relay anyway) and showed Lowe how to administer the breast self-exam that saved her life. The second installment saw Lowe speak with Olympic hurdler Damu Cherry-Mitchell, who was checked for breast cancer on Lowe’s advice and shared the changes brought on by her own diagnosis.
“That’s how I wanted the audience to just really feel connected: I wanted them to feel bonded, I wanted them to be able to see themselves or somebody that they loved in the episode,” Lowe said. “A lot of times Olympians and athletes are so untouchable, and this creates an opportunity for the audience to see who we really are, humanize our experience, and see themselves in us through the screen.”
That connection was apparent to Novartis, which signed a seven-figure sponsorship deal for Lowe’s show, featured its brand prominently on the title screen, and aired ads for its Kisqali breast cancer medication during the episodes’ first two minutes. Lowe noted that PlayersTV’s attention to detail when producing episodes—pulling archival footage of athletes, finding photos from points in their career relevant to the discussion—made the show visually attractive to Novartis. But in discussions with company representatives and a meeting at the Ad Council’s Public Service Award Dinner, Lowe saw a desire for deeper investment.
A lot of times Olympians and athletes are so untouchable, and this creates an opportunity for the audience to see who we really are, humanize our experience, and see themselves in us through the screen.
Chaunté Lowe, four-time Olympian, high jump
“I’ve gotten the opportunity to talk to the team and I guess what kind of really resonated deeply with me is how much they thanked me for being a part of it because they see so much value in elevating women’s voices in this space where they know that there’s a huge impact,” Lowe said. “I’m so thankful for them for not only saying that they want to invest in these stories, but literally investing in making sure that we can continue to have these conversations advocating for early breast cancer detection…I want people to remain recurrence-free.”
Audiences are taking note as well. During Powers’ episode with Williams—as he shared stories about being a jump-through-the-roof basketball player and took good-natured shots from Philadelphia Eagles fan Harris—more than 1 million people watched across multiple platforms. Powers built her show with Harris from a base of comfort, knowing that having your best friend in the room creates a safer environment and more open, honest conversation.
The episode with Williams, for example, was less about football and more a product of Powers and Harris’ curiosity about what shaped him: How he became the complete person he is today, and how he pushed through the less-than-big-league moments. While having her own show allows Powers to stay visible during the offseason, sharing insights into travel, beauty, fashion, food, gaming, mental health, identity, faith, entrepreneurship, and life transitions tends to land with the audience of actual human beings she’s trying to reach.
“I see that same connection play out through my Twitch streams, where I am able to interact with fans live, talk in real time, and build community in a very organic way,” Powers said. “Whether it is through gaming or conversation, those moments help sustain interest, deepen loyalty, and allow fans to connect with me beyond basketball.”
Through that growing connection to the audience, Powers sees even greater potential for the show. There’s opportunity for live events, pop-up conversations, and travel-based episodes—perhaps during overseas seasons or in WNBA cities—without losing the intimacy that makes the show special.
Guidrey, already a fan of Powers’ creativity and storytelling, sees her audiences as indicative of the power of his new hosts’ off-field connections.
“That ability to build audiences across multiple interest categories makes her incredibly compelling to both viewers and advertisers,” Guidrey said. “As we move forward, PlayersTV will continue to invest in creators like Aerial who have long-term media careers beyond sports, and we’ll expand content formats and distribution to meet audiences where they already are.”
Creating space
Powers came into PlayersTV with an established YouTube presence, an esports crew at Team Liquid, and fans in the fashion industry. Lowe turned her experience as a breast cancer survivor and work as a motivational speaker into a place where people can share their experiences and learn about care and early detection.
Billings, meanwhile, is actively working toward becoming a certified yoga instructor and is helping people feel a little lighter and more empowered along the way.
“The thing that I love about yoga: It’s you versus you, and just where are you at that day,” Billings said. “I just got out of the class, it just whooped me—I was not feeling like my best self in there—but that’s okay, because I’ve had days where I’m stellar, I’m hitting every pose…it’s just where you are right now, it’s a check in, it’s going inward.”
When Billings met Guidrey in February 2025, he was simply trying to expand PlayersTV’s women’s sports content offerings. Billings noted that yoga was her key interest outside of basketball and suggested building a show around it. She, Guidrey, and the PlayersTV team refined the idea around yoga sessions catered toward individual interview subjects and have already filmed the first season.
I’m so passionate about helping people understand who they are outside of what they do…it’s something that I enjoy doing, helping people discover their fire, their own passion.
Monique Billings, WNBA player, Indiana Fever
Now, instead of simply attracting basketball or track and field fans, Guidrey noted that each of the new hosts’ shows pulls from multiple niches. In Billings’ case, despite hosting early guests connected to basketball, Guidrey said some of the most promising response has been from the yoga community itself.
Before viewer and sponsor numbers rise, however, Guidrey and his team want to ensure each show is set up for success. The platform pitches partners “trackable, scalable inventory with clear audience metrics” that shows not only how many people are watching, but who they are and why they’re tuning in.
And to give each show what they believe is the best shot at reaching all of those audiences, PlayersTV launches each in a studio environment that Guidrey feels meets the standard of the audiences and brands they’re trying to reach. With the market already flooded by competing programming, PlayersTV believes it needs to offer its hosts more than a podcast-plus presentation.
“We invest heavily in quality: We believe in premium studio shows and high production standards, we don’t rely on Zoom interviews or low-friction setups,” Guidrey said. “That level of quality reflects the caliber of the athletes we work with and ensures they’re proud of what they’re putting into the world.”
