Popularity contest
Ilona Maher and the power of the star signing
On the first Sunday of the new year, 9,240 people turned up to Ashton Gate to watch a Premiership Women’s Rugby tie. That is more than double homeside Bristol Bear’s previous attendance record for a women’s match (4,101) and also marked a record crowd for a standalone PWR match.
That surge of interest was mostly down to an American woman. More than 90 minutes after Bristol Bears lost 40-17 to Gloucester-Hartpury, Ilona Maher was still stood in her kit in the blistering cold, posing for selfies with fans.
Maher is the most followed rugby player in the world (male or female). She has 4.8 million Instagram followers. On TikTok she has 3.4m and has amassed more than 235m likes. A whopping 325,000 people liked the unveiling video posted to Bristol Bears’ Instagram. Within two days of her signing announcement in December, the club more than doubled their Instagram following from 22,200 to 50,000. (That has swelled to 80,000 now). Within 72 hours of the announcement, the club moved her first match from the team’s usual 2,000-capacity venue to the larger main stadium Ashton Gate, in order to accommodate ticket demand. The Bears also literally hired a new social media employee, whose main role is to cover Maher’s three-month stint at the club. The likes of ESPN and the New York Times were in Bristol to cover her first match. A documentary camera crew followed her every move too. She is arguably the most significant signing in women’s rugby history — and that is before you consider the damage she can potentially do on the field.
Maher, 28, made her name playing 7s rugby for the USA at the Olympics in Tokyo, and won a bronze medal last summer in Paris. She was motivated to join a PWR side to gain more experience playing the XVs format, in anticipation of the Rugby World Cup which is being hosted in England later this year. She only has two caps for the USA in XVs, but is aiming to do everything in her power to make the team — hence this move across the Atlantic. Maher is going to take some warming up though, as she spent last autumn competing in Dancing With The Stars (the US version of Strictly), where she placed second.
She only played 19 minutes for her Bristol debut at the weekend, and her contribution was minimal. But the huge boost of publicity women’s rugby has gained from her joining the league is already stark, just one match in.
Some have accused her addition to the Bears squad as a gimmicky marketing tool. Sport is primarily about the result on the field of play, not about how many followers you have on Instagram, obviously. But women’s rugby could definitely use some star power with an upcoming World Cup in the autumn. Besides, Maher is not the first or last athlete to have her athletic ability complemented by a healthy side of off-field celebrity.
The star signing is a tale as old as time, well before social media was ever a thing. Think Diego Maradona going to Napoli in 1984, and causing an explosion of interest in Italian football. Or David Beckham’s seismic move to LA Galaxy in 2007, which was a complete game changer for Major League Soccer in the US. Hundreds of journalists covered the story, boosting the league’s stock and sparking other names like Kaka and and Thierry Henry to follow him across the pond. In recent years, Beckham invested in MLS club Inter Miami and masterminded eight-time Ballon d'Or winner Lionel Messi’s move there in 2023. According to Forbes, in 2024 Inter Miami was estimated to be worth $1.03 billion, marking a 72% jump in reported value from the previous year.
In women’s sport, the pay-off is far smaller, but the power of the individual has been used in a similar way to aid growth in football in recent years. I was not alone in touting Sam Kerr’s 2019 signing to Chelsea as a huge coup for the entire Women’s Super League. She was the best striker in the world, choosing to join a league that had traditionally struggled to attract the biggest names away from the likes of Lyon or the more established NWSL in the US. It was a big shift in the power dynamics of club football. Kerr lived up to the hype with her prolific goal-scoring, backflip celebrations and barging of pitch invaders, and other top talent followed her lead to England. The WSL became the go-to destination in women’s club football.
The following year, US superstar Alex Morgan also moved to London, going on loan to Tottenham Hotspur. Easily the most marketable name in women’s football, her 9.2 million online following at the time eclipsed the 356,000 that followed the Spurs women’s team Instagram account. Tottenham was a club in the bottom half of the league and still considered small fry, but billboards in bustling Leicester Square promoted their new arrival. Though Morgan’s period in England was short-lived, the fandom she attracted proved that star signings were very much a viable marketing opportunity for women’s football clubs.
In 2024, the most prominent example of a player eclipsing their club was Caitlin Clark, drafted by WNBA team the Indiana Fever. Clark was just out of college, a rookie and set to earn a measly starting salary of $76,000 at the Fever, but she already boasted Nike and Gatorade in her vast portfolio of personal sponsors. Her jaw-dropping college career meant she had a fanbase that went way beyond anything the Fever had ever attracted. With Clark on the roster, rival teams had to move their home fixtures against the Fever to bigger arenas, in order to accommodate demand. The WNBA as a whole saw a huge boost due to Clark and the rest of her popular rookie class, including Angel Reese. The league averaged 9,807 fans per game, up 48% from 2023, and merchandise sales were up a whopping 601% on the previous season.
The thing about star power is it will wane unless it comes hand-in-hand with quality performances. The athletes always need to be really good too. Maher has three months to show Bears fans whether or not she is. But some are already unfairly painting her as some over-hyped social media star before she has even had a chance to settle in. She herself reminded some online doubters of that this week. Replying to someone that said, “Are you a regular at the Bears games or just this one [match] as Instagrammer was playing?”, Maher replied: “I’m an Olympic medalist: put some respect on my name.”
My brilliant former colleague Fiona Tomas wrote a column this week on how traditional rugby fans are dismissing Maher, but they need to open their eyes to how the American is proof that the sport can break through to the mainstream and usher in new fans. And she’s right. As a woman in a male-dominated sport, Maher has built a fresh audience for rugby, and she has done it in the US — a country where the sport is peripheral at best.
Her body positive messaging cuts through beyond rugby (she was the cover star of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue last year), her insights into life as an athlete are often hilarious (she marvelled over a packet of chocolate digestives this week) and, lest we forget, Maher actually initially gained traction because of what an imposing force she is on the field of play. Clips of her brutal tackling and in-game athletic prowess have gone just as viral as the videos she posted behind-the-scenes at the Paris Olympic Village. People can be fans of athletes for a multitude of different reasons, and that is ok. (I for one would like to know how she found a signature red lipstick that stays put while playing rugby).
It feels like an obvious point to make, but Maher is also just a product of the inequality that exists in sport for women. She takes pains to craft her online presence not only because she enjoys it (and is very good at it), but because it is a necessity if she wants to earn a decent living. Playing rugby is a viable way of paying the bills for only a small handful of women around the world — the rest of professional players need side hustles to get by. That is the reality. Maher has been savvy enough to create a platform and online persona that garners her lucrative opportunities (including her latest sponsored content with Quaker Oats). Best of all, she wants to spread the power of her platform around.
“People call me a superstar of rugby, but that’s not enough for the sport,” Maher told reporters at the weekend. “We can’t just have one superstar, we need to have more, we need to have people connecting with so many different players and that’s what will grow our game… If one rises, we all rise.”
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As the Australian Open is gearing up, these are going to be tennis heavy.
First, the most intriguing pairing in sport make their competitive debut Down Under: Andy Murray is coaching Novak Djokovic at the Australian Open, and I can’t wait for the player-coach in-match interactions. The Telegraph’s Simon Briggs was at their first open session together in Melbourne.
The complex situation in Elena Rybakina’s camp continues and, while we wait to hear the WTA’s final verdict on their suspension of her former coach Stefano Vukov, Ben Rothenberg had a brief but insightful chat with her current coach, Goran Ivanisevic. Read it here on his Substack Bounces.
Tumaini Carayol of the Guardian interviewed Mirra Andreeva, and pointed out that she is the only teenager currently in the WTA Top 100. Considering this is women’s tennis, a sport that has often been defined by teen talent, that stat threw me a bit. The interview is great too.
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Thanks for reading!
Molly x
Really enjoyed this one Molly!
A lot of traditional rugby fans are also really dismissive of the Sevens version of the game, let alone the women’s game, so have no concept of how impactful Ilona has been ON the field the last couple of seasons.
Also, Im going to scream if I see any more “we don’t need this American style hype in the game” type comments.