Today we’d like to introduce you to Ellen Hyslop.
Hi Ellen, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
The idea for the GIST came together over dinner with my two college friends, turned co-founders, Jacie DeHoop and Roslyn McLarty. It was 2017, we were all in our mid-20s, and The Toronto Maple Leafs were unexpectedly heading to the postseason in what was supposed to be a “rebuild” year. We got into a conversation about the Leafs, the excitement about the team, and how sports were (or weren’t) showing up in our everyday lives.
When it came to sports, so much of the coverage still felt built for a traditional media model, and a traditional (read: avid male) sports fan. Sports media viewership was heavily male, and female fans (as well as other underserved fans) weren’t being intentionally considered in how sports were covered, packaged, or discussed.
At the same time, the way we consumed media had completely changed. Like most folks our age, we were getting our news digitally, mostly through our phones. We didn’t have cable, and as young women on the go, we didn’t have time to watch every game in the same way generations before us had.
That dinner sparked a bigger question for us: What would sports media look like if it was actually created with female fans in mind?
From there, we started The GIST as a side hustle. All three of us had full-time corporate jobs, and we launched as a weekly newsletter in Toronto, Canada.
The idea was simple: equally curate the (men’s and women’s) sports stories that actually mattered and deliver them in a way that was digestible, smart, and fun to read. We wanted The GIST to feel like having your sports-obsessed best friends in your pocket: giving you what happened, why it mattered, and the context and perspective that actually made you want to join the conversation. And that voice became a big part of what built our community.
From the beginning, we were intentional about building for an audience that was largely overlooked by traditional sports media. We weren’t trying to convince women to like sports. Millions already did. We wanted to create coverage and community that actually reflected how they consumed media, how they communicated with their friends, and how they experienced fandom.
What began as a weekly newsletter quickly became something we realized could be so much bigger. A major turning point came when we were selected as one of five teams in a highly competitive incubator program through the Facebook Journalism Project. That opportunity gave us the validation, support, and funding to quit our jobs and go all-in on The GIST.
After that, we expanded into the U.S. where we were accelerated by Comcast NBCUniversal and Techstars, and later by Billie Jean King Enterprises. As our audience grew, so did the ways we served them. We expanded from newsletters into social, podcasts, brackets, NFL pools, live watch parties, and other experiences designed to make sports fandom more accessible and engaging.
That community-first approach remains at the heart of The GIST. Today we reach more than 1 million newsletter subscribers and 40M+ monthly fans across our broader platforms. Our scale has changed significantly, but the idea at the center of The GIST hasn’t. Female fans have always been here. Women’s sports have always been here. We intentionally built The GIST to serve them.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Honestly, the hardest part wasn’t building the content. It was convincing anyone with a budget (brands, investors, etc.) that our audience and opportunity were worth investing in.
When we started The GIST, we saw two major gaps in the industry. Women’s sports received less than 4% of media coverage, and traditional sports media audiences skewed heavily male. Only 14% of sports journalists were women, so this trickle-down effect of fewer women athletes on TV, as well as fewer female fans, made sense to us.
We wanted to attack both problems at the same time: give women’s sports the attention they deserved, while creating an experience with underserved sports fans in mind. This felt particularly important because, in the early years, women’s sports weren’t treated as a commercial asset. They were treated more like a “cause,” something a brand did for goodwill. At the same time, leagues, teams, etc. weren’t thinking about this subset of fandom.
So almost every meeting we had in those early years was about much more than The GIST. We had to do a lot of educating on the space, including making the case for the opportunity itself: why underserved sports fans mattered, and why women’s sports mattered. And why both would lead to a successful business model. We heard a lot of “not right now” answers that never turned into a real budget.
But that conversation has totally flipped in the last couple of years. Women’s sports have exploded, from established leagues like the NWSL and the WNBA to emerging leagues like Unrivaled and the PWHL. At the same time, perhaps partly due to the Taylor Swift effect, brands have finally recognized women’s influence in the broader sports economy.
We no longer have to convince people that an opportunity exists. The ecosystem gets it, and now we’re allowed to have a fundamentally different conversation than we did in the early days.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about The GIST?
The GIST is a fan-first sports media brand that’s reinventing the dialogue around sports by providing equal coverage to women’s and men’s sports. We built our entire business around understanding the female sports fan years before the rest of the industry caught on. We weren’t trying to jump onto a trend. We saw where sports fandom was going and built for it early.
Over the last decade, we’ve built a very deep understanding of how female fans engage with sports – not just what they watch, but how they spend their time, money and attention. Our audience data shows that female fans are doing far more than just “watching the game.” They’re joining fantasy leagues, following men’s and women’s sports leagues, attending in-person games and engaging with the culture around sports.
That’s what makes The GIST different. We don’t just have an audience; we understand our audience. It’s how we were able to build a highly engaged community and deliver truly authentic and meaningful content.
The results speak for themselves. In the last year, we doubled our revenue, with women’s sports-driven revenue growing 118% year-over-year and campaigns integrating women’s and men’s sports – the kind that reflect how fans actually watch and engage – surging 270%.
That growth underscores what we have believed from the beginning: female sports fans aren’t a niche audience. They are powerful and increasingly influential consumers, and brands are finally starting to understand that.
How can people work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
There are a lot of ways to be a part of The GIST, whether you’re a sports fan or a brand!
For fans, the easiest way to support is to simply join the community. Subscribe to one of the GIST’s newsletters (thegistsports.com), follow us on Instagram at @thegistca and at @thegiustusa, and find us on TikTok at @thegistsports. And keep an eye out for some new content coming your way in Q4 and the new year.
From a brand perspective, we help companies authentically connect with tens of millions of GISTers, reaching a community of sports-loving, culture-savvy women and next-generation fans. We can work across newsletters, social, podcasts, live experiences, and integrated campaigns to help brands show up in sports in a way that actually resonates with female fans.
For us, it’s not just about putting a logo in front of an audience. It’s about creating something that fans actually want to engage with.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.thegistsports.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thegistusa/?hl=en
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ellen-hyslop-12829445/
- Other: https://www.instagram.com/thegistca/?hl=en
