Billie Jean King Enterprises

A Firm That Lives Up to Its Founder’s Legacy of Boosting Women’s Sports

Billie Jean King has been breaking down barriers for women in sports since 1973, when she beat Bobby Riggs in the Battle of the Sexes, the most-watched tennis match of all time. (King’s advocacy prompted the U.S. Open to offer equal prize money for men and women.) That legacy lives on in her eponymous investing, consulting, and marketing firm, Billie Jean King Enterprises, which supports women in sports and business. Thanks to two monumental deals in 2023, BJK Enterprises has made significant strides towards that goal. First, it helped establish the Professional Women’s Hockey League, the first-ever sustainable women’s hockey league, which has seen record-breaking attendance in Montréal, Toronto and St. Paul, Minnesota. The league also locked down a partnership with the Canadian Tire Corporation, one of Canada’s leading retailers, which has committed 50% of its sponsorship investments to women’s professional sports by 2026. BJK Enterprises also partnered with the International Tennis Foundation to create the BJK Cup, dubbed the World Cup of women’s tennis. The world’s largest annual women’s international team sports competition in terms of the number of nations that compete, the partnership has created countless jobs for women and supports grassroots tennis across 135 nations through participation grants of up to $50,000.

By Audrey Goodson Kingo