Roughly five years ago, Lily Shimbashi looked at her firstborn son, George, lying in her arms and wondered what was next in her life.
Shimbashi loved being a mother. But she had worked her entire life toward a career in sports media and wondered how she could use her broadcasting experience to fill a void in the sports media landscape.
The void Shimbashi saw? “Speaking to female fans.”
So that night in New York City, while still holding George, Shimbashi finished the business plan for Sportsish, a sports media company specifically built for women who follow sports.
“That was kind of my why, really, to help female fans feel seen in the way that I craved to be seen my whole entire life and to help them feel empowered,” she said. “I wanted to create new female fans because I knew there was a lot of potential there, but I also wanted to empower old female fans with knowledge and feeling like they have a community in this sports space.”
And ever since that night, Shimbashi has been on a mission to create the next mainstream sports media destination for women — reinventing sports coverage along the way.
Born to love sports
Shimbashi’s journey started at birth when her father, Dave Checketts, was the president of the New York Knicks.
“(Sport) was a big part of our lives. It was not the center of our lives, but it was a very big part of our lives,” Checketts told the Deseret News.
The Checketts family regularly attended games, and Shimbashi fondly remembers piling into the family’s suburban to drive an hour from their home in a Connecticut suburb to Madison Square Garden in New York City to watch the Knicks and later the New York Rangers and New York Liberty when Checketts became the CEO of Madison Square Garden.
Shimbashi’s childhood helped her develop a deep knowledge and passion for sports that has served her well in her career. It also became a source of bonding for Shimbashi and Checketts.
“As she got older, she was really into the teams with me,” Checketts said. “If I had to stay up late to watch the Rangers or the Knicks on the West Coast, she was always there with me.”
That shared father-daughter love for their teams expanded when Checketts became the first owner of Real Salt Lake in 2004 and then of the St. Louis Blues in 2006.
As a teenager, Shimbashi would travel with her dad to the Blues’ home and away games. Because of Shimbashi’s deep love for hockey, Checketts told his wife that their daughter would end up marrying a hockey player.
In 2009, Checketts and a then-17-year-old Shimbashi attended the MLS Cup in Seattle and watched Real Salt Lake beat the L.A. Galaxy. When Real Salt Lake won, Shimbashi was the first person Checketts hugged.
Her sports dream job — and why it changed
Growing up, Shimbashi always wanted to be a reporter, wanting to be the next Doris Burke or Erin Andrews.
“I remember the female sideline reporters at the Knicks games and just looking over and knowing that is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life,” she said.
Shimbashi dedicated much of her life to pursuing a broadcasting career.
“I wanted it with everything in me, and it’s really what I focused on. Every ounce of dedication was to sports broadcasting,” she said.
In high school, Shimbashi made herself the sports anchor at the school station she started. She continued her study of broadcasting at BYU and completed five internships before becoming a sports anchor for BYU’s CougTube. In 2016, she started working for the Utah Jazz as a broadcast assistant.
It was while working for CougTube and covering the BYU hockey team that she met her husband, Ashton, the team’s captain at the time — proving her dad’s prediction true.
Shimbashi knew that women in sports were treated differently. She experienced it herself as a fan as early as fourth grade.
“I was a female fan and always felt like I had to prove my worth — constantly quizzed about my sports knowledge or my knowledge of players on the team,” she said.
Shimbashi described her early broadcast career as “wonderful,” but there were times when her eyes were opened to the challenges of “being a female broadcaster in this men-dominant industry.”
In 2018, Shimbashi put her sports media career on hold when her husband got a job in New York.
Three years later, in 2021, she returned to her dream and officially launched Sportsish.
What is Sportsish?
Sportsish markets itself as “not your boyfriend’s sports news.”
“There are plenty of women who know their stats and their scores better than men. But they also want to know a deeper story when it comes to the sports industry, and so, that’s what I try and give,” Shimbashi said.
Sportsish combines pop culture and sports while also showcasing the personal side of athletes such as their fashion, relationships, inspirational stories and more.
“Lily was doing this long before Travis (Kelce) and Taylor (Swift) came around. Lily was already merging pop stars and sports,” said Annabelle Peterson, Sportsish’s creative director.
Swift and Kelce’s romance put a spotlight on the millions of female fans that sports leagues and teams may have overlooked. After Swift attended her first Kansas City Chief’s game to watch Kelce, a wave of women flocked to the NFL. Two million new female fans tuned into the Chiefs’ game the next week, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
Shimbashi wants those women to feel at home in sports — welcome enough to stay and maybe even expand their sports interests.
“There are women that came into sports fandom because of Taylor, but many of them stayed for the Trinity Rodmans, Coco Gauffs and A’ja Wilsons. Maybe their introduction to sports was nontraditional, but they’ve become full-fledged fans now. And truly nothing has made me feel more fulfilled than seeing women catch the bug of sports fandom,” Shimbashi said.
Sportsish tries to be unique, like comparing NFL players to Thanksgiving dinner staples or the stars of March Madness to the Kens of the “Barbie” movie.
“I think that’s probably one of the most fun parts about my job is there is no rule book, right?” Peterson said. “Nobody else is doing this, and so, it’s so fun. Every day, me and Lily get to be like, ‘Hey, what are we loving in pop culture?’ And, ‘What are we loving in sports, and how do we bring that to life?’”
Sportsish has a goal to split its coverage equally between men’s and women’s sports, so its readers can be just as informed of what’s going on in the WNBA and as in the NFL.
“I find our followers love women’s sports because they want to cheer other women on, but they also like men’s sports because they want to be a part of mainstream conversation,” she said.
The ups and downs of a startup
While there have been plenty of rewarding moments, Shimbashi doesn’t shy away from acknowledging that running a startup media company is difficult.
For four years, Shimbashi ran Sportsish’s Instagram, podcast, website and newsletter with just a team of part time interns, until hiring Peterson, “doing this just nonstop, hoping that it stuck,” she said.
Not even her father helped with Sportsish’s launch — as he was serving as a mission president for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ England London Mission.
“She’s been the driving force in that business, and where it goes, I don’t know. I just know she’s created a really, really great media business all out of her head and on her own,” Checketts said.
Now, Shimbashi feels that her hard work might finally be paying off and that Sportsish could turn into her career. But that doesn’t make her immune to thoughts of giving up.
Just three nights before this interview, Shimbashi told her husband that maybe she should quit and apply for an NFL social media position instead.
“It’s hard to make all the decisions and have it all riding on you and on your back and on your hard work. It’s really, really tough, and I know eventually there can be an amazing payout. We’re not there yet. We’re still in the backbreaking building phase,” she said.
In those moments of doubt, Shimbashi tries to remember why she started Sportsish, finding the motivation to continue her mission from the kind DMs she receives from followers.
“When I hear that there are people who finally feel seen as a sports fan, that’s everything to me. That’s really a huge motivator,” she said. “So, yes, I do want to give up all the time. But no, I don’t.”
Balancing life as CEO and mom
Though running Sportsish keeps her busy, Shimbashi’s main priority is her children, 5-year-old George and 2-year-old Rosie. She doesn’t work set hours, and instead works around her children’s needs.
“I work every weekend and every day, but I also make sure to put that phone down, unplug and look into the faces of my kids because that’s what I saw my dad do for me, and that’s what I want to emulate as a mother of my own kids while being in this very crazy, nonstop industry,” she said.
When her kids are asleep, Shimbashi puts her CEO hat on. When they’re awake, Shimbashi admits sometimes there may be some “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood” playing on the TV while she works. A nanny also takes care of Rosie a few times each week while George is in school.
“It is just a matter of finding those moments where I can completely unplug and be a mom and finding those moments where my kids can independently play and I can work,” she said.
Sometimes that means working at 2 a.m., so she could play with her kids at the playground at 4 p.m. the day before.
Shimbashi also credits her husband for his support.
“We’re very much in this together. We both have a love of sports and family and faith,” she said. “We’re trying our best.”
The success of Sportsish
In February 2021, Sportsish shared its first Instagram post, telling its followers why Aaron Rodgers winning his third NFL MVP award mattered. It received just 18 likes and zero comments.
Nearly four and a half years later on June 10, Sportsish posted about Rodgers again but this time, in regards to his secret marriage. The post garnered 2,726 likes, 44 comments and 1,333 shares.
That’s more likes than TMZ TV’s (7.4 million followers) and US Weekly’s posts (5.1 million followers). Sportsish did that with just 232,000 followers — a fraction of those outlets’ follower counts and a number that more than doubled over the last year, according to Peterson.
Some of its notable Instagram followers include the NHL’s Jessica Campbell, the NWSL’s Ashley Hatch, former NFL player JJ Watt, podcaster Kylie Kelce and Olympians Courtney Wayment, Gabby Thomas and Ilona Maher.
Simone Biles and Maher have even commented on or reposted Sportsish content, per Peterson.
“It’s such an exciting time to be a part of sports and especially for women, and I feel really grateful I’m a part of it,” she said. “I think Lily is a trailblazer, and there’s lots of big things ahead.”
Shimbashi believes Sportsish is still awaiting its big break, but when Kelce, a podcaster and the wife of former NFL player Jason Kelce, followed Sportsish in November 2023, it came pretty close to taking that title.
“That was definitely a moment where I thought, ‘OK, this is really resonating.’ It felt like a small nod from someone at the center of the sports world that we were onto something,” she said.
In April, Shimbashi was the keynote speaker for Sports Business Journal’s World Congress of Sports, where she spoke to sports executives about “the power of a woman as a consumer.”
She told her audience that female fans will make them money because “women really show up for things they love,” pointing to Swift’s Eras Tour and the NFL’s aforementioned new contingent of female fans.
“They do not want to be an afterthought. They do not want to be lumped in. They are here, and now, how are you serving them?” she said.
Shimbashi’s message appeared to strike a chord, according to Checketts, who had the honor of introducing his daughter ahead of her address.
“The rest of the conference, which just has all of these owners and managers of sports teams around the world — I mean, I couldn’t go anywhere without someone saying, ‘Wow, did she ever kill it. She was awesome.’ I was a very proud dad,” he said.
But this is still just the beginning for Shimbashi and Sportsish in the company’s pursuit of becoming a mainstream destination. To get there, the key is “more,” according to Shimbashi.
“We have all of our social channels and our website, but just more and more women working together,” she said. “I never wanted to build this alone. I’ve only wanted to build something along with other women for women, and so that’s kind of the goal within the next year: more talent, more fans and more female voices within this sports space that’s been dominated by men for so long.”
