The Players’ Tribune, SELF Team Up to Spotlight Women Athletes in Upcoming Series

The Players’ Tribune and SELF announce they will partner to create a series of original content, including video and personal essays, celebrating the untold stories, triumphs, and struggles of women across a wide range of sports. Olympic fencer, Ibtihaj Muhammad, who was the first Muslim-American to wear a hijab while competing in the Olympics, will serve as executive producer of the multi-episode video series, helping shine a light on other female athletes’ incredible stories. Through this partnership, TPT and SELF will connect athletes with fans on a deeper, more personal level as we address important issues that they face. The series premieres this fall on SELF’s and The Player’s Tribune’s channels.

The Playing Field will chronicle the experiences of females athletes from a wide intersection of sports. Using TPT’s trademark direct-to-camera format, the series will leverage SELF’s position as the leading wellness authority for women to highlight the athletes’ incredible stories of success and the obstacles they’ve overcome on the path to greatness. The Playing Field will tackle the issues that matter: visibility, body image, relationships, stereotypes, pay equity, health, self-expression, and more.

Additionally as part of the program, The Players’ Tribune and SELF are working with the Association of National Advertisers’ #SeeHer initiative on its mission to portray women in content & media accurately. The series will appear across SELF’s and TPT’s channels, including websites and social platforms, as well as on the social channels of participating athletes.

“Traditionally, women’s sports don’t get the same coverage as men’s— and it’s not just the quantity of coverage but the quality as well,” says Jessica Robertson, head of content at TPT. “At The Players’ Tribune, we believe athletes are athletes and champions are champions. We’re proud to expand on our commitment to women in sports and partner with SELF to recognize and celebrate female athletes from all sports, and to tell their stories with a first-ever content package. We hope that through this partnership we can deliver more visibility to women’s sports, create cultural conversations through deeply personal narratives, and provide a platform for voices that so often go unheard.”

“SELF is committed to helping people feel better, and providing a platform where people can share their personal experiences to facilitate a dialogue with a larger community is one way we accomplish that,” says Carolyn Kylstra, editor-in-chief of SELF. “We are thrilled to be partnering with The Players’ Tribune to honor so many incredible female athletes and share the stories that are meaningful to them.”

“I have always identified as an athlete, as a creative and as somebody driven to utilize whatever success I have to help improve the world around me,” says Muhammad. “Telling the stories of other women in sport who have succeeded despite incredible odds is critical to our pursuit of equality. We need more women’s voices in content creation, more stories about women in the mainstream media and it’s an honor to advance both of those efforts. Excellence has no gender and I’m motivated to celebrate my peers.”