Whoopi Goldberg’s All Women’s Sports Network aims to raise awareness

Hollywood icon Whoopi Goldberg hopes her newly launched All Women’s Sports Network will bring more attention to women’s sports.

Goldberg started the network with George Chung, co-founder of international media holding company Jungo TV. It’s the first global media channel dedicated exclusively to highlighting women’s sports and is available in the U.S. on the free streaming service Vizio WatchFree+.

Goldberg told CNBC her childhood passion for sports and desire for greater female representation in the field inspired her to start the network.

“I want little girls to have what we used to call baseball cards for their new favorite players, and I want them to follow just like I used to follow Mickey Mantle,” Goldberg said.

AWSN is also available via international partners in India, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and the Philippines.

The network will air 2,000 hours of live sports the remainder of this year and into 2025. It will feature a wide range of sports from soccer, basketball, volleyball and field hockey to cricket, judo and table tennis.

Goldberg said she hopes the growth of women’s basketball and soccer will help put the spotlight on other women’s sports.

“We started to see amazing basketball being played, and I think more people said, ‘Hey, I want to watch more of that.’ What other sports are women playing that we don’t know about? Like hockey or roller derby. I love roller derby. I want America to have a roller derby team,” Goldberg said. “I want it out there because women are doing it.”

Chung said Vizio currently reaches 20 million television sets, and, within the next three to four months AWSN expects to be available over on 100 million devices in the U.S.

Goldberg acknowledged she faced some initial resistance in launching the network, but once she met Chung, their goals aligned.

“I like a good business proposition, and I want this to go way past my lifetime. I want it to be as well known as an ABC, NBC or CBS,” she said.

Disclosure: NBC and CNBC are divisions of NBCUniversal.