Latina sports fans don’t have a passion problem. They have a recognition problem

In this episode of The Chingona Chair, we sit down with Karina Martinez, founder of Drafted, the media platform putting Latina sports fans at the center of a booming women’s sports economy. In just three years, Karina has gone from launching Drafted with what she calls a “wild hair of an idea” to building a platform fueled by community, cultural insight and data. Her philosophy is refreshingly simple: stop deciding what audiences should care about and start listening to what they’re telling you. We talk about why Latina consumers have been undervalued, what their fandom actually means in dollars, and why brands hoping to reach them need to stop treating cultural relevance like a campaign and start building a relationship. Karina also gets candid about entrepreneurship, getting fired three times in one year, learning to trust her own instincts, and building a company from her personal truths. In This Episode: Why Latina sports fans represent an overlooked economic opportunity How Drafted turned community listening into a business strategy Why representation starts with recognizing value What brands get wrong when trying to reach Latina consumers Why cultural relevance requires long-term investment, not a one-off campaign Building intimacy and trust while scaling a community Entrepreneurship, failure and finding power in your own truth Why sometimes you have to be “so loud they can’t ignore us” For marketers, brand leaders, sports executives and entrepreneurs, this is a conversation about much more than sports. It’s about who gets valued, who gets heard—and what happens when a community starts defining its value for itself.