Why Your Favorite Player Should Start a Finsta
A new generation of male athletes have made spam accounts, but why aren’t the women hopping on the bandwagon, too?
The art of the perfect finsta has been heavily analyzed and studied for years now. Rising to prominence in the early years of Instagram as an alternative account that predates the Close Friends story, finstas come in all shapes and sizes depending on the user — a personal archive of sorts. Home to many senseless rants, selfies that could never be posted on main and our deepest, darkest secrets, finstas have historically lacked curation and any aesthetic value. In the year 2026, athletes are changing that connotation.
If you keep up with soccer, you’ll have noticed a number of fashionable male players have opened public finsta accounts, notably Hugo Ekitike and Nick Woltemade. Their reach is massive, with Ekitike’s alt account pushing 500k followers. Serving as a way to share their personal style, things that make them laugh and a small glimpse into their lives away from the sport, these accounts almost act as a reminder that even the biggest players are human.
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Since the birth of Instagram and other social media platforms, public interest in professional athletes is at an all-time high. For some athletes, it’s their personality that draws people in. For others, it might be their sense of style. Either way, sports fans are heavily invested in the personal lives of their favorite players, and finstas give athletes a chance to share snippets of their lives on their own terms.
Considering how popular the finsta or archive account is in celebrity culture nowadays, with everyone from Gigi Hadid to Justine Skye having one, female athletes haven’t quite hopped on the trend yet. Angel Reese is one of the few athletes with a known alternative account, “barbieeearchive,” and she keeps it lowkey. Compared to the five million followers on her main account, her finsta sits just below 20k.
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It truly is an archive account, with snippets from vacations, memes, childhood throwbacks and endless selfies. The occasional repost from her main account might put the archives on your timeline, but of you’re not paying close attention, you would think it’s just a typical post. Reese might have cracked the code on how to quietly launch an alternative account that only her biggest fans are privy to. The account is public, but you have to do some digging to find it.
With the rising popularity of women’s sports in the last few years, fans are always itching to know what players do in their free time. TikTok has given us a glimpse into the funnier side of our favorite players, but for the more fashionably inclined athlete, a finsta is the way to go.
Houston Dash’s Messiah Bright has an account dedicated to her gameday outfits, whilst Croix Bethune recently launched a page documenting her loc journey and her personal style. What would it take for Jaedyn Shaw, Rickea Jackson, Jordyn Huitema or Coco Gauff to break down one more barrier between us, too?
There are a number of women’s athletes with incredible followings across multiple sports. WNBA icons like A’ja Wilson and Paige Bueckers have followers from all corners of the globe, whilst tennis boasts the likes of Naomi Osaka and Aryna Sabalenka. Following Milano Cortina 2026, olympians like Alysa Liu, Chloe Kim and Eileen Gu have grown their already astronomical fanbases even more. In Liu’s case, her prowess on the ice barely edges out the popularity of her hair and alternative style. Considering how much the world cherishes those carefully curated spam accounts, it’s high time our favorite athletes started making their own.
Female athletes already have a few less degrees of separation than male ones do, particularly in leagues and sports that haven’t always had the same buzz as they do now. That perceived closeness to the fans, and vice versa, might be why most of them haven’t chosen to create a second account. However, finstas aren’t only designed for sharing their lives with their fans.
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Finstas are clearly the future of men’s sports, with a new generation making them a sports fan’s new obsession, but it can be the future of women’s sports, too. The pro athlete spam account is still a fairly novel idea, but it seems like every other week, a new one spawns. Some people don’t see the point if it’s public, but a finsta creates a much-needed separation between the athlete and the person. In a way, it reminds fans that our idols and favorite players are just like us to a certain extent.
The age of the athlete finsta is well and truly here, and once your eyes have been opened to the reality, it’s hard not to notice them every time you log onto Instagram. The concept is only getting more popular, so maybe in a few months we won’t have to imagine what Trinity Rodman’s finsta would look like. Maybe it will already exist. Either way, this is a not so subtle message to all of our favorite athletes: there can never be too many spam accounts in the ether.
