I have been a sports fan all my life. I was like a mini-ESPN in high school, always watching the shows—SportsCenter, Pardon the Interruption and Around the Horn—and developing aspirations to become a sports writer. When I was way younger, at age five, I remember watching the World Series for the first time, and then, later on, the Super Bowl. It all started with men’s sports.
But now I am more of a women’s sports fan than a men’s sports fan, specifically when it comes to women’s basketball. As I mentioned, I was constantly watching ESPN in high school, so right around the start of my sophomore year, I came across the 2006 WNBA Finals between the Detroit Shock and Sacramento Monarchs. The interesting part of this story is that I was born in Sacramento, so I felt a connection to the Monarchs. I began to root for them and became a fan of their players, particularly Kara Lawson and Ticha Penicheiro.
Ultimately Cheryl Ford, Katie Smith, Swin Cash and Finals MVP Deanna Nolan were too good and overpowered the Monarchs for the second of three Detroit Shock championships in the span of six years. My introduction to women’s sports would continue in April of 2007 when I watched the NCAA championship game between Tennessee and Rutgers. Again, I had a rooting interest, because my mom is a Rutgers graduate, and again my team came up on the losing end. Tennessee’s Candace Parker proved to be a superstar at the professional level, and I would go on to cover her as a sports writer during her second WNBA MVP season of 2013, my first full season covering the league.
I had no reason not to love women’s sports. For me, all that mattered was that the storylines were just as compelling and the personalities just as entertaining and lovable as those on the men’s side. As a rec league basketball player myself, I saw female basketball players as my counterparts, and I had the utmost respect for them. Watching the Monarchs and Rutgers on ESPN sparked my interest, and then, as an aspiring basketball journalist, I was attracted to the University of Maryland because, when I toured the campus as a prospective student, I saw that they had not just a men’s basketball national championship trophy in the lobby of their arena, but a women’s one as well.
Women’s basketball became more than just a casual interest of mine; it became my livelihood, and the reasons were that I was attracted to the underdog story of women athletes and, once at Maryland, I fell in love with the way head coach Brenda Frese ran her women’s basketball program: with competitiveness but also integrity. Her personality as a coach made me want to cover her, and her team was having more success than the Maryland men’s team. The rest is history because I was hooked!
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There is a huge disparity in popularity between men’s and women’s sports in American society, a disparity that is most apparent when comparing the viewership of the NBA and WNBA Finals because basketball is the most popular sport in the United States that has a women’s league that is comparable to the top men’s league. Over the past 20 years, the lowest viewership a NBA Finals has gotten has been an average of 7.5 million viewers (Statista, 2023). Meanwhile, the WNBA just had its most-viewed Finals in 20 years in 2023, attracting an average of 728,000 pairs of eyeballs (Sim, 2023a), which still pales in comparison to the 7.5 million the NBA attracted in 2020 (Statista, 2023).
Men’s basketball has also historically topped women’s basketball at the college level, receiving more viewers for their championship every year until 2024, when superstar Caitlin Clark’s Iowa Hawkeyes took on the South Carolina Gamecocks and attracted an average of 18.7 million viewers compared to the men’s 14.82 million (Romo, 2024). The 2024 NCAA women’s championship received more viewers than any college or professional basketball game for any gender since 2019 (Romo, 2024). That stat may make it seem like the popularity of women’s sports is not an issue, but women’s sports are still searching for consistent popularity and increased respect for their professional basketball league, which is far less popular than women’s college basketball.
As mentioned, basketball is a good example of the disparity in popularity between men’s and women’s sports because the WNBA is respected as the unquestioned best women’s basketball league in the world. Although women’s basketball players get paid better overseas, it is still the goal of most of them around the world to play in the WNBA. Nobody doubts that the WNBA is putting the best product on the floor, and therefore most people know what the WNBA is and have known about it since it came into existence in 1997. But most people don’t watch it. Here we have a league that is well-respected but can’t seem to excite people enough to get them to know its teams and players as well as it knows those on the men’s side.
The lack of popularity in some other women’s sports is just as bad. North American football has no real comparable women’s league, but the men’s version is even more popular than men’s basketball and dominates our nation’s attention; the Super Bowl averaged 123.4 million viewers in 2024 (NFL, 2024). Then there is the comparison between baseball and softball, with there being much less attention paid to college softball (1.6 million viewers for its latest championship; Deitsch, 2023) than is paid to Major League Baseball (9.11 million; Sim, 2023b). Hockey and soccer aren’t as popular as basketball, but they too are played in similar ways by men and women. Yet the 2023 NHL (2.6 million; Gough, 2023b) and men’s college hockey (808,000; Gough, 2023a) championships were given a better chance to succeed than the 2023 women’s college hockey championship (shown on ESPNU, not even ESPN or ESPN2; Donnelly, 2023). Soccer is the only sport among the “big five” team sports where viewership is pretty close between men and women. The 2023 MLS Cup averaged 890,000 viewers (Lewis, 2023) while the 2023 NWSL Cup averaged a not-so-far-off 817,000 (Greenberg, 2023). However, the MLS Cup did attract 2.16 million viewers the previous year (Jones, 2022) compared to the NWSL Cup’s 915,000 (Yang, 2022).
Clearly, our society grossly favors men’s sports. Not only that, but female athletes tend to be demeaned through sexualization, and women’s sports are therefore not taken as seriously or treated with the same respect as men’s sports (Pruitt-Young, 2021). Journalists and public relations professionals are in a position to boost the popularity and image of women’s sports.
That is why, for my strategic communication master’s capstone project at American University this past spring semester, I investigated the following research question:
What are the best communication strategies for improving the popularity and overall public perception of women’s sports in American society, with a focus on women’s basketball?
My capstone study is significant because the disparity in popularity between men’s and women’s sports not only is an example of sexism, but also perpetuates sexism. Female athletes’ accomplishments are just as noteworthy as those of men because they perform at the highest level possible for their gender and put in just as much work. These accomplishments need to be celebrated as such.
For my research, I surveyed 67 sports fans who are bigger fans of men’s sports than women’s. I also interviewed Cat Ariail (editor-in-chief of Swish Appeal and Ph.D. in US sports history), Lauren Douglas (Los Angeles Sparks public relations director), Myles Ehrlich (New York Liberty beat writer for Winsidr), Howard Megdal (founder of The Next Hoops), Sabreena Merchant (WNBA and NCAAW writer for The Athletic), Chloe Pavlech (founder of Chloe Rose Consulting, Sad Girl Hours and Overtime WBB), Jackie Powell (social media strategist and Liberty beat writer at The Next Hoops) and Khristina Williams (founder of Girls Talk Sports TV). Here is the discussion of my results:
There is hope!
A discussion of the results of my research has to begin by referring to this table, which shows the mean ratings from my survey’s sliding questions (1 being the lowest value, 10 being the highest value).
Early exposure to men’s sports (9.25)
Men’s sports fandom (9.07)
Love for fantastic feats of athleticism (7.58)
Potential to become interested later in life (6.9)
Love for nostalgia related to sports (6.8)
Love for personalities (6.7)
Love for storylines (6.63)
How much would less-fantastic feats of athleticism detract? (4.77)
Women’s sports fandom (4.31)
Early exposure to women’s sports (3.38)
I think the first and most optimistic thing to note is that women’s sports are more popular than they are prevalent, while men’s sports are less popular than they are prevalent. Women’s sports fandom registered a mean 0.93 higher than early exposure to them, while men’s sports fandom was 0.18 lower than early exposure to them. This means that with increased exposure, women’s sports have the chance to match men’s sports in popularity. My open-ended survey questions overwhelming found that more coverage is the best way to promote women’s sports. The question then becomes what kind of coverage: selling feats of athleticism or storylines and/or personalities?
Storylines, personalities and/or fantastic feats of athleticism?
The most pessimistic thing to note from my results is that fantastic feats of athleticism were comfortably the top contributor to men’s sports fans’ love of sports. This is a discouraging finding because women will never become as strong, fast and athletic as men. In addition, my sole multiple-choice question found that fans favor the selling of athletic competence over the selling of personalities. However, my interview results contradict the survey by suggesting that storylines and personalities are more important than athleticism and athletic competence.
Merchant favored storylines as the most important aspect to sell and favored selling personalities over selling athletic competence. None of my interviewees said athleticism was more important than storylines and personalities, and only Megdal said it was equally important. I am inclined to trust the survey results more than the interview results since they are coming directly from fans as opposed to an expert’s interpretation of what a fan may want. However, the 2024 NCAA championship viewership numbers that saw the women beat out the men despite lesser feats of athleticism don’t lie. An explanation for this could be that I only looked at the 67 people who rated their love of men’s sports at 8 or higher AND their love of women’s sports at 7 or lower. Powell made an interesting claim when she said that men’s and women’s sports fans simply want different things. Enough people wanted to watch Caitlin Clark and Iowa take on South Carolina for the women’s championship to beat out the men’s championship. The fans who only watched the women may feel that there is something positive about women’s sports that men’s sports don’t have. Williams suggested that the underdog story of women is actually an advantage that women’s sports have over men’s, and I am certainly an example of this phenomenon.
According to my interview results, to get better viewership than the men it took a feat that came closer than usual to matching the men (Clark’s incredibly long 3-pointers), plus the media’s promotion of that feat and their promotion of Clark’s personality and storyline (she broke the all-time NCAA scoring record earlier in the season and was chasing a first championship to solidify her legacy). So ultimately, the proper communication strategy to make women’s sports more popular is to sell the fantastic feats when they occur while also always communicating the storylines and personalities in compelling ways. One storyline that should be communicated, at least for now, is women as the underdogs, though Pavlech points out that it would be better for us as a society to hope for a better future when women aren’t considered underdogs.
I expected athleticism to get a lower rating than storylines and personalities in my survey. I also expected respondents to lowly rate the level of detraction experienced when viewing lesser athleticism. The latter hypothesis was supported, with detraction registering a mean of 4.77. So while athleticism received a 7.58 (well above personality’s 6.7 and storylines’ 6.63), respondents generally shared that they don’t/wouldn’t love women’s sports all that much less because of lesser athleticism.
Nostalgia
Both my survey and my interview results indicate that providing early exposure to women’s sports is another key strategy. Nostalgia for something that connects to one’s childhood was rated slightly above both personalities and storylines in my survey results, and the biggest takeaway from the Megdal interview was the need for early exposure. However, potential to become interested later in life was rated slightly above nostalgia. The implication of these results is that women’s sports communicators should focus a great deal of effort on early exposure, but also come up with strategies to appeal to older potential first-time viewers because that is an audience that is convertible.
Repeated themes
I was delighted to find that women’s sport will be just fine when it does the right thing. A repeated theme in my interview results was that authenticity sells women’s sports. It was mentioned in reference to depicting the full spectrums of gender identity and sexual orientation, and in reference to being vulnerable and willing to talk about mental health. Another repeated theme was the need to build a community atmosphere with fans through communication. Building relationships with athletes and teams, and employing passionate journalists covering teams they love are also key strategies to improve popularity.
Feminist media theory
The previous literature was split on whether sex sells women’s sports; my interview results acted as a strong vote against sexualization, with Ariail, Merchant and Powell all chiming in. In addition, these three interviewees all supported the feminist media theory belief that the media should challenge negative ideologies about women (Steiner, 2014). I learned from my interviews with them that, in a women’s sports world that includes many male figures, the media needs to give women due credit. To improve popularity, the media should also stop comparing women’s sports to men’s sports and add as much context as possible about the differences between the two. In addition, the media should employ a good amount of women when distributing women’s sports coverage duties because only women can relate to the discrimination female athletes face.
Aces
As expected, my interviewees brightened up when I brought up the Las Vegas Aces’ personalities and their impact on women’s sports’ popularity. The two main comedians on the Aces, A’ja Wilson and Sydney Colson, were mentioned frequently. They have a major back-and-forth going on on social media, often pretending to hate and annoy each other for show. Wilson is the best player on the Aces, and one of the two best players in the world along with Breanna Stewart of the Liberty. But Colson has never been a star at the professional level; she is an end-of-the-bench player for the Aces who rarely gets much playing time. The fact that my interviewees see the promotion of Colson’s personality as good for the popularity of women’s sports shows that it’s not all about feats of athleticism.
Conclusion
I found that fantastic feats of athleticism are the most important aspect of women’s sports to sell if one’s target audience is current men’s sports fans, but also that there is an audience of people out there who want the focus to be on things besides the athleticism, such as storylines and personalities. A key thing to realize is that not all sports fans are the same. Some are inclined to appreciate the things the women’s game has that the men’s game doesn’t have, such as more underdog storylines, and personalities that are worn on the sleeves of athletes. Therefore, women’s sports communicators shouldn’t only focus on attracting those fans who favor athleticism, especially since women’s athleticism will never match men’s no matter how much you sell it. My research into Clark’s historic popularity indicated that a magic formula of selling athleticism, storylines and personality is needed. Selling authenticity and community, and covering women’s sports passionately are also important.
One thing I did not look into further is racism. It is curious that the NCAAW is so much more popular than the WNBA and that the WNBA was 70.3 percent Black in 2022 (Lapchick, 2022), while the NCAAW was only 43 percent Black in 2018 (Lapchick, 2019). I mentioned that Parker’s 2007 Tennessee team helped introduce me to women’s sports. Parker was the unquestioned best player in women’s college basketball at that time and is Black. She received a lot of hype, as did Maya Moore, Brittney Griner, Stewart, Wilson, Arike Ogunbowale, Sabrina Ionescu, and Aliyah Boston at the college level after her. Five of those other players are Black and two are white. Clark is white and her popularity skyrocketed above these others who were close to as good, if not just as good or better. Stewart (also white) won the national championship all four years of college and was named the Final Four’s Most Outstanding Player all four times. Clark never won a national championship. I think it would be interesting and important to research why Stewart was less popular than Clark, and whether race is involved in the popularity of Black players.
References
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