Women's sports on the rise in TV landscape
Sue Bird of the Seattle Storm brings the ball up the court against the Las Vegas Aces in the fourth quarter of Game 1 of the WNBA semifinals at Michelob ULTRA Arena on August 28, 2022 in Las Vegas. Credit: Getty Images/Ethan Miller
The USTA and ESPN unapologetically built the first week of the U.S. Open around Serena Williams, which was the right thing to do in tennis, TV and business terms.
Ratings and ticket demand were through the Arthur Ashe Stadium roof, and even casual and non-followers of the sport were paying attention.
There were men playing at the Open also — no, really, I saw some of them on “SportsCenter” — but they mostly were an afterthought.
None of that was the biggest recent news in women’s sports, though.
For about a half-century, tennis has been the closest thing in this country to a sport in which attention (and money) between the genders is in the general vicinity of parity. Serena’s superstardom is in keeping with that.
What’s changed is the newfound respect and coverage for other women’s sports, notably basketball, softball and soccer.
Just last week, ESPN announced that ABC will carry the women’s NCAA basketball final for the first time next April (albeit in the afternoon rather than prime time, at least for now).
My fellow old-timers might recall that CBS carried the very first women’s NCAA final in 1982, but that was a contractual obligation tied to its men’s contract.
This time it represents a milestone in a long run of increased exposure and interest around the event.
Last season’s NCAA final between South Carolina and Connecticut averaged 4.85 million viewers, the best such figure since 2004.
“Women’s NCAA championships continue to generate strong audiences across the ABC/ESPN networks,” ESPN programming boss Burke Magnus said in making the announcement.
That goes for softball, too. Its NCAA tournament has become a reliable viewership-generator for ESPN, and more than holds its own with the College World Series in baseball.
At the pro level, the WNBA never has been more visible on television, and of course the U.S. women’s national team in soccer is a sensation every time it appears in the World Cup or Olympics.
Is some of the rise in women’s sports on television and streaming services motivated by an insatiable need for content?
It is. Men or women, these outlets have a programming beast to feed, 24/7.
But something bigger than that is going on here. Women’s sports have followed a trajectory similar to that of soccer — men’s and women’s — in the United States.
Once upon a time, when a women’s basketball or men’s soccer game popped up on television, it was something of a novelty, and when those sports were written or talked about, it usually was in the context of their growth — or lack thereof.
Now both soccer and women’s basketball are taken seriously in this country as pursuits whose relevance speak for themselves, with real fan bases that do not have to explain themselves to non-believers.
Consider the arc from Far Rockaway’s Nancy Lieberman, a women’s basketball pioneer who usually was covered as, well, a women’s basketball pioneer, to Syosset’s Sue Bird, who is covered the way an aging male sports icon would be — as simply a great player nearing the end.
Are we all the way there yet in women’s sports coverage, especially on the pages (and websites) of traditional daily newspapers and on sports talk radio? Of course not. Not even close.
The sports debate shows with which cable TV channels fill their endless daytime programming hours rarely talk about women’s sports — or really about much of anything other than the NFL, college football or the NBA, come to think of it.
And while sponsors are coming on board, advertising is trickier for a women’s sports world with followers whose interests are more diverse than the stereotypical male fan’s focus on beer, trucks, unhealthy snacks and sports betting.
But ESPN can see which way the wind is blowing — and is powerful enough to generate wind of its own — and there clearly is something going on here in the 50th year of Title IX.
Serena Williams is good business. But there is a huge growth industry in her wake.
Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.
