Kev4029
Footballguy
I heard a great perspective on this from Michelle Wie on Daniel Tosh's podcast of all places (10/10 would recommend). She didn't address the economics of the issue as much as the practical enjoyability of the viewing experience - Men's sports are significantly better to watch on TV because the media has made it so. She said that for Men's golf tournaments there would be something like 80 cameras with different kinds of cameras to get different/better views and it allows the viewer to jump around and watch a variety of different golfers and holes with Jim Nantz announcing, while women get 10 cameras that are mostly just watching a few different pairings with an announcer you don't know. She recognized that there is a bit of a cause and effect thing here where the popularity drives the coverage, but to some level the coverage could drastically change the popularity as well. Additionally, men's sports have been around for decades longer than women's pro sports, so there has been more time and more tradition in building a fan base.
Her and Tosh brought up women's major tennis as the counter to traditional men's v women's coverage - women get nearly identical coverage and prizes which drives the viewership to be relatively similar. I also see something similar in Olympic coverage in that the announcers and quality are fairly even across men's and women's and the viewership isn't substantially different for many of the sports.
I generally kind of buy into what she said. For the sake of this discussion, I don't think there is anything that could be done to raise the WNBA's popularity to the NBA's, but I do think there is a world where the WNBA is turning a strong profit and their top players are making millions of dollars a year rather than tens of thousands.
Her and Tosh brought up women's major tennis as the counter to traditional men's v women's coverage - women get nearly identical coverage and prizes which drives the viewership to be relatively similar. I also see something similar in Olympic coverage in that the announcers and quality are fairly even across men's and women's and the viewership isn't substantially different for many of the sports.
I generally kind of buy into what she said. For the sake of this discussion, I don't think there is anything that could be done to raise the WNBA's popularity to the NBA's, but I do think there is a world where the WNBA is turning a strong profit and their top players are making millions of dollars a year rather than tens of thousands.