Why Are Women’s Sports Failing?
This post does not suggest that women don’t have a place in professional sports. It does ask what exactly that place is, especially given sports’ current climate.
What is this climate I speak of? Well, the six women pictured above are considered among the best in their particular sports and most people can’t name half of them. Can you? I bet you can’t. And that’s the climate of women’s sport; a climate in which fans may have accepted female athletes, but haven’t come close to accepting the leagues and organizations in which they play.
Let’s see if we can’t figure out some of the reasons.
We’ll spend little time discussing those female athletes that have proven marketable. We all know players Gabrielle Reece, Mia Hamm and the highest earning female athlete, Serena Williams have been able to mix elements of skill, personality and physical beauty into a packaged persona that more defies each of their sports rather than defines it. It’s important to note that most of these athletes are marketed as individuals. Few female athletes on team sports have endorsement deals.
Recently NBA commissioner David Stern announced that his league failed to turn an overall profit in 2009 and that the WNBA was far more profitable. But considering Stern’s funhouse definition of “profitable” is breaking even, his claim lacks accuracy. The WNBA, in its 13 years, has gone down in yearly attendance five more times than it has gone up. Since 1997, the average attendance of a game has fallen 19.6 percent and teams like the Phoenix LifeLock Mercury and Indiana Fever are selling off pounds of their corporate flesh in order to gain sponsorship and stay afloat. The league isn’t growing. And in sports terms, if you’re standing still, you’re going backwards.
The leading mixed martial arts promotion, UFC, started as a messy $2 million business in 2001, five years after the WNBA. Doggedly fighting for recognition by the same mainstream media who also ignored the WNBA, UFC has become a $1 billion force, despite hustling in the same economic environment as lady hoops. How? Because the UFC marketed their legitimate fighting organization the only way they could: bu spotlighting the fact that they have he entertainment value of fake wrestling like WWE … except that it’s real. So when sponsors and fans alike asked, “why should I watch you when I already watch boxing and pro wrestling?” UFC was able to illustrate the niche they had carved out.
Women’s sports, including the WNBA, haven’t come close to articulating (or even identifying) their niche.
When an individual player gets singled out in ads, it’s because that athlete is special. Women’s athletic promotions have followed this same logic, but it’s backfired in many ways. At some point, marketing whiz-bangs owe it to their clients to admit that some marketable female athletes are not as athletically talented as their male counterparts.
I know, I know. Boo on me. There’s a neon pink elephant in the room that no one was gonna mention, but I went and ruined it. Well tough, I’m tired of the room smelling like the zoo, okay? Campaigns like “They’re Better Than You Think” or Nike’s “It’s a Skills Thing” campaign are certainly pro-female athletes, but don’t address what about female athletics are failing to draw audiences and therefore serve the same ends as an anti-female athletics ad. Again, there is a differene between marketing women and marketing women’s sports. Nike is right, it is a skills thing. But that works against most female sports, because if a women’s skills allowed her to play with the men, she would. They know that. We know that. Nike knows that. Even your grandma knows that and she’s half senile. So when sports fans think about any specific women’s league, most think that it is of lesser quality than the male version of that sport. And if enough people think that for long enough, your league is doomed to go the way of Olympic softball, or the WUSA.
This isn’t like baseball’s Negro Leagues in the early 20th Century, where great players were not allowed to play against the established best. When athletes like Michelle Wie or Danica Patrick compete with the top male athletes in their profession, the media gives them an (over)abundance of positive attention. It’s unfair to say they aren’t given a chance.
In 1995, Nike launched the “Let Me Play” campaign in which pre-teen girls in non-athletic surroundings look into the camera and say things like, “If you let me play, I’ll be 60 percent less likely to get breast cancer” or “if you let me play I’ll have more self-confidence.” And this is where mixed marketing messages are ruining women’s sports. Does anyone cheer for Tom Brady so that his confidence is raised? Ben Roethlisberger maybe, but not Brady. Sports fans don’t want to be doing athletes a favor. Who’s entertaining who here? Sports are about competition; who’s better, faster, stronger. Ask yourself, why would you spend your time focusing on a collection of pretty good athletes when the best ones are elsewhere?
If the answers are out there, no advertising corporation has found them yet.
And because most of the largest female sports organizations have settled on positioning themselves as me-too sideshows, advertisers have answered the me-too, with a “no thanks.” Just last week, the president of the LPGA resigned following the association’s top players petitioning for her removal after having done such a horrendous job.
Since 2007, seven events have disappeared from the tour’s schedule, and only 10 title contracts are signed for the 2010 tour. The tour has also lost the backing of major sponsors, and the status of at least three other events for next year remains unclear.
[Carolyn] Bivens, 56, drew criticism from the players because she was unwilling to negotiate with sponsors to lower their costs of putting on tournaments. As a result, many sponsors dropped out of the tour, and players thought the economy was not solely to blame.
And the poor marketing doesn’t end with individuals or sponsors. Even penny-wise decisions are slowly revealing themselves to be pound-foolish over time. Last week, WTA’s former chairman and CEO Larry Scott, stepped down in order to become the commissioner of the NCAA’s Pac-10 conference. In his place is former WTA president, Stacey Allaster. Allaster is generally considered a strong choice based on her past accomplishments. She got the WTA a 40 percent increase in prize money since 2006 partly by expanding the group’s global television imprint. Without downplaying those achievements, or her successful quest to grant equal prize money for men and women in Wimbledon and Roland Garros, these facts don’t paint the whole picture. How did she make these things happen? She increased the amount of events that the top players would have to participate in each year, an effective change that some of those top players have complained about on more than one occasion. I’ll leave it to you to judge whether it’s positive or negative to earn more sponsorship dollars by riding your stars into the ground.
What about all the other female sports? Women’s MMA has two superstars who will fight next month. And who will the winner of that fight face next? No clue, because there are no other strong contenders with much experience. What about the newly formed Women’s Professional Soccer league? Well, hopefully attaching themselves to the MLS (similar to how the WNBA hitches its wagon to the NBA), will stave off the same fate as the $100 million now-defunct WUSA. Or not. And heck, if cheerleading isn’t the most popular high school and college activity for women, it sure is killing the highest percentage of ‘em. But if it’s not considered a sport, what are all those young ladies dying for for?
If women can compete with the best, wonderful. A lot of people will root just as hard (or harder) for those women. But where are they? The Williams sisters? Sure. Who else? Danica Patrick? Maybe eventually. Annika Sorenstam? She’s retired. Rachel Alexandra? She’s a horse, doesn’t count. In the end, every popular sport showcases what fans perceive to be “the best.” And with the exception of sex appeal, none of the major female sports has offered the average fan any reason to tune in. And none of the female leagues need to be told what happens when your fan-driven livelihood ceases to have fans.
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