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I was watching the WNBA game on ABC earlier today, and it seems like even after all this time, there’s still a big marketing problem here. Of the commercials I watched, most of them seemed to be the traditional “women’s market” items or traditional sports items (which are always tailored to male tastes); very few of the commercials seemed to be trying to bridge the gap, to tap the new market the WNBA is drawing. The WNBA’s been around long enough at this point that I’d think there would have been time to do ample research to figure out this new market.

Of course, I’m more than aware of the popularity problems the WNBA has been having, but I don’t think it’s right to pin the blame for that on the WNBA or its players. The allegation that WNBA players aren’t as good as their male counterparts is contentous at best, because for so long in America women were taught to believe that if they wanted to be athletes, they could only be tennis players, figure skaters, or gymnasts. (And I think this is still true to a large extent, despite the best efforts of sports programmes everywhere.) Until young women athletes are given the same respect and attention that young male athletes get, expecting the women to be “as good” as the men is buffoonery.

Don’t even get me started on the allegations that every WNBA player and fan is a lesbian; as if I needed more convincing of the lingering homophobia in this culture than all of the “that’s so gay” bullshit I hear everywhere. The fact that some WNBA players are openly lesbian gets all the crazy homophobes against the WNBA right off the bat, and that kind of thinking is only hurting everyone.

Honestly I think that the vast majority of the traditional male sports crowd doesn’t want a female “big four” sports league, and so, consciously or not, they conspire against the WNBA and try to make it fail. And that’s just not right.

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