This is a great response. If you want to support them, great! Donate, volunteer, watch their games, whatever. For the rest of us, it’s an entertainment product. I don’t watch WNBA because I don’t watch NBA, or any sports. But if you like basketball, yet draw the line at the players’ genitals, that’s weird.
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li10@feddit.uk 4 weeks ago
tbf, Caitlin Clark is the only WNBA player that’s profitable.
People will bitch about how the men’s league gets paid so much, then proceed to not watch the women’s league…
If you want it to make money YOU need to support it 🫵
Empricorn@feddit.nl 4 weeks ago
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 4 weeks ago
I would think that the kind of people who watch NBA, would want to watch the WNBA.
It’s the same concepts, but with women. I would think the mostly straight/male sports audience would want to watch their favorite sport where the players are also the gender they like to stare at.
Yet, here we are.
krashmo@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Have you ever seen a WNBA game? Sure, it’s the same sport but that logic applies to middle school basketball teams as well and no one gives a shit about those either regardless of the gender of the athletes involved.
The reason professional sports are fun to watch is you get to see the best athletes in the world push the limits of what is physically possible for a human to achieve. Top level women cannot compete with top level men in any regularly televised sport, including basketball. No one wants to watch Caitlin Clark on channel 3 when LeBron James is doing way more impressive things on channel 6. That’s just the way it is. I don’t get why people pretend that isn’t obvious and get offended by it.
WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 weeks ago
They should allow light gymnastics in the WNBA to even up the entertainment value. A series of backflips down the court before hitting nothing but net on a 3 would sure get my attention.
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 4 weeks ago
Have you ever seen a WNBA game?
Nope. Can’t say that I have. I’ve also never watched an NBA game.
I’m not the target audience. I’m just commenting from an outsiders perspective. I don’t “get” it, and I don’t expect to.
Have a good day.
barooboodoo@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
Their seasons don’t really overlap tho, you’re not missing LeBron by watching Caitlin Clark.
Wanderer@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
I don’t know how so many people are so devoid of understanding of something that is such an integral part if human civilisation the world over.
People find something they like. Let’s say is basketball. They like playing the game and want to be better so like watching people better than them so they tend to watch the best. Then they also find out they like watching it for entertainment sake. But anyone that has ever watched kids play sport know watching lower quality sport rapidly decrease in entertainment value.
Why would you go actively out of your way to watch an inferior product?
There are so many amateur male athletes that are better than female athletes. But no one goes down to their local game and watch a load of randomers play sport.
People watch the top league usually the club and the international if that sport is international. Then they will watch not their favourite team but other teams to get a better idea of the league. Then they will watch the feeder youth league if they want to. Then other countries leagues or lower leagues. All of these link together and all of them will be a better level than top women’s league.
Usually at the point you run out of time to watch any more or you just like sport in general and go watch the top tier of another sport.
There needs to be a reason to watch and the only reason I have found to watch women’s sport was to watch the UFC because that’s a player on player sport not achieving something. But the women have a lot less power and a lot more flexibility so the strategy is entirely different and sport looks different. In that sense in that entertainment value men can’t achieve that, in all other sports men seem to do what women do but better.
USNWoodwork@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
In my teens I watched NBA basketball religiously. In my twenties I was a huge MLB fan. In my 30s I watched the NFL every weekend. In my 40s I have athletics daughters and I watch them play and I also watch women’s soccer. Does it help that the US women are a dominant force in the international area whereas the men are just “no longer a joke”. Yes, yes it does.
When my highschooler was younger we’d go watch the Washington Spirit at the Soccerplex in Germantown. It sat about 4,000. This summer I travelled back to the US and caught a Spirit game in the new stadium in Baltimore. Holy shit what a big difference. The crowd now had 19,000 in attendance.barooboodoo@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
So to your first point, what are NBA fans watching when it’s off season?
Wanderer@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
I really don’t know.
todd_bonzalez@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
They built a gender segregated system where all of the marketing and airtime goes to the men’s side. It’s an industry where women get less than 1% of the pay that the men did for the same job.
But it’s my fault for not watching?
The corporate overlords thank you for redirecting the blame away from them.
EatATaco@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
There is no rule stopping women from joining the NBA. It’s just that no woman currently is able to compete at the highest level when men are included; the whole point of the WNBA is that, without it, there are no professional women in the sport.
In other words, it’s not the same job: one is an NBA player, the other a WNBA player. The WNBA exists precisely because women can’t do “the same job” but there is a market for watching women do the job. It’s just not as big as the market for people playing at the highest level of competition.
Somethingcheezie@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Are you suggesting they make a coed league where only the best get to play. How many female players will make the league.
EatATaco@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
NBA is coed. There is nothing in the rulebook banning women from the league.
StaticFalconar@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
The WNBA is a marketing line item for the NBA. If the NBA didnt give the WNBA their hand out, the WNBA wouldn’t exist.
Tom_Hanx_the_Actor@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
You do know that professional sports is considered part of the entertainment industry, right? This is like you insisting that Margot Robbie and Christian Slater should be paid the same because they do the same job.
callouscomic@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
I’m gonna bet that corporate executives are bigoted assholes and increases in profits won’t substantially go to the women players.
Tom_Hanx_the_Actor@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
It’s totally unfair to use Caitlin Clark as an example of the pay disparity as well. She’s a rookie on a pay scale. Her salary is less than half the average wnba salary. What’s really crazy to me is that the average salary is about 150k with only one woman making over 250k. For the salaries to be that flat seems odd compared to other pro sports but it’s just a part of the W having less revenue. Athletes have very strong unions also.
Fenrisulfir@lemmy.ca 4 weeks ago
Is bill burr on lemmy?
driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br 4 weeks ago
In Brazil, is even more common now to people gather to watch the women football national team, not at the level of the men one, but there’s even companies where they close up when any of the two teams play, to give people opportunity to see the game.
RecallMadness@lemmy.nz 4 weeks ago
Why does nobody watch the women’s leagues? Is it because nobody else does? can’t have all the social aspects of sports if nobody else is doing it.
Imo, they need to stop the segregation. Ditch the women’s leagues, but keep the games and teams. Have both teams play in one league, and contribute to the overall score of the team.
It’ll add new strategy to the seasons. Spend all of your budget on the dudes and hope they keep winning despite the ladies; build a strong women’s team to carry your b-tier men’s team; or something in between.
grrgyle@slrpnk.net 4 weeks ago
I don’t like watching basketball (love playing it, though), but oddly enough I know of more people that go to WNBA games than NBA games, which comes to think of it seems odd. Maybe the seats are a lot less expensive…
chiliedogg@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
You can sometimes buy season tickets to the WNBA for the price of similar single-game NBA seats.
Delphia@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
This has always been my stance, Women make up approximately 50% of the population and the WNBA generates 2% of the revenue that the NBA does…
My wife and her friends go to some restaraunt once a month and they buy brand name workout clothes. Go to a game, buy a jersey, take your daughter and make it a thing.
todd_bonzalez@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
So basically, “gender pay-gap are fine, because the value of a woman is decided by the free market.”? Fuck that capitalist drivel…
Tear down the entire sexist gender-segregated professional sports industry for illegal/unconstitutional gender discrimination and require professional for-profit sports be co-ed like every other industry in this country is mandated to be.
The fact that the NBA doesn’t admit women should be grounds for dissolving the NBA as an illegal organization. The fact that the NBA and WNBA operate intl-tandem while maintaining such an egregious gender pay-gap is proof of a conspiracy to discriminate against women.
Fuck the centuries of sexist tradition around sports. Just because it’s the way things have been, doesn’t mean it’s the way it ought to be. I’m sick and tired of the sexism and sexist apologia. If you think women deserve less, I don’t care what your excuse is, especially if your excuse is “the free market”. smh…
agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
The NBA, like most people sports leagues, had no rule preventing women from trying out. They’re already co-ed. The NBA doesn’t admit women because they don’t beat men in try-outs.
MonkRome@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
That last sentence is a bit misleading, women aren’t trying out for the NBA left and right. There also is a massive cultural barrier there, some of the best wnba players could likely play in the NBA and yet it hasn’t happened. I think someone would have to be willing to sacrifice their wnba career to try it out. If the person that does this isn’t built physically for it, it could paint a negative perception for years to come. Thus far it’s just been easier to keep separate. I do think we will see women start to enter sports dominated by men in the coming years though.
li10@feddit.uk 4 weeks ago
If people don’t watch, then there’s fundamentally no money to be given to the players. If you want money to be given to the player, you need to watch.
That’s how it works for women’s sports, and that’s how it works for men’s sports as well.
Pay for all athletes is dictated by the viewership they bring in, not their performance. WNBA players actually make disproportionately more relative to viewership.
You honestly talk like someone who’s never watched a sport in their life.
lemming741@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Men’s minor leagues all pay shit salary to and for the same reasons. Teams and leagues fold all the time.
Hockey, football, baseball, soccer- unless you’re at the top you make about as much as you would at Costco.
testfactor@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
The NBA allows women to try out though? It doesn’t ban women from competing at all.
ayyy@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
Can you point me to the NBA rules that relate to gender identity?