SPORTS
Tue, 12/21 6:47PM • 43:25
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
sports, women, female athletes, wnba, men, basketball, money, people, league, coach, media, inequalities, quinn, athlete, nba, sports fans, continue, story, ncaa, university
SPEAKERS
Afua Mfodwo, David Barry, Savanna Ryer, Sedona Prince, Dana Daschuk, Quinn Dorn Soder

Afua Mfodwo  00:04
In this episode of unraveled producer Dana Daschuk talks about the current state of women's sports and how the dynamics of the sports industry can shape the future of women's basketball. My name is Afua Mfodwo and this is unraveled.

Quinn Dorn Soder  00:20
I'm obviously not playing in the NCAA anymore. I'm kind of just watching from the outside, but I feel like there's definitely a conversation that was started for sure last year. 

Dana Daschuk  00:50
That is Quinn. Quinn Dorn Soder.

Quinn Dorn Soder  00:55
And so that is like a huge step because at the time we didn't even really talk about it. It was just like, of course, we don't have a billboard, you know.

Dana Daschuk  01:04
Quinn is from Regina, Saskatchewan, where she grew up chasing the dream of one day playing pro basketball. Eventually, she went off to Arizona State University to play as a senator. And she has now been in Europe for the past five years playing pro. She's also a member of the Canadian national team. When I asked her who she looked up to growing up in the sports world, this is what she had to say.

Quinn Dorn Soder  01:27
So I looked up to like my local university team was my first sort of like, I wanted to be on the local university team. That was the dream. And then the women who were playing at the Olympics. After that going into college, people I looked up to are just older teammates.

Dana Daschuk  01:44
This is an exception compared to the typical LeBron James Stephen Curry and Michael Jordan. And to be honest, it caught me off guard. Because for young girls in our generation to have grown up looking up to girls in professional sports world was rare. And Quinn's response isn't an answer we often hear. Usually we do hear LeBron James, Stephen Curry, Michael Jordan, and countless other NBA superstars. But this is the problem. And it has been for so long that the sports industry has failed to capitalize on women's sports. The sports industry is growing quickly and being marketed like crazy. However, there's one aspect of the sports world that the sports industry has failed to capitalize on. And that is women's sports. There are so many sports we could analyze, but in this episode, we are going to look at the future of women's basketball in America as they rise to the top. We are currently seeing more about female athletes than we ever have before. But they still aren't being included in the same way as men's sports are. Most importantly, the single story that continues to saturate and perpetuate through North America's media is that men's basketball is more worthy than women's basketball in funding coverage or time and resources. As a result, the woman's game remains in the shadows. 2020 brought new heights for the Women's National Basketball Association, or better known as the WNBA. The WNBA has began to occupy more mainstream media coverage. And in a press conference last year, Cathy Engelbert, the WNBA commissioner said that the league has seen a 68% increase in the average television ratings for its national games. Even more recently, though, in the spring of 2021, Sodonna Prince a forward at the University of Oregon made headlines when she highlighted the inequalities of NCAA women's tournament compared to the men's March Madness tournament. Her series of Tik Toks and tweets went viral, gaining traction with former and current NBA and WNBA superstars.

Sedona Prince  03:47
I got some to show y'all. So for the NCAA March Madness, the biggest tournament in college basketball for women, this is our weight room. Let me show you all the men's weight room. Now, pictures of our weight room got released versus the men's NCAA came out with a statement saying that it wasn't money. It was space. That was a problem. Let me show y'all something else. Here's our practice court, right and then here's that weight room. And then here's all this extra space. If you aren't upset about this problem, then you're a part of it.

Dana Daschuk  04:21
The video shows a comparison between the men's weight room and the woman's weight room. The women they got one stand up tower with a few little dinky dumbbells and a couple of yoga mats while the men have a full state of the art gym, close to 20 squat racks, benches plates, full dumbbell racks and Olympic lifting platforms. This opened the conversation for more women to speak out about the inequalities of women's sports compared to men's. Throughout the pandemic female athletes have been able to showcase the inequalities between men and women's basketball fight for recognition and change. There has been more coverage of the difference parities and inequalities and unfair treatment. In this episode, we will talk to sports economist David Berry, Quinn, Doron stonor, and former NCAA D one athlete and now grad assistant and student coach Savannah ryer. To hear about their perspectives and predictions for the future women's basketball, exploring the current narrative and unpacking the single story of basketball told through North American sport media. Historically, there is a disparity between men and women's sports, there always has an on the path we're on. Maybe there always will be. But I want to better understand why things are the way they are, in order to do so I've invited David Barry professor of economics at Southern Utah University. He has written two textbooks, over 60 academic publications, and has written for a ton of online publications, including but not limited to forbes.com, New York Times, Atlantic, Huffington Post advice, sports, here's what he asked to say.

David Barry  05:58
We are where we are in women's sports because of actions men have taken. It's not an accident, it's not something that has to be that way. There's a long history of discrimination against women. If you go back in time, obviously, women are actively banned from playing sports. So that's where we start. But even when the banning stopped, it also becomes the case that men actively discriminate and don't bother to promote women like it is because the men doing the negotiating didn't think of that. So they don't negotiate very hard. And so that's, you see this, you know, over and over again, it's the men making the decision, you know, we very much try and let these people off the hook, because we make it sound like they come across the media as if they're totally shocked. I'm shocked. How can you be shocked? This has been going on for decades, you've been in charge for decades? How are you shocked, you're not shocked? This is exactly the product of your decision making.

Dana Daschuk  06:54
This idea David brought up that people pretend that they are shocked is so similar to perspective Savanna Ryer holds on the changes we are currently seeing.

Savanna Ryer  07:03
A lot of the time when we would ask like why don't we have this? Or why aren't we able to get this it was always like, well, we don't bring in enough money or we don't have enough money in the program. Rather than like, hey, let's find a solution. Because we work just as hard. We practice just as many hours, we play just as many games so to not have the same access is ridiculous. Still, considering there is awareness being brought to the situation. It's almost like that fake wokeness that a lot of people in today's age have honestly, they'll be like, Yeah, we hear you. And we're trying to we're trying to fix it. But at the same time, there's never a solution given. So I like to call them fake woke.

Dana Daschuk  07:44
Yet this brings an idea that people only care to make a change when people are making a scene and demanding change. And it is a constant pressure. According to David Berry, that is what happened with March Madness.

David Barry  07:58
This is the recurring theme over and over again, college sports, we are where we are because men made decisions. And what happened this last year is a lot of media attention focused because of those pictures of the weight room. And it forced the men to make decisions they were not going to make. You know, the thing that people should understand is if those pictures in the weight room don't appear, then it stays exactly the way that didn't accidentally happen. That was not an accident. That was a that was a conscious decision by people in charge, and they were doing what they're doing because they actively discriminate, and they don't care. You know, I think that's that's the issue is that you do get them to change when people asked them to focus on. But that being said, they're only going to change. So you build a storyline changes and so the minute the pressure is off them, they'll stop doing because at the end of the day, Mark Emmert doesn't care about them. And I think we could establish that very easily by just asking Mark Emmert and Mark ever, by the way ahead of the delay, by asking him directly how many women's sporting events do you actually do? I mean, are you going to these things, I don't see him at least. If you're not going, I assume you don't get

Dana Daschuk  09:08
This past year, we saw Sedona Prince blow up on tick tock for highlighting the disparities between the men and women's tournament during March Madness. Now, months later, after constant demand for change and pressure, the NCAA has finally switched over to have the woman's tournament under the March Madness title. I asked David for some insight on why things happened the way they did, looking inside the bubble on what Sedona recorded. David explains that this was a catalyst.

David Barry  09:36
We're able to see very clearly a disparity in the way they set up the tournaments in a way that we probably couldn't have seen before. And that led up to a national conversation about this and we learned certain things about women's basketball that Eltek most people knew about. One is that March Madness, the label only was being applied to men so that produced the marketing of women. Secondly, We learned that the rights to women's basketball were being bundled together with the rights of a lot of other sports. They weren't being sold separately that was reducing the value of women's sports. So and then, when the men were talking about what revenue do women bring in, they had set it up that it wouldn't bring in as much revenue. And this has been a really frequent issue when it comes to women's sports is that it's not just that women bring in less revenue than men is that men negotiated so that, that it's even less than it would be, and that makes women's sports look smaller than it actually should be.

Dana Daschuk  10:34
I'm going to take a moment here to talk about Title Nine. And what Title Nine means in regard to college sports. Title Nine was implemented in 1972. And it states that no person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation or be denied the benefits of or be subjected to discrimination under any educational program or activity receiving federal financial assistance. Now, to put this into perspective, Title Nine gives women athletes the right to equal opportunities in sports and educational institutions that receive federal funds from elementary schools to colleges and universities. But Title Nine doesn't protect everything. And although it's supposed to make things more accessible, and more equal, this isn't necessarily true. So I'm going to hand it over to David to talk more about this.

David Barry  11:24
If you go to an issue like title nine. So Title Nine is significant in that it does make us women's sports, better than what we typically see in other countries, because it does force high schools and colleges to spend more money on girls and women in sports than they were going to otherwise. But I think there's a sense people have the title line may be equal. And if not equal, it is still the case, most schools do not comply with that. They also lie about Title Nine, they say, Hey, we cut men sports to make final line happen, that's not true. That's all made up. See, there's no title nine for production, they're not gonna there's no nothing to enforce you to do that, and you invest as much as you want. And so what they do is, is they don't invest much in the production value, because they don't, they don't think they, they don't think it's worth anything they don't want to do. And so so the production isn't as good. And then the the audience is going to be reduced of that. And there's nothing that makes them change. They're going to keep doing that. And so it's just it's the problem is the media is entirely biased to a small segment of population. And that's really true of society in general. Anyways, so people who look like me are in the United States 1/3 of the population. But we occupy like 80% of leadership positions. I don't know, I think we talk a lot. I don't know that anything specifically changes because the decision makers are still men. And the men are deciding what goes on. And the men are choosing what they like, men choose to put on the things that they enjoy watching. And I think I think people have this idea that they're somehow doing some kind of big marketing survey that says what they should put on. That is not what they're doing. And it's because, you know, most of the sports media is men, mostly sports media, like they're the ones who dictate what's going on, and they're doing their preferences.

Dana Daschuk  13:10
The under representation and promotion of women in sports are much due to the people that run the sports industry. If we look at a study conducted by cooky, Messner, and Musco in 2015. They examine the coverage of women's sports, finding that the sport media industry is primarily flooded with a male workforce, with 95% of sports news anchors being male and only a minuscule 3.2% of total sports broadcast time being dedicated to women. Now, this is a little bit outdated. So obviously, the numbers have shifted, but it's still relevant. The Sport media world has long been powered by a Euro Western white sis male man perspective, highlighting that men sports are more desired, deserve more attention and are more profitable. The Sport media world has been described as one that is run by men to promote and celebrate the successes of men in men's sports. As a result, the sport media industry has failed to include and promote women's perspectives, narratives and sports as a whole. Quinn echoed this idea when she told me a story about her time playing on a woman's basketball team at Arizona State University.

Quinn Dorn Soder  14:19
Well, my program was like pretty successful for most of the time that I was there. There was a year that we were a top top 10 I think we might have been number eight at the time program in the nation. You know, so like, pretty, pretty strong program. And our men's program was unranked. Not really notable, but I remember having to walk by everyday this giant billboard with the men's PG on it the men's point guard and just looking at that and just kind of I mean, we would just look at and be like, Wow, could you imagine being up there and this is our like, top 10 program. Looking at an unranked point guard You know, it's not even really about the ranking so much. But just yeah, the fact that like, we didn't get that sort of thing. At the time, we didn't even really talk about it. It was just like, of course, we don't have a billboard, you know.

Dana Daschuk  15:15
To look at this more deeply, I asked Savannah, how she sees these inequalities in her day to day life. Now, as a grad assistant coach at the University of Nevada, and also previously, as a student athlete at University of Hawaii.

Savanna Ryer  15:29
I think, especially in the position I'm in now, as a student coach, and seeing the other side of athletics, I didn't see a lot of the behind the scenes that went on in the fight that continues to happen daily for our female athletes here. Just to put it in perspective, we had to have, which thank goodness, like, I met a university that cares about their female athletes and understands that there's still inequality going on. But recently, we just had an event, it was a fundraiser for women's sports to be able to feed our female athletes the same as we feed our sports like football, and basketball, all our top sports. So it, it's nice that they care. But at the same time, it's really sad that like, we don't have enough people to support us to even feed our female athletes on a daily basis. Whereas football, basketball, men's basketball, all those sports have excessive amounts of money to put towards feeding, taking care of housing, all of their athletes. So that's kind of a perspective thing that I didn't realize was still going on.

Dana Daschuk  16:40
This is so true, not only for Savannah and her experiences, but for so many other female athletes. So I wanted to know what can be done or what is currently being done in her life or on her team to make long term changes for the future of women's basketball, or more prospectively, what she thinks can be done in the grand scheme of things

Savanna Ryer  17:01
As a coach now, seeing how much we have to fight to get things done. And the excuse always being like the budget, the budget, this, we don't have enough for this. And then on the flip side to be under a really strong, powerful coach that will take money out of her own pocket to give towards our program, because we can't get it from certain departments like to see that it gives me hope, because she's using, you know, she's in it for the right reason. She's also using what she's paid to give back to the program and to give back to women's basketball. I think that's huge. And I think that's something that, you know, a lot more college coaches are starting to do. I've seen at Ole Miss coach, her name's coach, yo, but the SEC, coaches in particular are making a lot more money now, thankfully, because they have powerhouse Dawn Staley at South Carolina right now, who just signed that huge deal for a woman's basketball she just signed, I think it was like 22 million year seven year extension, she's kind of brought their pay up in the SEC. So like at the top coach getting paid in that conference is that much like schools are starting to have to compete with that pay. So like the coach at Ole Miss, she's starting to use her salary sometimes to Cash App or Venmo ladies on campus that are in sororities, or just use her money to gain support for the program through what she's doing. But at the same time, like she's a women's basketball coach, and like she's able to do that type of stuff, because the pay is raising and people are challenging those school officials to start giving equal pay and to start rewarding these teams for great performances and actually caring about the success of women's basketball rather than just kind of hiding them and like, hoping that everyone does, okay. But yeah, I've seen a lot of change just within the two with the year I've been removed from basketball, the NFL is the biggest one. It looks like it's on the upward trend of being, you know, better for female athletes, but we just have to continue to fight and not be satisfied with what we're given. Because a lot of times when people give you things in the heat of the moment, it's just to quiet you and hope that you don't speak back up. So just to continue to use our voice and advocate for all the female athletes to come after us. I think it's super important.

Dana Daschuk  19:30
The disparity in funding and women's sports seems comical, it seems unimaginable. And the fact of the matter is that there were measures put in place to try and protect this. Things like Title Nine that were supposed to protect funding for women's sports, and are supposed to try and make things even. But that's just not the case. David Barry is going to talk more about the funding and explain the fundamentals and economics of this current situation.

David Barry  19:59
We saw that in COVID When athletic directors have an opportunity to cut sports, men's sports to transfer money to men's basketball, football they will take. And so during COVID Suddenly they were telling us all we have to cut men's soccer that we coded like, well, men's soccer, you know, ever since they did that it was like men's soccer cost $500,000 to run the program, like you have assistant coaches on your football team that make more talking about dollars. This cannot be a COVID reaction. This is I wish to cut men's soccer because I want to take $500,000 and go spend it on something else. And what you spend money on is men's football and basketball. That's not COVID That's what you want to spend money on. You know, USA Today has actually done a several stories on this where they found like at Arizona State, they laid off several smaller positions because of COVID. And then two or three weeks later, they fired the head coach of the football team and it cost him $25 million. Like I thought you had no money. You didn't have any money three weeks ago. Now you have $25 million to fire your head football coach. Yeah, well, that was three weeks ago. Or what change the three weeks? Well, the football coaches horrible. Well, that that didn't change the money situation. Oh, yeah. Well, that's the problem for different men. I think the same thing happening for Title line for decades, they would tell this story over and over again. We cut men's wrestling, we cut mentioned athletic because of women. No, you didn't. That's not why you did that you cut those programs. And you just women as your excuse, because you want to spend more money on football and men's football because you these programs were so small, you had the money to do that. And you could have simply added if it was title line, you could have added just another women's sport to balance it, it wouldn't make any difference. You have the money to do that. I don't want to do that. I want to spend money on football and basketball. There's also this big insistence that and this comes up a lot too is that women's sports have to make money. No one No one expects men sports to make money. That's not a requirement. Right? We've invested millions of dollars in in minor league football, both the international version in Major League Soccer, and the American version. And none of that is paid off. There's no money in minor league football. At any level. There never is going to be minor league baseball doesn't make money either. It's been around for 150 years. It doesn't make any minor league sports don't make money. That's that's been proven over and over again. And yet men will invest millions in the latest minor league thing, and they lose their money, but they just keep doing it. And then you say why don't you put you know, $100 million into the WNBA $100 million for National Women's Soccer League, because that's not a minor league. That's a major league. And they're like, Well, I don't want to do that I don't like that's and that's it. I mean, they don't say that. But it's clearly that's got to be the case because it doesn't make any sense.

Dana Daschuk  22:40
David highlighted that people think that woman sports need to make money. And that's just not true. This can be seen directly with the NBA and WNBA which if you didn't know share the majority of their owners. The NBA Commissioner Adam Silver had voiced his concerns in 2019, reasoning that the WNBA was not profitable, and was draining the NBA resources. Yet the NBA was not opposed to investing its money in another one of its affiliated leaks that it just started a newer league that wasn't generating revenue either. The announcement of this was significant considering that an 18 year old out of high school with a Slack contract would be making twice as much as the WNBA is league MVP at the time, and more than the max WNBA contract. The League, which I'm referencing to is the G League and it was recorded with low attendance, low national interest, low revenue and less entertaining gameplay. Yet the NBA continued to pour money into this league because they saw it as a good opportunity for developing new players. Barry has previously explained that by the NBA choosing to look past the financial struggles of the G league continuing to saturate and pay their minor league players instead of investing in the WNBA means the NBA sees the WNBA as a cost and the G league as an investment. Yet the financial situation is changing and the NCAA and furthermore and all women's professional ball. But let's key in on the NCAA here. As of recently this past year the NCAA released new NFL rules and I L stands for name image unlikeliness. This is going to help female basketball players receive more recognition of the inequalities they face and possibly more mainstream media coverage for their game. But I'm not in the shoes, so to speak on this is Savannah to share her experiences and what it looks like right now as a student coach and also her previous experiences as a student athlete.

Savanna Ryer  24:38
Yeah, I mean, I definitely think the NFL is a game changer at the same time is is it really that relevant to women's sports right now? Unless you're like, I know at Fresno State the Kevin deer twins. I don't know if you've seen them on Tik Tok, but they've done a great job of branding themselves. They're two twins that play women's basketball. So I've seen obviously change in that, and females being able to make money off of their social media presence and just being an athlete. But I think for us right now, it's learning to like, use that social media presence in a really positive, empowering way. But at the same time, like learning to really empower female athletes through what we post is super important. And I think that those people with those big platforms, like if they continue to do it the right way, then it'll open up doors for all the young female athletes to come behind them. I think female athletes are starting to do a really good job of kind of self marketing themselves on social media you're seeing, especially with tick tock and Instagram, they're taking advantage of those audiences and really getting the word out. So even though a lot of times it's more about, like, oh, this girl's really pretty, but she also plays basketball, they're kind of changing the image of what we used to be perceived as, which was like, not feminine females playing a male game. Now it's like, wow, she's beautiful, and she can play basketball. Like, that's pretty cool. And even though I'm not a big fan of romanticizing basketball, because females look beautiful, like, at the same time, it is helping our game. So I don't know if that makes sense. But I think that's a big reason we're seeing the media go up.

Dana Daschuk  26:27
Central to the idea of women in sports, and the problems they face is the way in which women are perceived in the sports world, sports have frequently been referred to as a gendered space. This is problematic as the history of women's sports has continuously highlighted femininity and sexualized its players, perpetuating a perception of female athletes to be showcased as more feminine than to be showcased as a powerful or skillful athlete. The sports industry has been designed and maintained by hegemonic masculine culture, bringing forth the idea that being both female and athlete is a paradox in itself. When women are included in sports coverage, the representation as presented as ideals of society, sometimes hiding their successes, achievements and confident personas. Yet things might be changing as college athletes are able to take control of this narrative and professional players have their own platforms to speak on. In a press conference this fall, so Dona prince said that the top seven or eight performing students for nio marketing are female. It is apparent that there is an interest in woman sports, but they just aren't being marketed in this way. Despite the societal perception that sports fans do not want to watch women's basketball. A study conducted by Nielsen sports in 2018 found that 84% of sports fans were interested in women's sports. This is evident with the viewership of the woman's 2018 US Open finals between Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka viewership reached roughly 3.1 million, surpassing the men's final match the following day by 50%. Five, zero. So why do we continue to see a disparity of woman sports, particularly women's basketball being broadcasted through mainstream sport media.

David Barry  28:15
So I'm going to answer your question very easily. Do we see any long run change? This is the way to answer the question. You go to ESPN front page and start scrolling down. So now we've been talking about this now for a year. So if you start scrolling down and ask yourself, what are the stories on ESPN Scott Page, and scroll down until you find a story on women? So there is a story on their headlines about UConn, so their star players isn't a story. So there's one. But if you go down and look at the pictures, how long does it take me to find a picture of a woman who's athlete? And the answer is I'm still scrolling. I'm still scrolling. I'm still scrolling. I'm still scrolling. Nope, still scrolling. Scrolling, still scrolling, still scrolling? Oh, I found one. Yes, there's a story on USA women's soccer and it must be three quarters away. Now. That's one that's the first picture. So every other picture. And so you get three quarters of the way down ESPN front page is a man plank. And that's, and that tells you right there the disparity in coverage. Because if it were equal, there would be women and then both all over the page. But there aren't women and men a lot of pictures of men on the page and men and men and men and men and men and men and men. And it's not just the major sports they're covering. I mean, we got we got all sorts of sports being covered that involve men. And so, you know, they just don't they don't cover them. And, and when they do cover women, it's sporadic. You can't count on it. There was a I was involved in a story at Bloomberg Television last week and one of the one of the comments made by one of the people they interviewed is women's sports fans are forced to be technologically savvy, because they have to know how to find the coverage. You can't expect them to put it in a place where you're going to know where it is. And so women's sports fans are far more technologically savvy than the men's sports fans simply because they have two years ago, the WNBA basketball schedule on TV was I don't know that this is completely true. But it did seem to be true. I think they managed to broadcast every single game at a different time than every other. So it was like, two o'clock on a Saturday and 11 o'clock on a Thursday. And you're like, are you just picking these times randomly? Are you making this as difficult as possible? Because when you come to med sports, I mean, we have a thing called Monday Night Football. I mean, that tells you what night is going to be on Monday night. You know, we don't do that in women's sports. There's no Monday night WNBA it's all very inconsistent. And so every week you have to check. Is it on? Is it Where's not? Where would I find? And it's like women, that's that's the way women's sports are and men's sports. You know, during the college basketball season, ESPN does Tuesday night men's college basketball, and you know, it's going to be using, you know, that's what they're gonna show Tuesday. And it's like, so you're making this as easy as possible for many sports fans, like, well, who's gonna be watching it? Okay. And for women, it's like winning a show women's game. Well, we shall win. Sometimes. They're here. And they're like, but I don't have any way of knowing when they're going to be, you know. So you learn to check the schedule all the time. Is there anything on right now and all that I could watch? It becomes, it's much more of a challenge.

Dana Daschuk  31:40
Currently, we see a lot of unfair treatment toward women's sports and women's basketball compared to male counterparts. What will the future of women's basketball look like? And will it ever be comparable to men's basketball?

David Barry  31:52
I do think in the future, it's all going to be different. And I think we're going to look back on this. It's the same thing with respect to racial discrimination. It's all frustrating, it takes so long to get change. The people who resisted the change all look very ridiculous. Historically, they all look very silly. I don't think people quite get that I wish people would pick up on that storyline, that when you're resisting these changes, you're going to be the villain in history. That's who you're going to be remembered as. And you may think that you're a perfectly wonderful person, but the fact that you couldn't get this issue, right, means that people in the future are going to be making fun of you. Maybe if we said it that way to them, maybe they would pick up on this Is this really how you want to be remembered? Because it's all going to change in the future. And in the future, when women's sports is much bigger, they're gonna look back on your resistance. So all this, and they're gonna go, what the hell is wrong with you? Why were you like that? And you're gonna have a hard time explaining that. That's how you were behaving. And so maybe that would make a difference? I do think in the future, it'll be good right now? Well, I I do think so in the short run, I am pessimistic. But in the long run, I am optimistic. So in the long run, the WNBA will be will will take off, it's already starting to take off. But it's going to take just two or three more decades to get to a point where it's going to look like the NBA. And the reason why is because what you're asking for in a professional league is you want the fans to develop an emotional attachment to something that doesn't actually exist. There is no such thing as a Washington mystic, or an LA spar or Minnesota Lynx. Those things don't exist. But you want people to spend their lives emotionally attached to them in the same way. They're attached to Boston Celtics and LA Lakers and Dallas Cowboys and things like that. Those things don't exist either. But people spend their entire lives I asked my sports economics class, I had a fan in my sports econ class, who's a fan of hockey. And he's a Pittsburgh Penguins. And I said, How many? How often do you think about the things you'd like every day? That's how a sports thing every day. So I grew up in Detroit. I'm a Lions fan. How many days of the year do I read a story about the line every day? It's a totally pointless endeavor, they're never going to win. And I wasted my entire life following this team. But I still look at them every day. The head men's basketball coach at at my school for the entire university is also from Michigan. He's also a Lions fan. And he does the same thing I do every day, every day we think about it. And what you want is you want to get your fans to do the same thing with the WNBA. So you know, I'm also a Minnesota Lynx fan. So I spend every day thinking about that too. So but you got to get a collection of fans who want to do the same thing. And they want to spend every day talking about this and thinking about this, but that takes decades because typically you inherit your fandom from your parents. And so it just takes a long time for that to happen. You can't start a league now. National Women's Soccer League is only a few years old, you, there's no parents there at this point. And there's no history. And see that makes all the difference. The history is what makes a big part of the fandom experience, give you an example of how history plays a role in men's sports. They made a comment last night during my football game about a player who he went off the field, he was hurt. And he came back on and he intercepted paths and Chris Collins where it said it was a Willis Friedman. Okay. Now, that only makes sense if you know the history that Willis Reed did this in 1973. In order for that to happen, you have to have the history. Right now, the National Women's Soccer League, nobody could tell a story like that, because the league is six years old. So there's no way to tell a story. You know, 50 years ago this happened. And see those kinds of stories are what make the experience more interesting, and more relatable, that we all have these common memories. And so we can relate them to what we're watching right now. But in order for that to happen, a memory for that to have happen. And women's sports isn't far enough along that we have those memories, and that that reduces the experience because that hasn't happened. But in 30 years, 30 years to now people are going to be talking about things Diana, Degrassi did or Maya Moore did or whatever. And they're going to say, what this person did is similar to what Diana Taurasi did 30 years ago, and that's going to mean something to WNBA fans, because they're going to remember all that. And so that's going to make that experience so much better. Because but you got to wait, you got to wait for the history to happen. So that you can actually tell those stories I tell students is LeBron James has meaning because Michael Jordan existed and Michael Jordan had meaning because Dr. DE existed and Dr. J and meeting because Elgin Baylor existed. But when Elgin Baylor came around in 1961, he had no meaning at all, because people were like, What the hell's he doing? Well, he talks a lot. Okay, no one's ever done that before. So there's no there's no context, there's no story you can tell. And so all of these things matter, because there was some sort of history you can compare it to. And when women sports, that will happen. And then it'll be just as big. And when it does happen, you know, you will see, you will see more of the coverage go because there'll be it'll be then obvious for the fans. What I think is frustrating from a women's sports fan, is that women have to constantly prove that there's an audience. And men just simply don't have to do that. It's for them, the audience has given to, you know, minor league football gets front page cover done yesterday as a website. Like, you know, these are leagues that last eight weeks, why are you giving them front page? And it's like, because the white guy who's doing the signing what goes on I get wildlife based on you. That's not That's not I'm working service, your own purposes. You're just marketing yourself. So that's really cool. So that's, you know, that's what's irritating. So I think eventually, women's sports gets big enough that it proves that it has to get the coverage. But it's a shame that we have to get go down.

Dana Daschuk  37:51
There's a long and complex history of women's basketball in North America. The WNBA has been around since 1997. And the first intercollegiate women's game was Stanford versus California in 1896. David berry explained that the majority of the inequalities we see in women's sports lies in enthusiasts, some of the owners, owners and higher ups of the sports industry and sports teams love men. It's mostly because they are men, and they picture themselves playing as these men. Almost as though it's a real life fantasy team. These owners are living vicariously through their teams and their players. And this is something that the cannot do with women's sports. This is why men will continue to sink money into a failing team or league despite countless losses and failure to generate revenue, but are more likely to abandon ship when it's a female team. It's because they want to be these players. It's because they envision themselves as these players. Barry explained this through an NFL reference for those of you who may be familiar. It's with the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Steelers was first created by Art Rooney and Rooney's biography. He said that he continuously put money into this failing league because he loved it. And it is that simple. The men that run the sports industry own these teams power these leagues and run the media are quick to abandon ship when they do not see immediate success in women's sports. Barry talked about the possibility of change coming to the conclusion that until more women are in power in sports, owning teams and leagues and having their presence in the media. The importance of men's sports will continue to dominate the narrative and women's sports will fail to receive proper funding and recognition. Now I want you to think back to the beginning of the podcast when I introduced Quinn Dorn Soder. Quinn can speak to this like no one else can. As this is her job. She lives this breathes this and she sees this every day. I'm going to leave you with what Quinn had to say. Because what she had to say will hit you in the heart. And I hope that through all This conversation, what she has to say, really hits home with you. Because for me, I know it did. So with that being said, Here you go.

Quinn Dorn Soder  40:11
There's so much of a market that hasn't even been tapped yet that it makes me really excited, because there's so much that we can do with this whole side of sports that's been being largely ignored. It's hard to say if, for example, women's sports will ever reach the same level of success as men sports just because I I mean, I don't know. And we're far from it still. But I don't even think we're necessarily ready to talk about that yet. I think that first, we just want to talk about equal opportunity or fair opportunity. And, you know, just like trying to get that base foundation the same first and where they end up is to me not at all the issue. I think that like naturally, nobody, nobody has ever really tried to say that men's and women's sports are exactly the same, because they're not anyone who is really kind of an advocate for this sort of stuff is not trying to say, men and women are the same. They're obviously not there's biological differences, those sorts of things translate to differences on the court to it is there are differences, of course, but I think what we're really trying to talk about is fair access to resources, to media, attention to marketing, all those sorts of things to just kind of valuing women's sports and Destigmatizing it for young athletes for all athletes. Honestly, that's kind of what we should be talking about right now, instead of trying to you know, are women and men the same of course they're not. But there's the first steps that we can take to get there.

Afua Mfodwo  42:18
And with that, we've made it to the final episode of Unravelled, a series about what the future of society could look like, post pandemic. We hope that listening to this series has helped you think about the ways in which society could look very different from what we know it to be.  That's all for today. I'm your host Afua Mfodwo.  Our associate producer is Talha Hashmani and our executive producer is Elena De Luigi. Special thanks to John Powers for composing our theme music, and Ben Shelley for creating our podcast artwork. Our professor is Amanda Cupido and special thanks to Lindsay Hanna and Angela Glover.








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