By TIM DAHLBERG
Nov. 25, 2009
The plug was pulled quickly on the Sacramento Monarchs. Selling season tickets one day, gone the next, there was no ceremonious ending for one of the founding franchises of the WNBA.
The LPGA's slide into oblivion has been slower, but just as certain. Players woke up one morning last week to find out they will go long stretches during prime golf season next year without a place to make money.
The economy is to blame, or at least that's what they want you to believe. Sponsor dollars were harder to find during the Great Recession, and even the lure of cheap tickets wasn't enough to get people to line fairways or fill arenas.
There's some truth to that. Baseball attendance was down this year, and empty seats at some games this season are testimony that even the NFL isn't entirely immune to economic pressures.
The WNBA and LPGA would seem even more vulnerable to the vagaries of the economy because they are, at best, niche sports vying for the low-hanging fruit that remains after the major sports have picked off the best stuff.
But that doesn't explain why WNBA attendance was on a steady decline even in boom years. Doesn't explain why, four decades after Title IX was supposed to bring an explosion of interest in women's sports and 13 years after David Stern's creation tipped off, that the league continues to struggle.
The play, by all accounts, has never been better. The attendance has never been worse, off nearly 30 percent from its peak in 1998.
Two franchises folded in the past year, and it could get worse as NBA owners such as the Maloof family in Sacramento shed their teams. The deciding game of the WNBA finals sold out only after Phoenix Suns players bought and gave away tickets in the upper bowl of US Airways Center, and television ratings remain minuscule.
The LPGA Tour, meanwhile, will have its smallest schedule in nearly 40 years, with 24 tournaments ? and just 13 of them in the United States. There are huge gaps between tournaments and, although prize money has not been announced, it is likely to be down.
It wasn't supposed to be like this. New generations of women who grew up playing sports were supposed to be the foundation of fans who would rather go watch women play basketball or soccer rather than pay even more money to watch men do the same thing.
But it hasn't happened.
Here's a way to impress someone at a holiday party. Ask them to name the most viewed women's sports event of the year (hint, it was a soccer match).
That's right, New Mexico against BYU, starring everybody's favorite hair puller, Elizabeth Lambert. The video of her yanking an opponent to the ground by her pigtail has been viewed by millions on YouTube.
Interestingly enough, the reason professional women's sports have struggled to survive isn't necessarily that men don't watch them ? it's that women don't either.
A survey earlier this year by Scarborough Research, a marketing research company, revealed that 14 percent of adults had some interest in the LPGA. But 63 percent of those fans were men, and just 10 percent of women said they were interested in the sport.
The WNBA numbers are similar, if not so lopsided. Again, 14 percent of fans said they had some interest in the product, with men outnumbering women by a slight margin.
So what do women watch? Well, they're big on the Olympics, but they also like sports involving men.
One out of every three women identify themselves as "loyal" NFL fans, while one in four feel the same way about major league baseball. Meanwhile, just 6 percent say they are "loyal" WNBA fans, the same percentage that identify themselves as fans of monster trucks.
With those kind of numbers, it's easy to see why the Maloofs shut down the Monarchs, and why sponsors are shutting off the LPGA. There's not nearly enough critical mass for either sport to grow past niche status.
Yes, some men will watch because some men will watch anything involving a ball.
But if women don't start watching women's sports, they don't have a chance.
Nov. 25, 2009
The plug was pulled quickly on the Sacramento Monarchs. Selling season tickets one day, gone the next, there was no ceremonious ending for one of the founding franchises of the WNBA.
The LPGA's slide into oblivion has been slower, but just as certain. Players woke up one morning last week to find out they will go long stretches during prime golf season next year without a place to make money.
The economy is to blame, or at least that's what they want you to believe. Sponsor dollars were harder to find during the Great Recession, and even the lure of cheap tickets wasn't enough to get people to line fairways or fill arenas.
There's some truth to that. Baseball attendance was down this year, and empty seats at some games this season are testimony that even the NFL isn't entirely immune to economic pressures.
The WNBA and LPGA would seem even more vulnerable to the vagaries of the economy because they are, at best, niche sports vying for the low-hanging fruit that remains after the major sports have picked off the best stuff.
But that doesn't explain why WNBA attendance was on a steady decline even in boom years. Doesn't explain why, four decades after Title IX was supposed to bring an explosion of interest in women's sports and 13 years after David Stern's creation tipped off, that the league continues to struggle.
The play, by all accounts, has never been better. The attendance has never been worse, off nearly 30 percent from its peak in 1998.
Two franchises folded in the past year, and it could get worse as NBA owners such as the Maloof family in Sacramento shed their teams. The deciding game of the WNBA finals sold out only after Phoenix Suns players bought and gave away tickets in the upper bowl of US Airways Center, and television ratings remain minuscule.
The LPGA Tour, meanwhile, will have its smallest schedule in nearly 40 years, with 24 tournaments ? and just 13 of them in the United States. There are huge gaps between tournaments and, although prize money has not been announced, it is likely to be down.
It wasn't supposed to be like this. New generations of women who grew up playing sports were supposed to be the foundation of fans who would rather go watch women play basketball or soccer rather than pay even more money to watch men do the same thing.
But it hasn't happened.
Here's a way to impress someone at a holiday party. Ask them to name the most viewed women's sports event of the year (hint, it was a soccer match).
That's right, New Mexico against BYU, starring everybody's favorite hair puller, Elizabeth Lambert. The video of her yanking an opponent to the ground by her pigtail has been viewed by millions on YouTube.
Interestingly enough, the reason professional women's sports have struggled to survive isn't necessarily that men don't watch them ? it's that women don't either.
A survey earlier this year by Scarborough Research, a marketing research company, revealed that 14 percent of adults had some interest in the LPGA. But 63 percent of those fans were men, and just 10 percent of women said they were interested in the sport.
The WNBA numbers are similar, if not so lopsided. Again, 14 percent of fans said they had some interest in the product, with men outnumbering women by a slight margin.
So what do women watch? Well, they're big on the Olympics, but they also like sports involving men.
One out of every three women identify themselves as "loyal" NFL fans, while one in four feel the same way about major league baseball. Meanwhile, just 6 percent say they are "loyal" WNBA fans, the same percentage that identify themselves as fans of monster trucks.
With those kind of numbers, it's easy to see why the Maloofs shut down the Monarchs, and why sponsors are shutting off the LPGA. There's not nearly enough critical mass for either sport to grow past niche status.
Yes, some men will watch because some men will watch anything involving a ball.
But if women don't start watching women's sports, they don't have a chance.
