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Notes -
Women's College Basketball Update
The gap between the Super Bowl in mid-February and the start of the NBA playoffs in mid-April is a dead zone on the American Sports calendar. The only respite of any relevance is the three-weekend single-elimination tournament extravaganza that is March Madness. Interestingly, most of the hype this year has been from the women's bracket. The quarterfinal between LSU and Iowa was the most-watched women's basketball game of all time with 12.3 million viewers, which is more than last year's (men's) NBA Finals. It was a good game too.
What is going on? The WNBA is still completely irrelevant. Last year was a good year for them. They got about 700,000 viewers for the finals. The only active WNBA player I can name is Brittney Griner, and that's because she was the subject of an international incident.
As with most questions regarding women's social status, "is she hot bro?", is probably the best place to start. Here is the roster of current NCAA darlings Iowa. Here is the roster of the 2023 WNBA champion Los Vegas Aces. You'll notice I had to use a promotional Twitter post for that one. The Aces don't have photos of the players on their website. They aren't even trying.
How did this happen? What are the incentives that led to this?
The WNBA loses money. Not a massive amount of money (about 10 million dollars a year), but it isn't particularly close to being profitable. The NBA keeps the WNBA around for positive PR, and because getting little girls interested in basketball is good for the cultural relevance of the NBA. The NCAA Women's tournament exists because of Title IX. Any university that spends money on men's sports must also spend money on women's sports, lest they be sued for discrimination. Universities can't pay players directly, but recent court cases and rule changes mean that players are allowed to profit off of their "name image and likeness" ("NIL") through endorsements, sponsorships, and the like.
In men's sports, NIL has created a massive clusterfuck that is worthy of it's own post. In women's sports, results were much more banal and predictable. The hotties get all the money. There is an economic incentive to be and present oneself as attractive in order to get paid. You think Hailey Van Lith wears her hair like this because it helps her get buckets?
On the earned media side, Caitlin Clark is getting a lot of airtime on the sports networks. She is in fact putting up some impressive numbers, but I doubt she would be getting this much attention if she wasn't a cuteish white girl who isn't attractive enough to feel threatening to the middle-aged PMC women who complain about stuff.
I don't know much about sports. But I've looked into TV ratings quite a bit and frankly I just don't trust them.
The main player is still Nielsen. There are competitors, but they're the mainstay, especially for US ratings (which are the most valuable to advertisers). And most of that data is still collected from people who voluntarily agree to be part of their measurement program. You can't volunteer for it, they have to approach you, perhaps by sending you something in the mail. They try to adjust for all demographics, but how could they? They have some device that they claim can listen to the audio and determine what you're watching but... I really doubt it's all that accurate. There are obvious questions like
and they just don't have valid answers for those. It's a rough measurement. They still ask people to fill out self-reports in booklets, you can imagine how accurate that would be. See this thread for some details: https://old.reddit.com/r/cordcutters/comments/11hd2sf/how_the_neilson_ratings_work_with_streaming_by_an/
So, I dunno. Maybe the women's college basketball finals attracts more of the sort of people chosen to be Nielsen families? Not that word, "families," they're probably not asking a lot of single guys hanging out at dive bars to gamble on whatever sports are on. It seems weirdly specific that people would be so into women's college basketball but not the WNBA.
First off, this would be the same methodology and population sampled as in previous years, so whether the total magnitude is correct the change should be relatively close.
I think there are a few contributing factors.
Not if they're measuring a relatively small number of people, who change from year to year, and then wildly extrapolate from that with a methodology that also changes from year to year!
More broadly: It seems like that one particular basketball game is an outlier. Most of their games are in the 2-4 million range. Still great ratings, but not the same as 12 million. I guess people really love that LSU-Iowa rivalry? Seems weirdly specific to me, but then I'm not the kind of guy watching basketball.
LSU & Iowa were the two most popular women's teams of the last few years. That basically explains it.
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