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Monday, December 8. 2008The strange case of the missing male fans
Megan, Because I Played Sports, and Apryl, Women Like Sports, both lament the poor financial health of women's professional sports, which may be taking a turn for the worse thanks to the economy.
Megan asks why enough women aren't following women's professional sports, a legitimate question. But I find something even more puzzling: Why aren't men? You would think that heterosexual men would naturally be drawn to watching strong, healthy, vibrant women display their athleticism. Instead, we have a nation of jockstrap sniffers (and a most homophobic one at that—where is Freud when you need him?). So the WNBA, for example, struggles, yet Candace Parker and her sister athletes entertain with enough athletic ability to satisfy any sports purist, and they bring an ineffable grace to their sport that the men cannot replicate. I don't get it, do you? Trackbacks
A lesson from the past
Search Google for "sports memorabilia" (with the quote marks) and you'll get, as of today,...
Weblog: Athletic Women Blog
Tracked: Apr 03, 09:49 Comments
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You make a great point and one I've pondered in the past - why don't more men want to watch women's sports? Great post!
Sadly, a conversation with a television producer might shed light on this: the major networks have a problem on multiple levels with women's athletics:
* On a continuing basis, women will not get together with other women to watch women on TV. They (perhaps incorrectly) believe that women go shopping on the weekends while guys would sit around with friends and watch sports. They believe that it is difficult to create a new behavior for women to actually sit and watch other women for 2+ hours. In addition, and I don't like their philosophy at all, they believe that the stereotypical "catty" nature of women to criticize other women will prevent them from becoming raving fans. All of the factors which guys love (watching the pre-game & post-game shows, fantasy sports, radio call-in shows, etc.) are behaviors of men. In the minds of the networks, the inability to create a raving fan base of women for women's profesional sports means one thing: lower ratings  And we all know what happens with shows that get low ratings. Basically, they have to market the WBNA to female basketball fans and no one else. In turn, they don't expect high ratings so the networks will do the minimum needed to market the product. That's why you hardly see women athletes marketed as heavily in the mainstream as male athletes. Hope that the networks can one day see otherwise, but this is the stark reality for now. |
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