If you’re any kind of sports fan, you probably know there’s a major difference between men’s and women’s sports, especially when you get to the college and pro levels. I’ve always been aware of this, but I wasn’t aware of just how different women’s and men’s sports are until I went to a recent ETSU women’s volleyball game.
Women’s volleyball was vastly different than any other men’s sports game. Admission was free for everyone, and when I got inside Brook’s Gym, there weren’t many people in the stands. Women’s basketball is usually played in Brook’s Gym as well, with the exception of one or two games, which is different than the men’s basketball team, which plays at Freedom Hall for every home game.
Freedom Hall houses many more people than Brook’s Gym does, meaning the number of attendees at the men’s games are significantly higher than the women’s games. This isn’t just a trend for sporting events at ETSU; it’s true for most sporting events nationwide. Cumulative views of men’s college basketball tournaments compared to women’s are 3:1, according to a 2012 article by Experian.
So why are people not nearly as interested in women’s sports? Women can play all the same sports, though football teams are relatively uncommon. Colleges provide scholarships for female athletes as well as to the men, and there are many colleges where women’s teams perform better than their male counterparts. In theory, it should be the same, but there are clear differences in viewers, funding and game attendance.
My guess for these differences is a mix of want of money and the presence of sexism in schools, the general public, the media, etc. It’s a vicious cycle between the three. Many women’s sporting events don’t get a lot of media coverage, and therefore less people watch or stream games because they’re not as easily accessible to them. At the same time, the media doesn’t prioritize scheduling media coverage of women’s events because they don’t think many people are interested because of low attendance rates or number of viewers on TV.
Since the number of viewers are lower, fewer advertisers would want to pay to put their content on networks that cover women’s sports. Companies may also be less likely to sponsor female teams, and this would cause a major funding gap between men’s and women’s teams and media coverage.
If more schools encouraged attendance to women’s games as much as men’s, it would raise the possibility of more news coverage, and therefore the games would become more accessible to others. This encouragement would possibly lead to more money, and the trend would continue in a more positive way.
Women’s sports can be just as exciting as men’s, and female athletes deserve the same opportunities that male athletes are granted by higher media coverage and funding.
