Quote:
Originally Posted by ThrobProng
I'm only referring to sports in the USA, but tennis is a 5th or 6th rate sport at best, whether you're talking about men or women.
As far as soccer, what does Nike raking in billions have to do with viewership? Selling soccer gear to kids doesn't equal adult viewership. Not in the USA, anyway.
No major sports in the US started out with world class anything, yet here they are.
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Sports in the USA mostly did not allow women. And they had decades to evolve from a court with peach baskets to a small gym to small to big arenas.
Look at the kc current or the new pro women’s volleyball league. Or even the mls. You would have given up on the mls for the decades where they were hemorrhaging money and huge markets could only find a few thousand fans. It took decades to build fan loyalty, star power, add new markets which were willing to build great stadiums. Hell look at the kc current. Imagine giving up on women’s soccer in kc because of past failures versus saying all it took was mahomes and a new stadium to create interest. And as they make more money, they can pull in bigger media deals, and with those deals pull in better star players, and with that pull in even bigger media deals. Those fans with better experiences will raise young kids who grow up to be loyalists. That’s how this works. It doesn’t happen overnight. And it takes investment and patience which mens sports like mls got, but women’s sports largely did not. The irony is I think the one exception is the wnba who got investment and just could not grow the game.
And yeah the huge sponsorships like Nike absolutely matter. Large sponsors drive media, sponsorships. Because Nike wants more viewers so they can sell more cleats and shorts. It has absolutely materialized into outstanding tv viewership for national women’s soccer games. That is in spite of lack of investment in a women’s pro league which seems to be a turning tide. So again, there is probably a lot more chicken and egg here. Where you assume investment isn’t there because of a lack of viewers, it can easily be argued just the same that viewers aren’t there because of lack of investment.
Hell, is anyone going to pretend that a lot of Caitlin Clark’s and angel reeses large followings aren’t largely due to NIL that finally allows college athletes to be marketed and celebrated?