WNBA failure and the NBA

These comments kill me!! It's not sexist!! I love Basketball and I love competition but the bottom line is guys consume 75% of all sports and most guys aren't going to pay top dollar to watch people do things they themselves can do better. It's that simple!! I watched the WNBA in the beginning and was amazed by Cooper, Swoopes and Leslie. It's so watered down now it's crazy. I'm sorry but I see out of shpe guys do the same thing at the Y free of charge. It's not sexism it's capitalism!! If you are a business and sports is a business you better have a product that the masses not only want to consume but seek you out to consume it. Honestly does anyone think the masses will miss the WNBA if it went away tomorrow? I'm sorry but you all know it's true.

Ok so -"Basketball is Basketball" may not be to your liking..so what? I don't watch/like/or care for the NBA, never really have, never really will in all likelihood. I find it to be a self-indulgent-dunk fest with little team work, played by spoiled over-grown "men" on a court that is far too small to give their 'talent' any credibility.So? I don't watch. I also don't rant and rave about how it's tearing down the fabric of the free world, nor do I endlessly blog about how it should be shut down due to it's colossal financial failure - cause I. Don't. Care. Maybe if they raised the rim by a foot, lengthen the court and make it wider to compensate for today's gigantic players, and made those uniforms a bit more form fitting,I'd watch-they can 'fix' the NBA, it's not too late. By the way, why is it that NO ONE mentioned that the NBA did report losses in the hundred million range? Fact is, the WNBA may not be financially independent as of yet, but there is no way in hell it is costing the NBA anything after the tax breaks they get kicked back to them year after year. Fact is, Stern said he wished the NBA was as financially responsible as the W. Fact is the W is here to stay, and frankly we don't care if you don't like it- just shut up about it already! There is a sufficient fan base and avid following to sustain and grow the league. Sorry if that threatens some boys pretending to be men.

I agree with Jordan. Nobody agrees with the "Basketball is Basketball" tag. If you have any visual ability it's pretty obvious that line is ridiculous. Both leagues wear uniforms, use a ball...smaller for women, and play on the same size court. The similarities end there. None of us know the behind the scenes workings of the TV negotiations but I'm sure Stern used his muscle to involve the women's league when the NBA inked it's current deal with ESPN. That's why there's no women's games on TNT. TNT is about making money since they don't have to fill their programming with niche sports.

The WNBA is not a failure, and while I find it hard to thank him, David Stern should be thanked for being a big factor behind the WNBA's creation. No way in hell the WNBA exists right now (whether it's thriving or not) unless it were under the NBA's league portfolio, PERIOD. That said, the WNBA has a lot of work to do in order to be relevant with most sports fans. Right now, it is a niche league which attracts lesbians (the league's most vocal fanbase if not the largest), families with daughters, and a handful of other basketball junkies desperate to watch more basketball in an NBA arena. The league should consider some different type of playoff format, etc., and from hindsight, teams should have been placed near where women's college basketball at least was popular already. Connecticut was a great choice for a WNBA team to be relocated, while Tulsa is a joke. I do believe the WNBA does make its own TV contracts now, like pilight said. If only 270,000 or so Americans watch it though, I have no idea why the hell ESPN would even air the games, but then again, if those games weren't on ESPN, then it would be harder for the WNBA to showcase itself to a newer generation of kids who may like the league more as adults.

What is cost to operate the WNBA is a drop in the bucket, and doesn't even make a dent in the NBA's wallet. why won't use your time to investigate why owners have routinely written multi-million dollar contracts for dudes who routinely sit on the end of the bench, or told to not show up at all? every team in the league has them. Curry and Malbury's knicks contracts could run the Liberty team for years, and they gave NY nothing for the money! fans in some markets hardly ever get big name free agents. there is nothing to excite the fan base in Minnesota, or or Memphis, or Toronto, and now add Detroit and Philly to the list. those markets losing money has nothing to do with the wnba...and they put a strain on the nba in general.

@Ethan You should have read the next sentence. The WNBA had a deal with ESPN before the NBA did and had a contract in effect with ESPN at the time when the negotiations with the NBA were ongoing. It could not have had an effect on the NBA negotiations.

@Ronald What is there to get? There is really no data to say the WNBA loses money for the NBA because no such data (pro or con) is released. There isn't any news to prompt this article because the WNBA doesn't really generate news. The post is prompted by a recent reading of "These Guys Have All the Fun," a book that details how the WNBA complicates NBA TV rights negotiations. Perhaps I have done a poor job of conveying my main point about the WNBA's impact on NBA national TV deals.

I don't get it, I agree with the folks above this is pretty harsh and unwarranted. There's really no data that says the WNBA is making the NBA lose money or the contrary. The only real point of substance you made in this piece is that the average of all WNBA games this season (among all networks--local and national) was viewed less than the once a year hot dog eating contest on ESPN. Everything else was extremely questionable and highly opinionated, really just blaming the WNBA for everything--losing money, losing TV contracts, and even implying the lockout--it all seems pretty silly when you consider that the WNBA is worth at the most a few hundred million and you're implying that they've had a crippling negative affect on a league worth billions.

It's like the NCAA deal with CBS. If CBS wanted to show men's hoops it had to show some of the women's games. That's why they show a triple header of women's games during the NFL playoffs which fulfills that agreement. CBS knows it won't win that time slot so it puts the small viewed games there and calls it a done deal. Same with the Wnba...their deal was swung my NBA inc. and was bullied in by Stern. Remember when the ladies threatened to strike? Stern said stop the silliness and get on the court and they did. Stern runs the NBA AND the Wnba make no mistake about it.

@pilight Why is the story "so much BS"? Are you claiming that Shapiro fabricated his interaction with David Stern? Also, are you claiming that the WNBA (which notches a .33 TV rating in its Finals) helps NBA TV rights value?

Funny that you only ask for proof that it's budget neutral, but accept that it's budget negative without question. Nice double standard. Stern is just as secretive about the NBA's finances. Don't know why you would expect anything different re: the WNBA. The Mark Shapiro story is so much BS. ESPN already had a contract with the WNBA when the NBA deal was negotiated. It could not have been a stumbling block of any kind. Given that Shapiro was the guy who hired Rush Limbaugh for ESPN, I would consider any opinion of his to be questionable at best.

None of this matters if you don't buy the initial NBA negotiating premise that the league's future financial outlook is a hellscape without significant changes. That point aside, this is a surprisingly vindictive article with little to provoke it. You don't even have the *one* thing that would justify bringing it up in the first place: relevant financial news that indicates that the WNBA is unprofitable. Basically it's just a long-winded and self-indulgent rant that you don't like the WNBA and it should just go away already. The stance that Stern should fire all the WNBA folks shows a surprising sentiment in contrast to all the hand-wringing that's gone on about how the NBA owners are laying off workers because of their own lockout. A few marketing folks get laid off and it's wrong, but you want to fire an entire league's worth of people for little more than your most vehement point that they *bore* you. Harsh, man.

Shorter Ethan: women aren't as good as men so no one should watch the WNBA. OT-your comments on the Wolves in the 5-on-5? Seriously, why even show up? If you're not interested in the team, turn down the gig. Unless your motivation is to the kewlest kid on the block with your snark factor turned up to 11. In that case, well played, sir. That AM talk show gig is waiting for you, I guess.

Totally agree with that, Jordan. "Basketball is Basketball" is an awful, and awfully illustrative campaign.

One of the biggest mistakes of WNBA is to market it as an equivalent of the NBA, because it isn't at all. Regardless if it's Dwight Howard saying "basketball is basketball" or a highlight of an NBA player making an amazing shot followed by a highlight of a WNBA player making the same shot, no one will ever believe that the basketball played in the WNBA is the same as the basketball played in the NBA. Marketing the WNBA is an enigma in and of itself. Who is your primary target? Assuming that women will want to watch the WNBA solely on the fact that it's a women's league is dangerous thinking; if a girl is a sports fan, she'd more than likely want to watch a good product that airs in the same season, such as the NFL, college football, or MLB, rather than a lesser-quality product that only attempts to appeal to their gender.. Likewise, attempting to market it to men by saying, "hey! It's still basketball!" won't work because it's not even the best basketball of the season. In this age of streaming video, anyone can easily access live feeds from FIBA or EuroBasket or any other league that produces a better brand of basketball than the WNBA.

An addendum to this point. We don't know how many millions were left on the table as a result of Stern's insistence that the WNBA be a part of the ESPN deal. However, we do know that national TV deals like this one are shared equally amongst all teams and counted as BRI. As Mark Cuban noted back in 2008, the fact that a percentage of local TV $ is counted as league-wide BRI means that teams with low local deals have to spend more than they otherwise would when a team like the Lakers inks an enormous local deal. That rising tide can drown teams that can't afford to pay an increased % when another market gets a huge deal. National TV deals, on the other hand, affect all teams equally. The weakest markets benefit most from strong national deals, that's why the NFL's gargantuan national TV contracts create a league that can sustain just about any market. I wonder how Robert Sarver feels about the Phoenix Mercury cutting into his bottom line. Also, I wish Ethan had expounded more on the second point- "Should a women’s league exist under the umbrella of a far more popular men’s league?" Obviously without the NBA the WNBA wouldn't be on ESPN2 all summer. But it's not exactly a feminist dream to have the marketing, scheduling, etc of a women's professional league wholly controlled by it's male counterpart.

Good article. I'd like to see a discussion on why women's professional sports leagues are usually considered failures. I mean is the quality of play that bad to watch?