By Andreas Donas ’27
Sports are a huge part of cultures all around the world. Although the popularity of individual sports varies based on location, men’s sports are usually more popular than women’s sports. Professional women’s sports receive less attention than men’s due to reasons such as unequal media coverage, longevity, and the perception that men’s sports are more competitive than women’s sports.
Unequal media coverage is a significant factor in the lower popularity and attention given to women’s sports. Media coverage is heavily skewed towards men’s sports, likely because men have historically been the primary audience. According to a study from 2023, women’s sports only make up about 15% of all sports coverage.
Men’s sports leagues in the United States of America have also been around for significantly longer than the women’s leagues. For example, Major League Baseball (MLB) was officially established in 1903, the National Basketball Association (NBA) has been around since 1946, the National Football League (NFL) was founded in 1920, and the National Hockey League (NHL) has been around since 1917. This has led to the embedding of male sports leagues into American culture.
The Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA), on the other hand, was not founded until 1996. Whereas the NBA generated over $11 billion last year, the WNBA generated only $200 million. The financial discrepancy is so significant that the WNBA is considered unprofitable, having lost an average of more than $10 million each year since its founding.
Recently, however, women’s sports has been gaining more and more traction, and an example of this can be found in the increasingly-competitive worlds of college and professional basketball.
In 2024, the March Madness Women’s Final Four game between University of Connecticut and University of Iowa peaked at 17.3 million views, making it the most-viewed women’s basketball game in history. A major reason for this increase in popularity for women’s basketball is competitive players such as Caitlin Clark, who became the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) all-time leading scorer last season at Iowa. She also broke a women’s college basketball record with 548 career 3-pointers in her college career, and 1,204 points in her senior year alone. Her success on the court made her a cultural phenomenon; her games at home and on the road were often sold out, and she had a million followers on Instagram. She has since been drafted into the WNBA and has received an eight-year $28 million endorsement from Nike.
Another well-known female athlete is Sabrina Ionsescu. She is a WNBA player for the New York Liberty who is coming off winning the WNBA championship. In her collegiate career at the University of Oregon, she became the first player in college basketball history to score 2,000 points, 1,000 assists, and 1,000 rebounds. She is widely-recognized as one of the greatest three-point shooters in the WNBA today, and has broken both the WNBA and NBA records for most points scored in a three-point contest. She also has a Nike endorsement, and the popularity of her sneakers are a testament to the growing popularity of women athletes and their respective sports.
Although women’s sports have been significantly less popular than men’s sports historically and at present, they have been getting increasingly more popular and they are gaining momentum by the year.
As more and more female athletes become increasingly popular, they will help to further break the barriers between men and women’s sports.
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