A Vox reader asks: Why do people pay more to watch men’s sports than women’s sports?
For all of Caitlin Clark’s feats on the basketball court — breaking all-time scoring records, taking the Iowa Hawkeyes to two national championships and getting the Indiana Fever to the WNBA playoffs — what might be more impressive is the attention she’s captured and the sheer amount of people who want to see her play and are willing to pay top dollar to watch her dish dazzling assists and launch 3-point daggers from the logo.
In her rookie season, Clark helped the Fever achieve the best attendance in the league — over 17,000 people per game, a 265 percent increase over last season — and their televised games regularly reached over 1 million viewers per contest. Scalpers were selling tickets outside the arena. At one point in the season, they were asking $250 for a ticket that usually went for under $100, while some secondary market sellers were looking for up to $9,000, CNN reported.
Clark’s emergence alongside a new generation of exciting rookies and ultra-talented, already-established veterans has created momentum for women’s basketball and more generally women’s sports. Mainly: People are finally willing to pay more to see women’s basketball? That raises the question: Why weren’t they already?
Why have women’s sports historically been less popular?
At the heart of this question is a pretty simple answer: Men have had decades-long head starts when it comes to sports and professional sporting leagues. To put it in perspective, women were allowed to compete in the 1900 Olympics in five sports; it wasn’t until the 2012 London Olympics that women competed in all of the sports that the men were.
Similarly, in the US, experts specifically point to Title IX — the federal law that bans gender discrimination at schools receiving federal aid — and its passing in 1972 as a watershed moment for gender equality in sports. Before that, US schools had no obligation to provide the same athletic opportunities to girls that they did for boys. It broke down existing barriers to entry, allowing women not only to compete but also receive equal financial opportunity tied to sports (e.g., college scholarships ). But when Title IX solidified women’s rights into law and protected them from discrimination, the NBA was already over 20 years old.
“The easy way to think about it is to look at the overall lack of investment,” Lindsey Darvin, an assistant professor at Syracuse University, told me. Darvin studies women’s sports and gender equity in the intercollegiate and professional sports industry. She said that the NBA, and any other major sports league, have had decades upon decades of resources, both external and internal, infused into them. Women’s leagues are, relatively speaking, still so young and don’t (yet) gather the same kind of attention.
“The amount of investment that’s been put into the NBA — it dwarfs what’s been put into the WNBA,” Darvin said. The WNBA was founded in 1996, almost 30 years ago. The same number of years on the NBA timeline would be the late ’70s, when the league was finally established and on the verge of a massive leap in popularity. While the WNBA is growing, it hasn’t seen the same kind of trajectory — at least not yet.
It took decades for teams like the Lakers, Yankees, Arsenal, Bruins, and Packers to become lucrative sports franchises that generate millions in revenue each year and play in arenas and stadiums in front of thousands of people. Some professional leagues count revenue in the tens of billions of dollars. Decades of investment — money, advertising, promotion, television deals, sponsorships, etc., — have turned teams and leagues into brand names.
That’s what you’re paying for when you’re purchasing a ticket. That’s also why a men’s pro sports ticket is usually going to be more expensive than a women’s.
How does marketing factor into it?
The last couple of years in women’s college basketball have shown us that women’s sports can challenge men’s in popularity — like, right now. At the 2024 Final Four, tickets for the women’s tickets on the secondary market were going double for the price of the men’s games.
The Caitlin Clark effect was in full motion, and the ratings for Clark and her cohort were at an all-time high. Clark’s last two games were the most-watched in history, averaging close to 14 million and, as The Athletic reported, eclipsed men’s sporting events like every World Series since 2019, every NBA Finals game since 2017, and every Daytona 500 since 2006.
“As a researcher, I don’t like to say the phrase that ‘the stars align’ because that just seems so kind of out there — but the stars aligning is a piece of it, and that’s what happened, right?” Darvin said, noting that Clark’s skill and flashy, appealing game; the success of the Iowa basketball team; and Clark’s marketability and her team’s underdog story were all factors in becoming a phenomenon.
But what intrigues Darvin is now that Clark has graduated and driven similar sellouts in the WNBA, is whether this can convince people — especially those in charge — that people are willing to spend more money to see women’s sports.
One of the trickier reasons about why men’s sports are valued over women’s is because that’s what we’ve been told they were more important for so long. Clark and Iowa basketball are one of the rare examples when investment, promotion, and media hammered home that Clark’s games were worth watching, worth paying for, and even more exciting than the men’s teams.
“You’re steered in directions through marketing, advertisements, and the media — you are basically told what you’re supposed to like and what you should pay for, and what you’re going to enjoy,” Darvin said. “And what is cool to enjoy and pay for has always been men’s sports.”
Essentially, we were told to value Caitlin Clark’s senior season in a way that hadn’t happened in women’s college basketball. But while Clark is the most recent barrier-breaker, she isn’t alone.
During her career, Serena Williams and her rivals were at times bigger stories than male tennis players. (Not unrelated: Tennis has been one of the better sports at striving for equal pay.) Simone Biles and the US women’s gymnastics team are bigger stories than the American men, and similarly, women’s figure skating is usually as popular as men’s at the Olympics. Those are all examples, Darvin said, where women athletes fare better when it comes to marketing and publicity.
The more women’s pro sports are publicized and marketed, the more people are willing to pay to see pro women athletes, and ostensibly the idea is that all this capital turns into growth, opportunity, and equality for women. With more money, perhaps the WNBA will be able to pay rookies more than $76,000 for their first season! A possible sign of progress: Unrivaled, a stateside professional 3x3 women’s league debuted in January with a $200,000 average salary per player and a multiyear media deal with TNT. Darvin also notes that college women athletes signing lucrative NIL deals are also changing the playing field and upping their media profiles.
If there’s one drawback it’s that if all goes according to plan, eventually we’ll get to the point (in the distant future) where women’s pro sports won’t be as accessible. Currently one of the debates around the NBA is that the ratings are down and whether that’s due to it being very expensive to watch or even attend a game. One of the best things about women’s pro sports and women’s basketball is that it’s affordable.
Well, they are for now.
