Larry Harnisch (of The Daily Mirror) and Jimi Adams sent in a story in the New York Times about ESPN’s plans to roll out espnW, a brand aimed at women. The brand will apparently mostly consist of a website, Facebook pages, and the like for now, with possible expansion to TV in the future.
Responses have been mixed, with some excited at the idea of women’s sport, and female sports fans, being taken seriously, and others fearing it’ll be a condescending attempt that will serve to segregate those groups from “regular,” i.e., men’s, sports and fans.
While women may be interested in watching women’s sports in particular, the article also notes that women make up a minority, but significant, portion of the viewership of the NFL, NBA, and MLB, as well as a number of sports-related websites:
From the article:
Women make up 44 percent of football fans, 45 percent of baseball fans and 36 percent of professional men’s basketball fans, according to research conducted by the sports leagues. During the 2009 season, an average of 4.2 million women watched the N.F.L. on ESPN, according to the network.
The NYT article includes a link to a study by Michael Messner, Cheryl Cooky, and Robin Hextrum shows that over time, ESPN’s coverage of women’s sports during SportsCenter, its headline sports show, has gone down, generally remaining well below the portion devoted to women’s sports on broadcast news sports segments (the report includes a full description of the methodology):
Women’s basketball gets the most coverage among women’s sports:
On the upside, since the total coverage of women was down in 2009 compared to previous years, the researchers found less ridicule of female athletes and fewer sexualized joke stories (i.e., a story about a bra that unfolds into a golf putting green). So, you know…woo! If programmers just completely erase women from TV, they can’t ridicule, sexualize, or belittle us! We’ve found the answer to negative portrayals of women!
Comments 37
Greg — October 18, 2010
Those viewing stats are from Nielsen. Nielsen gets its stats from targeted households, correct? (I'm from Canada, so please correct me if my understanding is off.)
I'm just curious how many of those women viewers are actually invested in the sport being viewed and how many of them are cohabiting with a man and he happens to be the one to turn it on.
I'm not saying women don't watch sports by themselves or that they will never take the independent initiative to do so. However, I suspect there are at least a few who would fall into the situation I described and I wonder if the data collection can account for them and separate them from the ones who are actually interested and paying attention. Maybe the former population is not significant, but it makes me curious.
(The reverse is also possible, of course, that a woman turns on a sport and her male partner is "viewing" it without paying attention. That's probably a little less relevant in this case, however, because they aren't trying to prove men's interest in sports.)
Lance — October 18, 2010
As an impression, rather than researched data: I've been seeing an increasing number of football-centric commercials that show women as well as men enjoying the sport, which is (again, impressionistically) a change from even a few years ago, when people watching football--whether in an ad for the NFL, corn chips, wide-screen TVs, or what have you--were overwhelmingly male, and women tended to be bringing snacks to the men.
So for instance, there's a series of ads for some media-providing service or another where a fan of one team has moved deep into another team's territory: a Dolphins fan in New England, a Packers fan in Dallas, and so forth. The locals show their disdain for someone who can come to the heart of Patriots or Cowboys land and still be able to watch their home team; in some ads, the locals are men, and in some, they're women, speaking just as fervently about the home team.
There's another ad for a football channel in which a man and woman are sitting at home alone, lamenting the fact that they got Red Zone, which only shows highlights from games and not entire games, while their next-door neighbor has a house full of fans watching whatever channel they're pitching. In this case, the man is quietly sobbing on the couch, while the woman address the camera about how mad she is about not getting to see the game, and the neighbor she references is female.
Then there's a Chex Mix ad in which, while the woman is bringing a bowl of food from the kitchen, she's not catering to the menfolk; her guests are roughly evenly split between men and women, and she's shown as being as avid a fan herself.
Again, the plural of "anecdote" us not "data", but I suspect that if someone were to sit down and really analyze ads that use football fans, they'd find a trend towards recognizing that it's not just men who watch football.
R — October 18, 2010
It's hard to separate women sports fans (sports fans who are women) from women's sports fans (fans of women's sports), but the new brand is likely going to fail if ESPN can't do just that.
As a sports fan who is a woman, I don't like the implication that I need a separate web page or channel. I'd prefer that media stop using women sportscasters as the "on the field" commentators and actually let them call the games. Don't further marginalize women fans by forcing us to check the scores on some pink-colored, dumbed-down website or by hiding the Cowboys score below meaningless WNBA stats.
There's already a major fight against Pink Hat Fans (a stereotype that women who wear pink jerseys/hats won't watch the game and doesn't know anything about sports) and for EPSN to create additional hurdles for women fans would be incredibly frustrating.
eeka — October 19, 2010
These stats are interesting in so many ways. I was a bit surprised that football dominates over basketball and baseball so strongly (and where TF is hockey, I ask you?!), probably since I live in Boston where I'd guess the fan bases are more equal, but it makes sense considering places in the midwest and southeast where football is huge. I'd love to see breakdowns of sports viewing by region, income, education level, religion, etc. Could be really interesting.
I just find professional sports fascinating in general because of all the trillions that are spent and generated on something that really doesn't matter (hey, I like baseball and hockey, but there are much more important things), and mostly out of private funds from average people who don't think of themselves as people who have the financial means to affect anything. Can you imagine if even just half of the Red Sox shirts were Greater Boston Food Bank shirts, and half of the Patriots parties were fundraising parties for education or housing? Or if we had Wii games that were licensed by small community arts organizations?
b — October 19, 2010
I wonder why total coverage of women's sports fell so drastically in the past five years, to even much lower levels than the late 80s. I understand the spike in 1999, right after the introduction of the WNBA etc, and then you'd expect it to maybe go back to previous levels like it did... but then why the crazy drop recently?
Ames — October 19, 2010
I love your statement at the end, Gwen. I've been an athlete for 45 years and have long hated the lack of coverage. But as I read the first part of your post, I wondered: Why do I have mixed feelings about this report of the lack of coverage? then moved on to: Because they mock us and find ways to make us look ridiculous when they do cover us. Your comment nailed it. My guess is that an ESPN for women will be full of condescending, patronizing crap.
I, too, wonder at the reason for the even larger decrease in coverage and whether someone is researching what's going on. My first thought is that, as women make greater and greater athletic gains, men who cover sports and who make decisions about what gets covered are increasingly afraid for the viability of their private little clubhouses.
Wes — October 19, 2010
As you pointed out, a significant portion of sports fans are female--but does this necessarily mean that they would rather watch coverage of women's sports? Just a thought to be considered.
John Spinda — October 22, 2010
This is Dr. John Spinda at Murray State University and I am interested in learning more about female NFL fans. Please click the link below to learn more about this non-profit, academic research project. Thank you for your time.
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[...] week, ESPN launched a new website, espnW, targeted towards a female audience. There’s a great piece over at Sociological Images that talks about the abysmally sparse representation of women’s [...]
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