ESPN created espnW for women’s sports. But, somehow tragically, it has managed to make matters worse.
The more women play, the less people seem to care. Despite an increasing number of women and girls playing sports, studies show that media coverage for women’s sports continues to decline.
Courtesy: Prime News
I once had great hope that online coverage could become the equalizer we desperately need, removing the competition with men’s sports for airtime. But the most prominent sports websites force visitors into a deep dark hole (right down to the dregs of the website) to find any coverage of women’s sports.
By that time, many visitors no longer care.
ESPN is a notable exception. They created a website specifically for women’s sports, espnW. But, somehow tragically, it has managed to make matters even worse. The cursive W and its soft-as-tissue-paper layout would be offensive enough. Sadly, though, the blows don’t stop there.
Navigating to the ESPNW.com homepage reveals that the most prominent woman on the page is Disney’s “princess” Mulan. Please don’t misunderstand. Mulan is a badass and worthy of celebration. I just struggle to recall an instance of a Disney prince taking center stage on any other sports media website (20th anniversary or not).
The gesture, while perhaps well-intentioned, chips away at the credibility and seriousness of coverage.
It reframes perceptions of women athletes as imposters … posing as something they are not.
The typecasting that’s built into the site’s structure continues throughout. It solidifies ESPN’s perception and treatment of women’s sports as separate but equal. And hopefully, by now, we all understand the merits of the separate but equal framework.
espnW has four tabs–sports, voices, lifestyle, and culture. I’m still trying to figure out how ‘sports’ can be one on four equally-prominent tabs on any ESPN website? In contrast, ESPN.com is chock full of real-time sports content with nary a lifestyle piece in sight. Drafts, match predictors, “NBA Trade Machine,” and ESPY votes match up against a variety of sentimental articles between pieces on Jurassic World.
Courtesy: One-Minute Marketer – WordPress.com
It gets worse. On espnW‘s homepage, there’s a shocking number of articles and videos featuring males. On ESPN’s homepage, though, you’d be hard-pressed to find a single female athlete.
Sports media is a powerful force in society. It doesn’t just respond to us as sports consumers, it creates demand and alters perceptions. Sports media doesn’t wait for fans to become interested in women’s sports, either. It helps create apathy.
That apathy has far-reaching consequences for women in sports business and in business, generally. How? Sports becomes ever more “a boy’s club.”
Because the lessons that sports teach are lauded the world over, shouldn’t women and girls learn them, too? I mean, how will Steph Curry explain to daughter Riley that she isn’t every bit as tough or as valuable as LeBron James Jr.?
