Mike Whan Podcast(s)

NLU Content Discussion
123

I’m saying that if the guys hit it the distances the women hit it, they’d be much more “accurate” too.

And @thesaxemachine, I don’t. It’s a few of you, here, who appreciate the easy likes from the rest of that few. I don’t know most of you, and you don’t really know me at all, either. So your opinions of me mean very little.

Opinion once again: I don’t think that if you just swapped coverage schedules, that the LPGA would see the same viewer ratings as the PGA Tour, per the question I asked yesterday. I think they’d be lower. Part of that is the history, and where we are now: golf fans (not most here, but the general audience) don’t know much about Brooke or Nelly or Danielle or Ariya or Inbee or Jin-Young-Ko. So that’d put a damper on it.

I think if you want to “solve” the problem, you have to be honest about some things, and one of those things is that women’s sports, by and large, don’t have the viewership of men. A few do, and of those, a few times a year. Figure skating does well, but it’s not on every weekend. It’s more of a “special event” type thing. Tennis does, but it took Serena and Venus Williams and hosting the tournaments concurrently and at the same venues… golf would struggle with the latter, and it doesn’t really have a dominant American right now (let alone sisters).

Women’s golf is growing, but the studies show generally that women don’t watch many sports.

124

All I’m seeing here (and elsewhere) is circular logic from you.

You haven’t addressed how the massive disparity in exposure between men’s and women’s golf has led to different economics; instead citing the vastly different economics to justify the differences in exposure.

17 Likes
125

This would be great. I know the LPGA had some trouble in the past finding players that they could effectively market to the masses. But that’s not true anymore. They have multiple players that are doing very without the support of being “mainstream.” If you switched TV contracts it obviously wouldn’t make any difference over night. But if you gave it a year or so, I think the LPGA would be more popular. If they shoved Danielle Kang, Nelly Korda, and Brooke Henderson down our throats like they do Rickie, I think they could reach those same levels of popularity.

1 Like
126

@Randy, thanks for the response. I don’t see it as circular because I don’t see it entirely as an exposure thing. That’s a chunk of it for sure, but I’m not sure it’s even the majority piece.

Given an equal choice (LPGA on Network A, 1-5pm on weekends, PGA Tour on network B, 1-5pm on weekends), average golfers or viewers will watch the men play more than they’ll watch the women. I think that, even after ten years, if you could do the Network A and B thing, the PGA Tour would still see more viewers than the LPGA Tour in the U.S… Sure, most of the people here might split their attention, or record both to watch later, or flip between channels like Mike talked about… but this site almost surely isn’t representative of the general golf watching population.

It goes beyond “exposure,” IMO.

If networks saw an opportunity to make money here, particularly given that the networks could get LPGA rights pretty inexpensively, I think the networks probably would have found a way to get women’s golf into their network weekend lineups. FOX, maybe, would have made a bid to get the rights from NBC/Golf Channel if they thought it would work. NBC could probably easily shift it to the network coverage instead of always having it on Golf Channel, even if it was just the weeks when the PGA Tour was on CBS. But that doesn’t happen, and I suspect it’s because the networks suspect that people would not tune in to watch.

Like I just said in the addition above, there’s definitely a bit of a catch-22 (this is similar to the “circular” stuff) in that the men are currently so far ahead, and people don’t know much about the women… so they’d not be starting on the same level… but I don’t think it gets around to being a circle, or being solely because of coverage or exposure, because I don’t think anyone can point to some type of women’s regularly-played (not special events type things) women’s sports in the U.S. that see the success men’s sports have. That’s the uphill battle, and though we may get there (“there” being "purse equity in similar type events on the LPGA Tour and PGA Tour), I don’t think it will be for more than a few events, and I don’t think it’s going to happen before 2025.

And I got the impression that Mike Whan, who did tremendous things and who will be missed, thinks we’re closer to that. Maybe the orders of magnitude more information he has says so, maybe he’s projecting confidence and optimism because that will help… I don’t know. But the “when” and “how” are what I was looking to discuss.

Do you think that it’s purely a coverage issue, @Randy? Or do you think that it’s more than that: that the average American sports fan doesn’t watch women’s sports, and that the LPGA may not achieve the viewing audience that the PGA Tour has?

Again, I’m with you (and others here) in that I watch a lot of the LPGA Tour. I love your podcasts with Beth Ann… I love coaching the girls I work with… my daughter can kick the butts of most of the members here (and me a decent chunk of the time), but we’re not the average golf viewer.

Again, it boils down to this for me: I got the sense that Mike Whan was giving off the vibe that he thought we’re closer to that “comparable events (i.e. not comparing the USWO to an opposite-field PGA Tour event or something), equal purses” than I thought we might be, so I wanted to discuss the “when” and “how” of that.

127

Opinions don’t equal facts, right? You can’t prove that, it isn’t the truth just because you think so. Please provide examples.

ESPN’s Coverage of WNBA Finals Game 3 Up 34% Year-Over-Year - ESPN Press Room U.S. This press release tells us the WNBA is currently the only major professional league seeing an increase in viewership. Tell me again how the american audience doesn’t want to watch womens sports.

4 Likes
128

You’re right, I can’t prove it, but you can’t prove it either, and I think the evidence supports the idea that in the U.S., relatively few people watch women’s sports.

Sure, the WNBA was up 34% (for one game - it was 15% for their finals)… but that’s comparing it to themselves the previous year. What were the actual numbers compared to the men’s finals?

ESPN’s coverage of the Seattle Storm’s championship-clinching victory in Game 3 of the 2020 WNBA Finals was up 34% year-over-year over Game 3 of the 2019 WNBA Finals—averaging 570,000 viewers—and up 27% over the Washington Mystics’ Game 5 championship win last year.

570,000. How many watched the NBA finals? The lowest ratings were this past year, and Game 3 of the 2020 NBA finals was the least watched game… with 5.94 million viewers.

Women’s viewing is growing. I voted “inside 20 years” myself. I’m not saying “never.” I didn’t even say “25+”. I just don’t think it’s getting there as quickly as some others, and so I’m trying to discuss “when” and “how.”

But that starts, IMO, with a good understanding of where we are right now.

129

According to this site, as of 2019, it seems the women draw higher ratings in the tennis US Open.

US Open viewership at multi-year highs - Sports Media Watch.

Edit to add this tweet. Women topped the men 4 out of the last 6 years.

5 Likes
130

Time is a flat circle.

1 Like
131

I can’t tell if this is sarcasm or not (/s), but i would be interested to see how the tv viewership numbers and purse compares.

Could you imagine trying to justify that semi-retired men make more?!

1 Like
132

So, as I mentioned, the WNBA was the ONLY sport in North America who saw a ratings increase in 2020. You seemingly glossed over and missed that important point, so I just wanted to make sure you saw it again.

If you cover it, people will watch it. If they led with womens sports on sportscentre and had female athletes in the commercials, who knows what kind of audience they would get? Is the viewership smaller because the coverage is smaller, or is it vice versa? The gap is closing faster than clearly you would like to admit.

6 Likes
133

Ok, take your Network A/B scenario, now put Network B with the PGA Tour behind a paywall. How does that change things?

I don’t think swapping tv schedules is going to change things over night, but what it does do is allow the LPGA to put more resources to market their players/product and makes that marketing budget a lot more efficient as well

2 Likes
134

Don’t forget the broadcast times on Network B will be all over the place. Might be in the morning. Might be mid-day. Or just for fun, it might be in the middle of the night. And some weeks to really mix things up, it might not be on at all.

1 Like
135

I saw it, but if an event goes from 100,000 people watching it to 200,000, that’s a 100% increase, and if a men’s event sees a drop from 20 million to 19 million, that’s a decrease… but it’s still also 18.8 million more people that watched the men’s event than the women’s event.

It’s easier to “grow” when you’re small.

But why would they? As an experiment? They’re trying to make money, and generally speaking:

  • women don’t watch SportsCenter
  • guys don’t watch women’s sports

Yes, some of that reason is the exposure disparity. I just disagree that’s even the majority reason.

How did you vote in the poll? I’ve never said the gap isn’t closing. I just don’t think it’s closing as fast as Mike Whan seems to think. I don’t think we’re 3 years away from five events with purse equity in the U.S.

136

really love this idea. saw it last night and have been thinking about it since. the idea of 4 day, Thursday-Sunday tournaments is so ingrained into our subconscious that such a simple innovation never crossed my mind.

2 Likes
137

You might also catch a rerun from Network A if you’re lucky!

1 Like
138

According to the WNBA commissioner, the big reason they saw a ratings increase at a time when they were competing against MLB, NHL, and the NBA was because of having more games on actual TV stations and not being buried on channels like ESPN News or NBA TV

The increase in average viewership is significant in that there were more opportunities to do so with games available on TV (ESPN, CBS Sports Network) as well as on Facebook and Twitter streams. It had the benefit of doubleheaders on the main ESPN channel and wasn’t buried on ESPN News at all. There were 87 of 132 nationally televised regular season games, she said.

3 Likes
139

So from what I can tell, you think the majority reason is people aren’t interested in watching women’s sports in general. Why do you think that is and how did we get there? How can we change that?

My first answer to those questions is exposure, interested to hear yours

5 Likes
140

Companies aren’t just going to give the women’s games “exposure” out of a sense of fairness or whatever. They’re running businesses.

NLU does a ton for the women’s game, I think we’d all agree. As much as or more than almost any other “media” group that isn’t solely dedicated to the LPGA. Yet the men’s game still dominates their podcasts, the talk here on the Refuge, etc.

141

Do you think people “only want to watch men’s sports” because for decades that’s all there was to watch, and so they don’t know if they like or don’t like to watch women’s because it’s not what they grew up watching? Whereas, if you do make it accessible and easy for people to watch, they could become fans and it becomes more and more popular because of… EXPOSURE.

To play devils advocate, of course they could not enjoy watching it and therefore not become fans. But we don’t know that because we don’t have the exposure

20 Likes
142

Again, that’s certainly a part of it.

Interest in women’s sports is growing, but I don’t think it’s growing as fast as Mike Whan seems to think it’s growing. I think it’s going to take longer to overcome those things.

I didn’t vote 25+. But few people voted for “within 5 years,” too.