Study shows 5% of sports coverage focuses on women
A 30-year study from USC/Purdue University published Wednesday in Communication & Sport, shows that “researchers found that 95% of total television coverage as well as the ESPN highlights show SportsCenter focused on men’s sports in 2019.”
For this article I am not going to refer to sports as men’s sports or women’s sports, but rather sports where men play or sports where women play. I want to get away from categorizing sports as either men’s or women’s because in each case, the sport is the same but the only difference is who is playing the sport.
The percentage of coverage of sports where women play has increased from 3.2% (TV News) and 2% (SportsCenter) in 2014 to to 5.1% and 5.7% in 2019, respectively. However, this percentage increase is still grossly inadequate coverage and the study suggests the 2019 numbers could be inflated due to coverage of the Women's World Cup.
The disparity in coverage echoes a much broader issue in overall disparity in the treatment of women in the world of sport. To address disparity, TOGETHXR was founded. TOGETHXR is a new media commerce company founded by four of the world’s greatest professional athletes: Alex Morgan, Chloe Kim, Sue Bird, & Simone Manuel. They focus on rich storytelling and are a platform where equality and representation are the norm.
A weak claim is often made that people are not interested in watching women in sport or that women don’t bring in enough dollars to justify more coverage or equal pay. This is grossly untrue and made evident by the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team.
This study argues that mainstream sports media actively builds audiences for certain sports where men are playing in ways it does not do so for sports where women are playing. Let’s look at the data about offseason coverage of sports.
As you can see, the WNBA in their offseason got 0 stories and zero minutes of coverage compared to the NBA in their offseason which had a total of 175 stories.
“Eighty percent of the news and highlights programs in our study devoted zero time for women’s sports,” said Cooky, a professor of American studies and women’s, gender and sexuality studies. “On the rare broadcast when a women’s sports story does appear, it is usually a case of ‘one and done’ — a single women’s sports story partially eclipsed by a cluster of men’s stories that precede it, follow it and are longer in length.”
The study also looked at social media and online news to see if the coverage was still paltry when it came to sports where women played.
“Considering the ease of posting content and the relative lack of production and budgetary constraints when compared to TV news, we anticipated more coverage of women’s sports in online and social media spaces,” Cooky said. “We were surprised by how little coverage we found. There just isn’t a compelling excuse for that absence.”
This lack of coverage of women in sport is not only present in the professional sphere, but also in the collegiate sphere. The chart data below was taken from coverage of the 2019 NCAA Basketball Tournament.
The tabled shows that in 2019, the Women’s NCAA Basketball Tournament had 27 stories covered with the Men’s NCAA Basketball Tournament receiving 417 stories. In March 2021 at the NCAA Basketball Tournament, the gross disparity in treatment of the players for the women’s tournament and the men’s tournament was put front and center.
Without increased coverage of sports where women are playing, the equality and parity in treatment of women in a broader sense, will not be happen. Women must continue to fight for equality and parity both on and off the courts and fields. Change is coming, but when will enough maltreatment be enough? A new generation of athletes are unafraid to speak out and this type of courage is needed in order to not just move the needle, but break the status quo.
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About the Author:
Alex holds a BBA in Marketing and a JD from Texas A&M University and Texas A&M University School of Law, respectively. She has been an in-house counsel for a famous sports family, a multinational company, various startups, and most recently, a professional sports team. She has also led marketing, public relations, sponsorship generation, negotiation of media deals, and negotiation of various contracts including employment contracts for professional athletes, NDAs, and sponsorship deals.
She also has a creative bug and has worked remotely for USA TODAY Sports Media Group's NFL Wire sites since 2016 as a journalist, content producer, voice over & on-camera personality. She provides her unique perspective on all things NFL including national anthem policies, sports betting, DE&I, and was the first female to be hired by the NFL Wire sites. Alex was also selected to sit on an esports Board of Directors and chairs the Legal & Governance Committee and is the first woman to hold either position.