This is a great response. If you want to support them, great! Donate, volunteer, watch their games, whatever. For the rest of us, it’s an entertainment product. I don’t watch WNBA because I don’t watch NBA, or any sports. But if you like basketball, yet draw the line at the players’ genitals, that’s weird.
I would think that the kind of people who watch NBA, would want to watch the WNBA.
It’s the same concepts, but with women. I would think the mostly straight/male sports audience would want to watch their favorite sport where the players are also the gender they like to stare at.
Have you ever seen a WNBA game? Sure, it’s the same sport but that logic applies to middle school basketball teams as well and no one gives a shit about those either regardless of the gender of the athletes involved.
The reason professional sports are fun to watch is you get to see the best athletes in the world push the limits of what is physically possible for a human to achieve. Top level women cannot compete with top level men in any regularly televised sport, including basketball. No one wants to watch Caitlin Clark on channel 3 when LeBron James is doing way more impressive things on channel 6. That’s just the way it is. I don’t get why people pretend that isn’t obvious and get offended by it.
They should allow light gymnastics in the WNBA to even up the entertainment value. A series of backflips down the court before hitting nothing but net on a 3 would sure get my attention.
I don’t know how so many people are so devoid of understanding of something that is such an integral part of human civilisation the world over.
People find something they like. Let’s say is basketball. They like playing the game and want to be better so like watching people better than them so they tend to watch the best. Then they also find out they like watching it for entertainment sake. But anyone that has ever watched kids play sport know watching lower quality sport rapidly decrease in entertainment value.
Why would you go actively out of your way to watch an inferior product?
There are so many amateur male athletes that are better than female athletes. But no one goes down to their local game and watch a load of randomers play sport.
People watch the top league usually the club and the international if that sport is international. Then they will watch not their favourite team but other teams to get a better idea of the league. Then they will watch the feeder youth league if they want to. Then other countries leagues or lower leagues. All of these link together and all of them will be a better level than top women’s league.
Usually at the point you run out of time to watch any more or you just like sport in general and go watch the top tier of another sport.
There needs to be a reason to watch and the only reason I have found to watch women’s sport was to watch the UFC because that’s a player on player sport not achieving something. But the women have a lot less power and a lot more flexibility so the strategy is entirely different and sport looks different. In that sense in that entertainment value men can’t achieve that, in all other sports men seem to do what women do but better.
It’s a different feeling watching a team compete to be the best in their league and watching a team compete to be the best in the world.
When MLB was shutdown early on in the pandemic, Taiwan was able to get their league going before MLB started up again. So I watched that. But when MLB startup up again, I stopped watching the Taiwan league baseball. It doesn’t mean I hate the Taiwan league, it’s just that MLB is a higher level of play, that’s the league “my team” plays in, that’s the league my team’s rivals play in. There’s an ongoing story of your team that you’re tuning in to see. They’re competing to be the best in the world by going up against the best in the world. Everything else is just a curiosity.
Yea it is. Go find me a sport where top level women have played against boys and won? It’s happened in football and it’s happened in ice hockey and boys dominate. I fail to see how a sport that is arguably most about freak athleticism will result in a more even game.
Football, baseball, hockey, or some other sport. Or maybe even some other form of entertainment not related to sports. People can be interested in more than one thing.
I’m not into basketball myself, but I do watch both baseball and hockey. The top level (MLB, NHL) in just those two sports have me covered year round.
This is a great response. If you want to support them, great! Donate, volunteer, watch their games, whatever. For the rest of us, it’s an entertainment product. I don’t watch WNBA because I don’t watch NBA, or any sports. But if you like basketball, yet draw the line at the players’ genitals, that’s weird.
I would think that the kind of people who watch NBA, would want to watch the WNBA.
It’s the same concepts, but with women. I would think the mostly straight/male sports audience would want to watch their favorite sport where the players are also the gender they like to stare at.
Yet, here we are.
Have you ever seen a WNBA game? Sure, it’s the same sport but that logic applies to middle school basketball teams as well and no one gives a shit about those either regardless of the gender of the athletes involved.
The reason professional sports are fun to watch is you get to see the best athletes in the world push the limits of what is physically possible for a human to achieve. Top level women cannot compete with top level men in any regularly televised sport, including basketball. No one wants to watch Caitlin Clark on channel 3 when LeBron James is doing way more impressive things on channel 6. That’s just the way it is. I don’t get why people pretend that isn’t obvious and get offended by it.
They should allow light gymnastics in the WNBA to even up the entertainment value. A series of backflips down the court before hitting nothing but net on a 3 would sure get my attention.
Nope. Can’t say that I have. I’ve also never watched an NBA game.
I’m not the target audience. I’m just commenting from an outsiders perspective. I don’t “get” it, and I don’t expect to.
Have a good day.
Their seasons don’t really overlap tho, you’re not missing LeBron by watching Caitlin Clark.
It overlaps with other sports where we can see the competition to be the best in the world at another sport.
Ok but that wasn’t the point the person I was responding to was making.
The point of WNBA is not to look pretty. They are there because they are good.
If straight men want to look at women there’s plenty of environments where the point is that the women are pretty.
I don’t know how so many people are so devoid of understanding of something that is such an integral part of human civilisation the world over.
People find something they like. Let’s say is basketball. They like playing the game and want to be better so like watching people better than them so they tend to watch the best. Then they also find out they like watching it for entertainment sake. But anyone that has ever watched kids play sport know watching lower quality sport rapidly decrease in entertainment value.
Why would you go actively out of your way to watch an inferior product?
There are so many amateur male athletes that are better than female athletes. But no one goes down to their local game and watch a load of randomers play sport.
People watch the top league usually the club and the international if that sport is international. Then they will watch not their favourite team but other teams to get a better idea of the league. Then they will watch the feeder youth league if they want to. Then other countries leagues or lower leagues. All of these link together and all of them will be a better level than top women’s league.
Usually at the point you run out of time to watch any more or you just like sport in general and go watch the top tier of another sport.
There needs to be a reason to watch and the only reason I have found to watch women’s sport was to watch the UFC because that’s a player on player sport not achieving something. But the women have a lot less power and a lot more flexibility so the strategy is entirely different and sport looks different. In that sense in that entertainment value men can’t achieve that, in all other sports men seem to do what women do but better.
That’s exactly right.
It’s a different feeling watching a team compete to be the best in their league and watching a team compete to be the best in the world.
When MLB was shutdown early on in the pandemic, Taiwan was able to get their league going before MLB started up again. So I watched that. But when MLB startup up again, I stopped watching the Taiwan league baseball. It doesn’t mean I hate the Taiwan league, it’s just that MLB is a higher level of play, that’s the league “my team” plays in, that’s the league my team’s rivals play in. There’s an ongoing story of your team that you’re tuning in to see. They’re competing to be the best in the world by going up against the best in the world. Everything else is just a curiosity.
In my teens I watched NBA basketball religiously.
In my twenties I was a huge MLB fan.
In my 30s I watched the NFL every weekend.
In my 40s I have athletics daughters and I watch them play and I also watch women’s soccer.
Does it help that the US women are a dominant force in the international area whereas the men are just “no longer a joke”.
Yes, yes it does.
When my highschooler was younger we’d go watch the Washington Spirit at the Soccerplex in Germantown.
It sat about 4,000.
This summer I travelled back to the US and caught a Spirit game in the new stadium in Baltimore. Holy shit what a big difference.
The crowd now had 19,000 in attendance.
That’s just not true.
Yea it is. Go find me a sport where top level women have played against boys and won? It’s happened in football and it’s happened in ice hockey and boys dominate. I fail to see how a sport that is arguably most about freak athleticism will result in a more even game.
So to your first point, what are NBA fans watching when it’s off season?
Football, baseball, hockey, or some other sport. Or maybe even some other form of entertainment not related to sports. People can be interested in more than one thing.
I’m not into basketball myself, but I do watch both baseball and hockey. The top level (MLB, NHL) in just those two sports have me covered year round.
I’m not disagreeing with any of that, just saying their opening salvo is funny because it’s pretty clear they’re not a basketball fan.
I really don’t know.