mekka okereke :verified:
NBA basketball player Michael Porter Jr says that women's basketball players shouldn't get paid nearly what men make, because they don't have as many fans, and aren't "packing out arenas" like men are.
Look. I'm not even mad. I don't think he's wrong about player pay should be tied to league revenue, which is tied to in person attendance, online, and TV viewership.
I'm not mad. I just know that he hasn't looked at his NBA champ Denver Nugget average game viewership, compared to Caitlin Clark.😬
mekka okereke :verified:
Some real reason women athletes get paid less, are because their leagues make less, and they tend to get a lower percentage of their league's profits.
Women's leagues make less money, because their "dollars paid per minutes of game viewership generated" are not as good as other leagues. In short, the viewership is undervalued.
Whoever at ESPN negotiated this deal is a genius. They got women's college bball included in the big bargain basket of sports? Really?😮
mekka okereke :verified:
Steph Curry, considered the greatest shooter of all time, shooting in the NBA 3 point contest:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QVdgaeEmrlQ
Sabrina Ionescu, one of the best WNBA shooters of all time, breaking the NBA and WNBA shooting record, at the WNBA 3 point contest:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DquTVwX4njo
This year at the all Star game, they're going to compete against each other in a special first of a kind NBA vs WNBA contest!👍🏿
They've agreed on rules (NBA distance) and the date is set.
It's going to get a lot of viewers
mekka okereke :verified:
I don't think folks have accepted how much women's sports viewership has grown in the past 20 years. And it's not just basketball. Soccer. Tennis. Gymnastics. I think people are really having 2024 conversations with 1974 data.
I don't think people understand that 92K people watched this women's college volleyball game.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mP17VGH15xE
We keep having viewership upsets:
Women's US Open final > Men's final
US Woman's world cup > US Men's world cup
Woman's NCAA final > Mens final
mekka okereke :verified:
In person attendance for NBA games is essentially a rounding error when compared to TV viewership. We're talking 20K vs ~1.5 million for TV, for a big game featuring a premiere team like the Denver Nuggets.
Iowa women's basketball also does 1.5 million TV viewers for a normal game, and crosses 9 million for a big game.
And women's basketball viewership is growing faster than men's basketball.
So I'm not complaining! Viewers equals dollars. Got it. I just want to know the rules.
Catherine is not giving up.
@mekkaokereke do NOT get in front of my mother and her friends when UConn women are playing. All these women in assisted living who were never allowed to play sports are rabid women’s basketball fans. It’s wild seeing women in their 90s screaming and hollering and it’s also really beautiful.
funnel
@mekkaokereke love this trend: in the US there is Soccer and 'Mens Socccer'
Luke Kanies
@mekkaokereke soccer is the only sport I know anything about. And for that, it’s easy to explain why women’s soccer is having to work so hard to catch up: it was effectively banned for 50 years by basically every national football organization, because it was threatening the men’s game:
It seems like there’s a conspiracy against women’s sports because there is, and always has been.
Radlerin 🚴♀️
@lkanies @mekkaokereke
In Germany: Over years we had the discussion that women‘s football (european football) was boring because they were playing like amateurs. Even on national level.
Well, they were getting paid so poorly for playing that they had to do a job to finance themselves.
They were not playing like amateurs, they were amateurs. How else were they supposed to play?
This is an endless circle that needs to get broken by better payment.
mekka okereke :verified:
🇫🇷👍🏿 France's commercial was pretty great.
mekka okereke :verified:
Let me put into perspective how good ESPN's deal is.
LeBron James is considered to be among the top 3 greatest basketball players ever. Victor Wembanyama is the number one NBA draft pick. Two huge stars. When Victor and LeBron played against each other, the US TV station that aired that game got 1.4 million viewers.
When Caitlyn Clark played Ohio State 2 weeks ago, the network that aired the game got 1.93 million viewers. When the game went to overtime, that jumped to 3.9 million viewers. 🤯
Normal Poster
@mekkaokereke Mekka my broke ass likes 20 dollar tickets stop giving away the secret
mekka okereke :verified:
The next NBA TV deal will likely be $75 billion. With a "B."
The women's college basketball deal was ~$115 million. With an "M." And it included 39 other women's and even some men's sports in the bundle! 🤯
My prediction is that that's going to go down as one of the best media rights deals history. Fair play to whoever at ESPN is going to be eating off that for the next 8 years. But wow.
Bill Reese
@mekkaokereke Read a thing a while back about how the Big Ten Network experimented showing some women's volleyball games in primetime and the viewership was way beyond what they expected.
There is an audience, it's just never been given an opportunity to show that it's there.
mekka okereke :verified:
92K
Bill Reese
@adambkaplan For real. Didn't Nebraska put like, 70,000 people in the football stadium for a volleyball game?
Adam Kaplan ???
@patmikemid @mekkaokereke @reesecommabill and has HUGE fan bases in the Midwest.
I used to fly to Omaha regularly for work. Volleyball is just as big as college football out there.
You S Blues
@mekkaokereke @reesecommabill Volleyball is an exciting sport that is very TV friendly.
piebob ✨
@mekkaokereke "think people are really having 2024 conversations with 1974 data"
hah, this applies to SO MANY TOPICS...
Ericka Simone
@mekkaokereke that’s actually wrong and I wish everyone would shut up before speaking.
NCAA women’s basketball has consistently had equal if not higher ratings than men’s, especially with the massive evolution in the last 5 years. These new girls are playing DIFFERENT different. WNBA is also expanding because of the new girls coming out of college.
In all honesty, if he’s jealous because no one wants to watch him, just say that. lol.
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