Getty ImagesDoes the success of women’s college basketball hinge on big names or can it build on the momentum that has come with more eyes and promotion? ESPN’s Monica McNutt and BBC special correspondent Katty Kay discuss the staying power of women’s sport.
That success was largely fuelled by the surge in interest around two superstars, Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark (who has reached such levels of celebrity that she’s recently been spotted alongside Taylor Swift). But now those two women have left the league, can it hang on to the public’s interest? Or did it all depend on the celebrity of just two players?
Now that America’s famous March Madness playoff tournament has begun, there are some encouraging signs. Regular season viewership of women’s games was up compared to last year and ad dollars for the women’s tournament are on the rise, too. In American sport, money often tells the story.
And yet, observers of the sport still worry that popularity based on personality is hard to maintain, particularly in women’s sport, where the pitfalls of celebrity are endless.
I spoke with Monica McNutt, a basketball analyst for ESPN and the New York Knicks – who also played college basketball – about what this all means. Watch or read our conversation below; it’s been edited for length and clarity.
Katty Kay: How do you account for what happened last year when suddenly as many Americans were watching the women’s college basketball as were watching the men’s?
Monica McNutt: It’s a culmination of a lot of things as I reflect on my experience as a women’s basketball player and now as a member of the media. The one thing that comes to mind is the star power of last year’s crew. I mean, Caitlin Clark, household name; Angel Reese now also a household name. And so you had this wonderful culmination of incredibly talented young women that were also marketable.
Now, I will add the additional layer and some folks may want to argue about this, but based on my lived experience in this country, the Larry Bird-Magic Johnson effect of it all, that is to speak of the two representations of two different worlds, when you talk about Iowa and LSU, it’s a culminating ingredient in how we get to this big moment that crosses into mainstream conversation in a way that women’s sport had not often prior to that.
KK: I interviewed Magic Johnson not long after, in about early last summer, and I asked him about the phenomenon of Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese and had they really changed the game for good? Had they changed the whole business model? Did this mean going forward, there would always be just as many people watching women’s college basketball as there would be watching men’s college basketball – and he sounded pretty confident at the time. But I’m wondering if that’s true or was that a moment in time?
MM: Here’s where I am on it: we’ll have to wait until we get to April 6th this year to see what the numbers provide in terms of the viewership of the women’s tournament this year. But when I’m watching the Super Bowl and I see a Nike commercial that features JuJu Watkins and Caitlin Clark and A’ja Wilson, Jordan Chiles and other women athletes, when I’m seeing a variety of young women – I mean, the Notre Dame women’s team in an insurance commercial – when I’m seeing women become more and more part of the actual mainstream experience of sport, I’m inclined to believe that we are, in fact, seeing a change.
I do think that last year, and this is me just having been in it and having lived in it, I do think last year will represent a spike, but I do not think we will go back to where we were, either.
I am confident that the women’s game is growing and partly because the marketing dollars are there. The money is there, Katty. And we know that where there’s money, that’s where people are putting their investment and showing their interest.
KK: Only in America is the real barometer of success the fact that you’re in an insurance ad.
MM: And even if you don’t see an actual player. The other day, I was watching a commercial for, I believe it might’ve been a breast cancer drug here in the States. And the woman’s journey, they show her in various chapters of her life, but in one of the early scenes in the commercial, she’s a basketball player.
KK: That’s super interesting. So, somehow, women’s sport has to become part of the story of our lives, right? In a mainstream way. And I love that example that you just said that somehow the fact that it showed up in an ad shows what we all know, which is all our girls are playing sports now. So it becomes part of our lives. Is it that that’s going to make it long-term commercially viable?
MM: Two things: I think it has to show up in our storytelling and it has to be encouraged by our families. And so covering the WNBA this past season, Caitlin Clark’s rookie year, for all of the conversation that surrounded her, some which was fair and some which wasn’t, the one thing that I cannot deny is the amount of little girls that were showing up to follow her.
Same thing for Angel Reese, when I had a chance to cover their games. But I think Caitlin represented, and again, some of this to me probably is not fair to her, because it was not anything that she said or was truly based on her personality, but she was a white girl from the middle of America. And so she represented a whole lot to a lot of people, whether that is truly what she prescribed to or not. We can all say she is a dynamic basketball player and a force both on the court and the marketing sense. But I do think, same thing with folks that may have fallen in love with Angel Reese; she may or may not have agreed with everything they had to say, either. We attach our fandom to these icons for all types of reasons, and sometimes they may not be based in truth.
Getty ImagesKK: OK, so I’m going to go straight down the kind of gender question here, which is that I can see you’re right, thinking about it, that men’s sports, and I look at the English Premier League, which my husband follows religiously and my kids follow religiously, being dominated forever by personalities. People love the people that they follow. It’s the individuals as much as the teams. I’m just wondering now whether there are just more pitfalls for women in being, maybe this is totally wrong –
MM: Come on, say it! Yes!
KK: – being big personalities, right? We are just going to get tripped up every time we try to be that personality that has to carry the whole league on our back. There’s going to be pitfall after pitfall after pitfall that we might fall into in a way that there isn’t for men. And that just makes it harder for us to be those big personalities and carry the sport with us.
MM: Katty, you are preaching. Yes, I agree! And this is why that Nike commercial this year is to me so iconic, not just because of the powerful women that were in it, but the message. The whole message is exactly what you just said. It’s all this chatter that women have to deal with.
We have to so delicately navigate our being as women, right? In this Nike ad, it’s all this chatter. But the line for that ad, hook, line, sinker, final thing, period, full stop, is “you can’t win, so win.” And so to me, yes, you nailed it in that women have to navigate all these various pitfalls. Are you too feminine? Are you too masculine? How do you show up? What do you represent? But to whom much is given, much is required. And I am enjoying an era of athlete that is not apologising for who they are. They will find the brands that align. They will find the fans that align. And they will go on about their business. We all know, if you don’t want something, just leave it. That’s it.
KK: So Monica, I guess the question now is, we’ve got a whole load of people who are kind of peeking through the window. They’re interested. How do we make sure they walk through the door and then stay?
MM: Push them? [Laughter]. I mean, you know –
MM: Just come on, come on in, come on in. You made your decision already. I would say that if you love the game of basketball, if you want to see someone that you resonate with for a number of reasons, they exist in women’s college basketball or in the WNBA.
