2 min read

Women In Sports Coming Together to close the gap

Written by MOS Editorial Team

Published on 4 May 2018

This week eight leagues that include WNBA, National Pro Fastpitch (NPF), Canadian Women’s Hockey League (CWHL), National Women’s Hockey League (NWHL), Women’s Professional Lacrosse League (WPLL), and the U.S. Tennis Association — announced they were joining forces to form SheIS, an initiative designed to increase demand for women’s professional sports in North America.

Women’s professional sports clearly do not attract the attention given to men’s professional leagues. So, perhaps by sharing resources women can close this gap.

In a sense, this approach seems consistent with something Adam Silver — the NBA’s commissioner said about the WNBA, that the WNBA is simply not doing enough to connect to young women.

According to Silver, if the WNBA did a better job of marketing it would become more successful. In other words, Silver seems to think the issues facing the WNBA could be solve by the WNBA simply trying harder.

Silver and Delle Donne both agree that marketing is an issue for the WNBA. Where they differ is that Silver seems to think the issue is the quality of the WNBA’s marketing efforts. For Delle Donne, the issue is clearly the quantity of these efforts.

Whether the issue is quality or quantity, there is yet another more important issue facing the WNBA. And it’s the same issue facing all the women’s sports leagues who have come together for the SheIS movement.

Women’s sports leagues are simply different from men’s sports leagues.

So the questions is, how do they change consumer demand?