why is college women’s basketball immensely more popular than the WNBA?

Question

Like I hear more about college players than actual professionals… seats are always sold out too

In: Other

Answer 1

A few reasons.

The WNBA suffers from a lack of good time slots for viewership and overall advertising, something college will never lack. Unless you are following a player you watched in college, genuinely love women’s basketball, or live in an area with a team, your probably not ever going to go out of your way to watch one.

College sneaks by that with not only March Madness, one of the biggest sports tournaments, but also having networks dedicated to just college sports. Sure, the WNBA has ESPN, but not a dedicated channel.

We also are in the midst or probably one of the best college players, both men and women, and any in any sport to play their game. Clark is a phenom the same way Mahomes is for the NFL. She’s breaking all over the place that includes both men and women’s basketball. Regardless of what people think about Pistol Pete and how he did it in much shorter time frame and games, her name is there now. She’ll go down as one of the best to ever play the game. That’s what the WNBA needs. They need a Jordan like player to come in to take the league over, make it popular to watch, and make people want to watch it. Clark could be that person. Hell a lot of the players for women’s basketball hopefully will be. The talent has been spread around pretty well the last couple of years. It would be great if this next generation of players is what infuses the WNBA with good rivalries that carried over from college that kick viewership up a notch.

The WNBA needs to take a page from what the NIL is doing marketing these women and transfer it over. Get hype going. A lot of people are just now starting to pay attention to women’s basketball. It’s gotten more viewers than men’s college basketball right now, the Iowa LSU game brought in more viewers than the superbowl and world series, viewership for women’s basketball in general had gone up almost 65% in 2 years! If the WNBA can even grab half of that %, it would be a success.