This year’s WNBA Finals features a clash of super teams and is giving ESPN and the league its best championship series ratings in two decades. But while the booming popularity of women’s basketball has led to slightly more coverage on the biggest shows, hoops fans enjoying the tremendous series only get discussion of it that is filtered through the hosts’ allegiances and grievances.
At ESPN, that dynamic came to a head last week when Pardon the Interruption host Michael Wilbon turned his series prediction (wow, WNBA Finals picks getting valuable airtime on PTI!) into a chance to bash the New York Liberty’s home arena. Wilbon picked the Las Vegas Aces in a landslide in large part due to Barclays Center being “dark, quiet and awful.” Huh?
Yesterday, Michael Wilbon addressed Joe Tsai, saying he didn't criticize "your fanbase or even your team. I criticized your building, which is awful. Dark, quiet, and awful, so let's be straight about that, so you and your minions don't confuse it." pic.twitter.com/EEWhs0c23K
— Lucas Kaplan (@LucasKaplan_) October 17, 2023
Tsai responded by inviting Wilbon to Game Four on Wednesday night while Liberty center Jonquel Jones added “We knew that our fans were going to be behind us and New York was going to be watching and supporting.” But let’s be serious, Wilbon only sporadically makes it to Washington, D.C., to shoot his own show. He’s not going to an arena he hates to cover a league he doesn’t seem to actually care about.
PTI has “covered” the WNBA playoffs throughout the late summer and early fall. Highlights of that coverage include laughing over the Washington Mystics’ late-game execution in the first round and criticizing the league for the weeklong wait between the semifinals and finals round. On a show built around precise debates running the gamut of the day’s sports headlines, neither Wilbon nor Tony Kornheiser had much to say about the WNBA despite plugging it into the final block of the show near-daily. Were they watching?
During ESPN’s day-time slate, First Take also tried its hand at WNBA postseason analysis. Host and executive producer Stephen A. Smith devoted a few minutes to the Finals by reheating his usual heartbroken Knicks fan shtick for the Liberty. First Take is built around Smith’s showmanship and comedy, but it only goes so far. Are fans going to care more about the WNBA Finals simply because they saw a famous host monologue about the series in vague terms for a minute or two?
"New York stand up!"@stephenasmith is picking the Liberty to win their first WNBA championship this season 👀 pic.twitter.com/VNAoDE8Ifo
— First Take (@FirstTake) October 6, 2023
Renowned sports media scholar Cheryl Cooky has charted coverage of women’s sports for years and found that coverage of women’s sports on sports news and highlight shows went up just 0.4% from 1989 to 2019—from 5% to 5.4%—despite the introduction of the WNBA and the rise of the U.S. women’s national soccer team dynasty. Big-time shows like First Take and PTI covering the WNBA does matter. It raises awareness of the schedule and storylines of the league and legitimizes it for casual sports fans.
But how the league and other women’s sports leagues are covered matters, too. ESPN may be in its entertainment era, building its business around big personalities and letting them loose on air. Maybe analyzing the WNBA through the lens of those personalities is just par for the course in 2023.
Then again, The Pat McAfee Show proved it’s possible to simply hype up a game and its storylines without being egotistical or reductive. Crew member Boston Connor on Wednesday ripped through the recent stats and stories heading into Game Four before the show made its betting picks on the game. Retired NFL cornerback Darius Butler noted a key injury to point guard Chelsea Gray while McAfee told stories of meeting star Liberty players Breanna Stewart and Sabrina Ionescu and appreciating their competitive energy.
Covering the WNBA is a choice. As a young league fighting for attention in a crowded landscape, it deserves more care and consideration from segment producers and talent than other sports. Make a Monday NFL segment all about roasting the Cowboys or clowning the Jets and viewers have the requisite background and knowledge to get the joke. Fans know McAfee played for Indianapolis and that his ESPN show’s studio is there, too.
If Smith or Wilbon want to discuss the WNBA, it has to be done differently. The usual theatrics don’t work the same. By choosing to cover the sport, they are demonstrating they understand the need to give a great series played by great athletes the attention it deserves—and to promote a high-profile ESPN broadcast property. They just aren’t cutting it.
McAfee showed it’s possible to at least do the bare minimum. No nonsense, expose the audience to good sports products with interesting storylines, and bring the hype. It’s no different than what McAfee does with baseball or any other sports he barely watches.
Beyond that, ESPN produces a great, long-running WNBA podcast called Around the Rim hosted by broadcasters LaChina Robinson and Terrika Foster-Brasby. The network employs an active WNBA player, Chiney Ogwumike as well as excellent men’s and women’s basketball analysts like Monica McNutt and Andraya Carter. (It’s also worth mentioning the midday NBA Today has committed to WNBA coverage much more since Ogwumike and host Malika Andrews joined on). ESPN’s three WNBA writers have covered the Finals day to day. That expertise isn’t terribly hard to translate to the studio show format.
Of course, Fox’s studio shows have sat out the WNBA entirely. Digital shows and podcasts mostly have, too. It takes confidence and trust in your audience to try something new. ESPN is being held to a different standard by paying for WNBA broadcast rights and covering the sport at all.
While the WNBA is hardly the only league suffering from ESPN’s studio show business running opposite of its other interests, the personality and beef-driven middle ground that ESPN has settled into isn’t helping anyone.
