when women athletes challenge men, they can't win
the spectacle of sabrina vs. stephen was always going to be a losing endeavor
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Unless you happen to live under a rock, if you are a sports fan then you heard about the 3-point showdown between Stephen Curry and Sabrina Ionescu at NBA All-Star Weekend. Billed as the modern-day “Battle of the Sexes” a la Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs, the event would see the reigning 3-point champion in the NBA face off against his counterpart in the WNBA.
Now that the ratings grab is over, I have some thoughts and some feelings about the whole thing. Please bear with me as I sort them out here and forgive me if they are not as coherent as I want them to be.
Let’s get one thing out of the way up front: this was not akin to the 1973 tennis match between King and Riggs, for several reasons. While both were promoted as spectacles, we have clearly come a long way since King played Riggs. In 1973, King was dominating her sport while Riggs was an aging athlete who was no longer in his prime; Curry and Ionescu are both active professional players who are still at the top of their games. Another major difference is that Riggs was a raging misogynist who taunted and spoke down to King throughout the entire press circus. In contrast, Curry is not only an advocate for women’s basketball (a real advocate, which differs from the way we saw someone like Kobe Bryant use the women’s game), but someone who respects Ionescu deeply.
Like King before her, who opted to play best of five sets rather than three against Riggs, Ionescu played on the men’s terms—she shot from the NBA’s 3-point line, which is about two-and-a-half feet further back, and used a smaller WNBA ball (which makes sense; women have smaller hands). While Ionescu put on a show—she performed well enough to tie the winner of the main NBA 3-point competition and blow most of the other NBA players out of the water, and still holds the highest overall 3-point contest score—the reaction after the fact is a testament to why these kinds of competitions will never produce the outcome that most mainstream advocates of women’s sports seem to think they will.
First of all, I think the overall belief is that the Sabrina vs. Stephen Showdown was a marketing opportunity for the WNBA. It is true that, as the owner of the W, the NBA has really struggled over the years to find ways to truly highlight and promote its sister league. Due to the fact that a majority of the WNBA players spend the off-season playing overseas, some kind of showcase between teams of W stars isn’t really feasible the way the new PWHL did a 3-on-3 showcase at NHL All-Star Weekend this year.
“The Stephen vs. Sabrina shootout… is meant to be a true display of WNBA talent and skill,” Jackie Powell wrote at The Next. “Their collaboration is an organic and a thoughtful attempt to give professional women’s basketball the platform it deserves.”
But as Roberta Rodrigues, the former Coordinator of Basketball and Business Communications for the Seattle Storm pointed out on X, a look at the numbers shows that the NBA has more to gain than the W does, and is likely using the thriving WNBA to boost itself (all bullets and citations courtesy of Rodrigues).
NBA ratings have experienced a steep decline, with last season figuring as the fifth-lowest performance since the 1993-1994 season, including the COVID years. The All-Star Game/All-Star Weekend has taken an even stronger hit, as ASG2023 had 23% less viewers than its previous low.
The WNBA, on the other hand, is reportedly on the rise both in regular viewership and All-Star Game ratings. The 2023 season was the most-watched in 21 years AND had a 21% increase year-over-year. The ASG2023 followed the same upwards trend and was the most-watched in 16 years with 16% increase year-over-year.
Put a magnifying glass over the skills challenges, and the difference in performance by the leagues is even more startling. The NBA lost 19.3% year-over-year in audience for the Saturday events, whereas the WNBA gained 43% year-over-year as Sabrina Ionescu went 25-of-27 to break the 3-point contest record.
But it’s more than just numbers that show why this event was a boon for the NBA while the W, and other women athletes, don’t really have much to gain with these gimmicks. This is nothing against Ionescu, who can and would beat Curry on any given day—and both Ionescu and Curry know that. But it’s not Curry that Ionescu needs to prove herself to.
Until women’s sports stops believing that they need men to watch them in order to succeed, they will always be stuck as second-class and trying to prove themselves. They used to try to draw in (straight) male viewers by sexualizing their athletes and highlighting their femininity. Then women were celebrated for being the “female version of [insert great male athlete here].” Now that “women’s empowerment” is all the rage, the hope is that viewers of men’s sports will be converted to fans of the women’s game by proving that women can compete alongside—AND BEAT—their favorite male athletes. That women are not worthy of men’s respect and viewership unless they can be better than a male athlete, or prove they are just as good. In basketball, men often use the fact that (they believe) women don’t dunk, that the three-point line is closer, as reasons they aren’t interested in watching.
But here’s the thing: women’s sports don’t have to look like men’s to make them entertaining or worthy. Athletes who play women’s sports shouldn’t have to keep trying to prove that they can hang with or beat the best men in the world in order to make a case for being respected. Because they can’t win, even if they do win that specific competition.
When King beat Riggs, the narrative became about how he was past his prime anyway. If Ionescu would have won against Curry last night, men would have immediately pointed to her smaller ball. When she lost, broadcasters immediately began lamenting that she should have shot from the WNBA line (despite the fact that she tied Damien Lillard’s score as the winner of the NBA’s 3-point contest). When Kendall Coyne Schofield competed in the NHL’s speed competition in 2019, she came in 6th out of 7 and the narrative was about how cool it was that she put out a respectable performance, but she still didn’t beat most of the men, which just reinforced the idea that women just aren’t as good.
“When she took off, I was like, ‘Wow!’” Connor McDavid, who won the NHL’s fastest skater competition, said of Coyne’s run. “She was a really good skater and that was an amazing thing for the game to see her participate like that in an event like this.” Of course Kendall Coyne is a good skater? She is an Olympic gold medalist and professional hockey player! But why does she need to prove herself to Connor McDavid or anyone watching the NHL ASW to affirm that?
Maybe Coyne can’t outskate the fastest men in the NHL—but that doesn’t mean she’s not worth watching play hockey. Maybe most players in the WNBA don’t dunk (though it’s a misconception to say that none do; some can and do dunk)—that doesn’t mean their game isn’t impressive. The women’s game looks different than the men’s game but different is not worse. For example, women athletes tend to have better fundamentals than male athletes do. I’m willing to bet that there are skills competitions that WNBA players would have crushed the NBA players at (honestly, probably most of them, that skills showcase was so embarrassing for the NBA, one of the dudes1 literally dribbled the ball off his foot).
Women’s sports needs to get over the idea that it needs to prove itself to male audiences in order to succeed. The numbers show that isn’t true—when the WNBA started letting their athletes be openly queer and present themselves in authentic ways, viewership rose. Sports bars are opening around the country, catering only to people who want to watch the women’s game—and they are thriving.
Ionescu still holds the highest score in 3-point competition history, with 37, while Curry has never scored more than 31. But no one aside from women’s sports fans will remember that now, and it’s not a record that will be respected by mainstream sports fans because, in their mind, she couldn’t match it when shooting from the NBA line while facing Curry and therefore it will be deemed illegitimate.
Until the women’s sports world learns that male attention and validation is not its ticket to success, they’ll always be seen as second-class. Stop trying to prove yourself to audiences who won’t respect you anyway, and embrace the ones who already do.
But as I said:
(My co-author, Lyndsey D’Arcangelo is very smart and you should follow her.)
No, I’m not going to look up his name, I’d never heard of any of the men competing.
that footnote 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣