Gotnext Women's Basketball Boards

1carol · Joined: 17 Jul 2003 Posts: 1050 Location: Phoenix AZ

http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/sports/12918630.htm
excerpts from Philadelphia Inquirer article by David Aldridge & Ashley Fox

Quote: Pro Sports: Saving Their Games
The future of pro sports

As the entertainment landscape evolves, the Big Four scramble to stay competitive.

Finding new fans

Baseball is continuing to cultivate the Latino community, sponsoring fan voting for an all-time "Latino Legends Team" that will be announced during the World Series.

Women, previously limited to an ancillary, sexualized role in sports - when thought of at all - are now being courted for their athleticism and their wallets. The NFL, which for several years has sponsored "NFL 101" classes for female fans, says 43 percent of its fans are women. The NBA has supported the WNBA, both financially and logistically, for nine years.

"We think we're in the process of creating additional strong interest in basketball fans, who will then spill over to becoming an audience for the NBA as well as the WNBA," Stern said. "And that is a huge additional opportunity for us."

With domestic league expansion stalled, international growth is exploding. The NFL continues to bankroll NFL Europe, and it claims 235 countries and territories will air more than 182,000 hours of league-related programming this season. MLB and NBA games are fed by satellite to hundreds of countries in dozens of languages.

"Someone asked me, does the NBA care that L.A. [or any other big city] is not in the playoffs?" Stern said. "I said, 'Yeah, but Shanghai [home of the Rockets' Yao] is in.' Shanghai and its environs might be 150 million people. Shanghai is in. Germany [home of the Mavericks' Dirk Nowitzki] is in. France [home of Spurs guard Tony Parker] is in."

Getting finances in order

Each of the four leagues now requires its teams to share at least some of the revenue they generate with other franchises that aren't doing as well financially. Three of the four leagues have negotiated salary caps that limit how much money players can make.

The lower-revenue teams note the league survived in its earlier days only because teams pooled the lion's share of its resources and distributed them equally, so that cities like Green Bay, Wis., could compete with cities like New York.
It's great that women are finally being recognized for their sports acumen and acknowledged for their wallets.

I find sharing the wealth for the benefit of the league very interesting. I hadn't realized the WNBA wasn't the first or only league to be supported through its infancy. So many articles have rambled on about how we can't support ourselves so shouldn't exist.