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I used to host a podcast featuring Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve. We’d frequently discuss the growth of the WNBA.
Reeve thought the key to growth was more mainstream media coverage, to legitimize and promote the league. She wasn’t wrong.
I thought the league was missing a key ingredient to success in the internet era:
My argument then was this: The NFL became the most popular sport in North America not by providing a quality product or making intelligent decisions. There are and were a lot of terrible NFL games, and the league used to frequently damage its own reputation and credibility with inane or borderline criminal decisions, such as pretending that players weren’t risking brain injury by playing the sport.
The NFL became a superpower when it decided to promote itself 12 months a year, when it fully embraced the nonsense that surrounds the sport — rumor mills, misinformation, hot-take arguments, controversy, conflict, disinformation, inaccurate speculation, any other form of speculation and breathless reporting on every minor ankle injury suffered by a mediocre left guard.
The WNBA didn’t need to improve its product to become a financial success. The product has been great for a long time. What the WNBA needed to do was embrace all the stuff that makes coaches and organizations cringe — and also keeps their sport front of mind among casual fans.
The problem with giving advice is that sometimes it is taken.
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