Rob Parker isn’t sold on women’s basketball’s rise

The future of women’s basketball has never looked brighter.

If the viewership figures didn’t make that clear, the Caitlin Clark effect certainly did. And look no further than this past Sunday’s preseason game featuring the Indiana Fever and the Brazil National Team, which drew an eye-popping 1.3 million viewers according to ESPN.

That led Awful Announcing’s Ben Axelrod to pen a column about how those monster ratings, driven by Clark, of course, bode well for ESPN’s life beyond Major League Baseball. And that’s because right now, the conversation we’re having is about women’s basketball.

And, oddly enough, about Rob Parker, too.

So, where does the Fox Sports Radio host come in? Well, he’s not exactly buying the hype. At least, not when it comes to interpreting the preseason game’s ratings as a sign of long-term momentum, or even relevance.

“My point is: you can’t look at that game as an ordinary WNBA preseason game,” Parker said on his The Odd Couple show. “The tickets were going for $440 because it was Brazil. For them to put out a story and act like her magic with the numbers for just a preseason game, do you feel me?”

Sure. But as co-host Kelvin Washington pointed out, people still tuned in, and they did so during the heart of the NBA and NHL playoffs. Washington brought receipts, too: last season, the WNBA had 22 regular season games that averaged over a million viewers. Add the All-Star Game and the WNBA Draft, and you’ve got 24 events topping that number. A’ja Wilson’s new signature shoe? Sold out in four minutes.

Things have never been better. But is this sustainable? It depends on who you ask.

If you ask Parker, well…

“No. Here’s my issue with all that you talked about. The W, last year, with the number, lost $50 million,” Parker told Washington. “That’s No. 1. No. 2, they’re still average. The average attendance was 9,000. The league hasn’t been around for a week or 10 days or one year; the league’s been around for 30-some odd years. 9,000. And the TV numbers, that’s nice for her. She is the Harlem Globetrotters when she shows up. They’re not doing that. They still have arenas where they’re getting 6,000 on a regular Tuesday night game. So, yes, you’ve seen it. And when she shows up at those games, yes.

“And that’s what I’m saying. I can’t look at this and go like it’s going to be, ‘Oh, it’s here to stay, and they’re going to from now on sell out every game, or have these unbelievable ratings.’ As long as Caitlin Clark, and even her thing after a while, could fade after we’ve seen her.”

“There have been great players that have played in the league,” Parker adds. “Let’s not make it like there haven’t been. Caitlin is different, OK? Because she was playing the game different from the way women play… She’s taking the logo three’s, so guys got, ‘Wait a minute, what is this? I’ve never seen this. Not in a women’s game. I couldn’t watch it.’ And the other thing, too, as much as we talk about it, women still don’t go to the game like they should. And until women embrace the league, I just don’t see where it’s going to grow. There are more women than men, and they won’t go.”

Parker’s not wrong to ask the tough questions about profitability, about staying power, about whether this moment is a true shift or just a spike. But what’s happening right now is still unprecedented.

People are showing up. They’re tuning in. They’re buying shoes, jerseys, and tickets. You can dismiss it as a fad if you want, but eventually the numbers stop looking like an anomaly and start looking like a trend.

The WNBA may not have arrived everywhere just yet, but it’s a lot harder to argue it isn’t on the way.