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On the latest Sporticast episode, hosts Scott Soshnick and Jacob Feldman are joined by Just Women’s Sports founder and CEO Haley Rosen to discuss record-breaking ratings for the WNBA Finals—and the player vs. commissioner feud that has threatened to overshadow on-court proceedings.
“The national conversation is not serving [WNBA] fans,” Rosen said. “For me, it continues to prove that legacy media—they have a slot for a token women’s sports story, and that story right now is the CBA conversations. And again, that should be part of the national discussion, but there’s a lot more there that fans are thinking about and talking about.”
The WNBA and the Women’s National Basketball Players Association are nearing a work stoppage that could begin at the end of the month as they negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement. Amid those conversations, WNBPA VP Napheesa Collier said that the league has “the worst leadership in the world.” Those comments got the attention of talking heads including Stephen A. Smith, but have left fans interested in the ongoing Aces and Mercury matchup wanting more, Rosen said.
She pointed to MLB, which is nearing its own moment of labor strife but is still producing playoff-specific conversation for mainstream audiences at the same time.
“There’s this groundswell of interest and fandom that is building and growing but we have to set up this infrastructure to take advantage of this opportunity and build this into the industry we all know it can and should be,” she said.
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