Two of my three daughters, ages 4 and 6, are the biggest women’s soccer fans you’ll find. My youngest, age 1, has started to dribble, but she’s still too young to know what a fan is. They frequently host front-yard matches that feature our beloved home team, the Washington Spirit, facing another team from the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL). We’ve also had the pleasure of attending a few games in person, but our family ritual of watching the Spirit on TV is what really cemented their fandom—until recently.
本赛季，精神队 24 场常规赛中的绝大多数比赛都从我们当地的地区体育电视网（RSN）转到了流媒体平台。因此，就在本赛季揭幕战之前，我发现自己争先恐后地注册了派拉蒙+（Paramount+），该平台今年将播出精神队的 16 场比赛，但却发现我的智能电视无法使用该应用程序。"我的中间孩子一边和她姐姐争抢 iPad，一边抱怨说："我还是在电视上看比较好。我们在女儿们晚上 8 点睡觉前看了 30 分钟的比赛，但也仅此而已，因为派拉蒙+ 不能像 DVR 那样提供完整的重播。
就在第二场比赛之前，我发现比赛是在 Twitch 上进行的，这是一个单独的应用程序，本赛季有五场精神队的比赛是在 Twitch 上直播的。但和以前一样，我们只能在平板电脑上观看。"爸爸，我想上厕所。你能暂停一下吗？"我的大女儿问，我只好回答："对不起，它不像电视那样可以暂停。"
对我们来说，这并不是最顺利的观看体验，但我们会坚持下去。我的女儿们让我别无选择，幸好我们家有这样的设备、网络连接和预算。但普通体育迷是否也有这样的愿望、时间和资源呢？答案很可能将决定女子体育（如果不是整体体育的话）的未来。
Women’s sports have always been hard to find on TV. Aside from the Olympics, World Cup soccer, golf and tennis, women’s sports have taken a distant back seat to men’s for decades. Nielsen data show that in 2019, the last full pre-COVID season, 96% of televised professional basketball games were of the NBA, while only 4% were of the WNBA. Pro golf was slightly more equitable, with 77% of events with men, 18% women (and 5% both men and women), but still nowhere close to gender parity. One shouldn’t expect a multi-billion dollar industry with a status quo rooted in men’s sports to change overnight, but there’s a growing consensus that it must make progress and soon.
Why is gender equity in sports media so important? It’s not only the right thing to do, but it also has a profound effect on industry economics. There is a direct correlation between the audience size of a sports league’s televised events and the financial health of that league. By way of example, the 256 regular season NFL games last year delivered an average audience of over 15 million viewers, and seven games were among the top 10 highest rated primetime TV shows in 2020. So it’s not surprising that the NFL commanded a whopping $10 billion per year in its most recent media rights deal and provides a very comfortable minimum player salary of $610,000 per year.
Comparatively, only nine NWSL games were televised in 2020, with an average audience of 434,000 viewers, 35 times smaller than that of the NFL (1). So it’s understandable that the NWSL’s latest rights deal was also smaller, reportedly $1.5 million per year, leading to a much lower minimum player salary, $20,000 per year. Therefore, more viewers equals more money and, even in the year 2021, TV audience sizes still matter and quite a lot.
So if you’re a sports league or media partner of one, what should you do? You should maximize total viewership however possible, regardless of platform, using a strategic set of media channels, both streaming and linear TV. After all, if you’re trying to grow your fan base, shouldn’t you make your product available to as many people as possible? A best practice is what I’d call the “barbell strategy.” On one end of the barbell is streaming, also known as connected TV (CTV), which accounted for 27% of total TV usage in June 2021 in the U.S. An ideal approach would prioritize high-reaching, ad-supported streaming apps that are free to the consumer, which minimizes a viewer’s “barrier to entry.”
On the other end of the barbell is traditional, or linear, TV. Despite Americans increasingly “cutting the cord,” linear TV is still the overwhelming way that people watch TV, sports in particular. For example, in June 2021, 49 million households watched ESPN or a RSN. This compares with the 30 million who watched a network streaming app. The vast majority (73%) of ESPN/RSN watching households did not watch a network streaming app (2). Therefore, sports leagues, women’s included, just can’t afford not to have a strong linear TV presence (and putting just a few playoff games on broadcast networks is not enough). In a perfect world, TV distribution would leverage both RSNs (to foster and capitalize on home-team loyalty) and national TV networks (to drive reach and awareness among the general population).
总之，一个执行良好的 "杠铃 "战略可以通过消费者的选择实现覆盖面的最大化；喜欢流媒体的观众会选择流媒体，而喜欢电视直播或时移的观众也会选择电视直播。关键在于，这两个群体高度互补，共同产生尽可能多的观众。
And for those who believe that such a strategy isn’t realistic because one can’t reasonably expect profit-driven TV networks to carry lower-viewership women’s sports, I’d offer two counterpoints. First, to paraphrase Cathy Engelbert, Commissioner of the WNBA, you first need to televise women’s sports sufficiently in order to give them a fair shot at achieving greater viewership. Rome wasn’t built in a day and the NFL has been on TV for 82 years. Second, small audiences for men’s boxing, drag racing, esports and soccer (3) (with Major League Soccer having lower 2021 average viewership than the NWSL) hasn’t prevented these sports from airing prominently on national TV.
Maximizing content reach has the added benefit of driving brand impact. The brand here is the league. You’d be surprised how few people are even aware that certain sports leagues exist. Harder still is producing the high level of awareness that’s required to drive viewership intent across large numbers of people. Key to the mix is not just the content itself, but also promotions, including paid, owned and earned, which further drive awareness and intent to view. Content and promotions reaching sufficient numbers of the right people creates a virtuous cycle.
知名度会带来收视意向，推动实际收视率，最终形成大量重复收视人群，吸引大型广告商、利润丰厚的媒体版权交易，为电视网络、流媒体应用程序、联赛和球员带来经济上的成功。另一方面，如果将女子体育归入小众订阅流媒体应用程序（尽管这些应用程序如今很时髦），再加上一些象征性的电视播出，那么很可能会延续目前相对默默无闻和经济效益不佳的趋势。
最后，我想谈一点个人的看法，过去的几年影响了我们中的许多人，让他们在职业生涯中寻找更深层次的目标，作为三个女儿的父亲，我也是如此。说到媒体中的公平，包括性别平等，我认为我们这些业内人士处于一个独特的位置，而且有特殊的义务去真正实现它。我的希望是，当我的女儿们到了我这个年纪时，女性体育运动能像男性体育运动一样普及和成功，而她们会把这篇社论看作是过去岁月里的陈旧纪念品，因为它早已逝去。
说明
(1) 434,000 viewers is the weighted average of the seven televised Fall Series games and the two televised Challenge Cup games
(2) 尼尔森全国电视面板数据加上流媒体视频收视率；2021 年 6 月在具备流媒体功能的家庭中，直播 +7
(3) 尼尔森全国电视面板数据，P2+，2021 年 1-6 月，直播 +7
