If the Summer of 2021 will be remembered for one thing, it should be for the dominant international performances by Canada’s Women. Whether you choose to focus on Team Canada’s Gold Medal performance in Women’s Soccer at Tokyo 2020, or the thrilling OT winner to capture the Women’s Hockey World Cup, this summer has had no shortage of female fueled storylines.
At the Olympic Games, Canada set national records for most medals won in a non-boycotted Olympics with 24. Of those 24 medals, the first thirteen in a row were won by women, and 18 of the 24 were handed out to a woman when all was said and done.
The FIBA U16 Americas Women’s Championship just wrapped up with Canada taking home silver (the men settled for bronze), while at the Tokyo Paralympics, as of this writing, the men and women are tied at 8 medals a piece (though the women hold a 2 gold to 1 advantage). And countless other examples that are too numerous to digest in one sitting.
There has perhaps never been a more impressive stretch of athletic accomplishments from women hailing from the Great White North than what we’ve seen these last few months. All of this in spite of the fact that you’d be hard pressed to find any kind of meaningful women’s sports coverage on most networks.
In an age where “representation matters” and “seeing is believing”, there’s been a staggering amount of empty promises made in terms of investing in women’s sports of late. In a non-Olympic year, and when the World Cup of Hockey isn’t taking place, could you honestly come up with 5 examples of women’s sports being covered in a meaningful way in Canada?
Now, the point of this mental exercise isn’t to shame TSN, SportsNet and the other major players in Canada. They know they need to do better, they know they can do better, and really all that’s left for them to do is to actually follow through on BEING better. Instead, it’s to envision a scenario where women’s sports got 25% as much coverage as their male counterparts.
How high could Canadian athletics climb if young women actually had the ability to see their role models and favourite players in primetime slots on major networks? Could the Canadian Women’s soccer team (fresh off Bronze, Bronze, Gold at the last 3 Olympics and currently ranked 6th in the world in the latest FIFA rankings) dethrone the Americans as the most dominant team on the planet?
It’s not a stretch to think that with some promotion and some investment in domestic leagues that it’s a possibility. The Canadian women’s national team have to disperse their players all around the globe for them to play professionally and earn a living. Same with the Canadian Women’s Basketball team (who unlike the men actually qualified for the Olympic Games). If there was a Canadian based option for them, you’d have to believe that national sporting bodies would prefer to keep a watchful eye on their development than sending them to far flung corners of the world.
What if that number became 50% of the level of coverage that the men received from television, radio, and streaming services? The next generation of athletes shouldn’t need to wait every 4 years for women’s sports to matter for a few weeks before slipping back into obscurity.
Why other leagues haven’t taken the NBA model and used it to leverage viewership, ticket sales, and create fans for life is frankly baffling at the moment. Gary Bettman is a former NBA exec, the NHL should be tripping over itself to sign partnership deals with women’s hockey. For a sport that’s been plagued by diversity issues and “an old boys club” label for decades now, this is a no brainer.
In much the same way the NBA and WNBA coexist and even benefit from one another, the same could be done for women’s hockey. Major League Baseball briefly trotted Jenny Finch out as the equivalent of a halftime show for some events many years ago. But why couldn’t they do something with USA Softball? Or the Women’s College World Series?
The possibilities are there, all it takes is a little bit of forward thinking. If there’s one thing that’s become glaringly obvious this year it’s this: people will watch women’s sports if they’re on TV. And the last part of that sentence is key: IF they’re on.
Viewership across dozens of prominent women’s sports leagues has been on the rise for years now. In 2020 the National Women’s Soccer League saw a 500% increase in viewership. The WNBA jumped 68% during that same time frame, and the previously mentioned Women’s College World Series outdrew several NHL playoff games in terms of ratings.
So enough with the excuses. Start devoting resources to covering women’s sports. Because as mentioned off the top, we’re currently in a golden age of female athletic achievements. There are some Babe Ruth, Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky-esque performances going on in the women’s game at the moment, and no one is talking about it. And the reason isn’t that they’re not interested, it’s that no one’s covering it.
-Kyle Skinner
Twitter: @JKyleSkinner