Women’s Sports: How Multiple Factors Contribute to Severely Limited Media Coverage and Recent Events Are Creating Change

Women's sports have historically been neglected by the media as a previous 30-year-long study conducted from 1989 to 2019 proves by showing that only 5.7% of coverage went to women’s sports for sports news show ESPN SportsCenter. For overall TV news, that average decreases to 5.1%. (Cooky et al.). However, women’s sports media has become an increasingly popular topic of conversation within the last three years. One of the larger catalysts for this conversation was a viral TikTok video about the 2021 NCAA March Madness tournaments posted by Sedona Prince, who at the time was a University of Oregon women’s basketball player. The NCAA March Madness tournaments are for qualifying college basketball teams across the United States. There is a tournament for the men’s teams and another one for women’s teams that happen simultaneously each March. In her video, Prince displayed the shocking differences between how the men’s and women’s players were provided for. The video showed how the NCAA stacked the men’s weight room with a plethora of free weights and weight racks, while the women’s “weight room” was a tiny singular set of weights. Prince also mentioned that the NCAA addressed this issue by saying that the women’s facilities had a “lack of space” preventing them from having an adequate weight room, which Prince followed by showing an expansive amount of free space where a weight room could be created for them. Not long after exposing the NCAA’s disregard for the women’s teams, the NCAA was forced to fix the issue. Just two days after posting her original video, Prince posted a follow up showing that the NCAA had made a women’s weight room equal in nature to the men’s. Prince’s video and the NCAA’s swift action that followed not only showed the world just one of the ways in which women’s sports are treated as lesser than men’s sports, but also that change can be made – quickly. Prince’s video also provided inspiration for the basis of this project: Women’s sports deserve more media attention. After Prince’s video sparked the NCAA’s largest public relations crisis in history, the Women’s NCAA Tournament skyrocketed in popularity. Prince’s impact on the women’s 2021 NCAA March Madness Tournament is just one example of why women’s sports coverage is vital. To examine the reasons behind why women’s sports coverage has been extremely limited throughout history, how it has been changing for the better in the last three years, and the impact recent change has had on women’s sports, this journalistic research analysis consists of information collected during 20 interviews conducted among knowledgeable individuals in women’s sports, including: professional athletes, college athletes, college coaches, journalists, editors, marketing professionals, professors and researchers.