If you refuse to pay attention to the WNBA, you missed something cool Wednesday
The crowd was electric
Original story by The Washington Post’s Dan Steinberg.
The noise during Washington’s rather electrifying Wednesday afternoon comeback — the Mystics, playing without their top two scorers, trailed by as many as 21 and never led in regulation — was louder than 95 percent of Wizards games.
It was a rock show inside a closet.
It was miked-up cicadas on speed.
It was thousands and thousands of kiddie campers high on cotton candy and Dippin’ Dots.
This was an A-plus, invigorating, spleen-rending crowd. If you, a WNBA skeptic, went to a Mystics game with a crowd like that, featuring a comeback win like that, you would absolutely want to return. So how do you create more crowds like that?
This brings us to talk about Ted Leonsis and the media.
Ted Leonsis is a majority owner of:
- National Hockey League’s Washington Capitals
- National Basketball Association’s Washington Wizards
- Women’s National Basketball Association’s Washington Mystics
- Arena Football League’s Washington Valor
- Arena Football League’s Baltimore Brigade
Ted Leonsis and his views on WNBA coverage
He acknowledged that the WNBA has struggled to gain traction, but said “the issue stems and starts with the media coverage, in that the game isn’t given the respect that it’s due.”
“If you listen to sports talk radio, they are not talking the right way about most women’s sports,” Leonsis told the magazine. “Those people will retire, or frankly a lot of them are getting fired or laid off — and we’ll get younger people into key media positions who are more egalitarian, more open-minded, more respectful.”
That’s an old-school mouthful. Why focus on the media? Why so much concern about sports-talk radio? Why does he care?
“I think media helps to set agendas,” Leonsis said Wednesday afternoon. “I mean, you either get neglect or snark [about the WNBA]. And I don’t get it. I think it’s bad business, too. That to me is so remarkable: As a programmer, you want to reach the widest audience possible. … If you’re only talking about what’s in front of you, and you’re talking to your peer group, and your peer group is dying away, it makes no sense to me as a media professional.”
He believes every NBA owner should own both a WNBA team and a developmental team. He doesn’t love that there soon will be 27 G-League teams, but just 12 WNBA teams. He said his peers need to consider themselves promoters of basketball, not just promoters of the NBA.
“I don’t think we respect the [women’s] game enough,” he said. “I think it’s internal bias. It’s how you were raised. And then you get the echo chamber.”
His WNBA team, of course, will soon play in a 5,000-seat arena. That’s less than the team’s average crowd — and far less than Wednesday’s crowd of 15,597, most of whom can’t drink legally. And yet both the owner and his coach think the move actually will provide a jolt.
“It’s hard to respect the WNBA in a 20,000-seat arena, because we’ll never sell 20,000 seats,” Leonsis said. “But getting 5,000 people into a 5,000-seat arena will make it successful.
