PHOTO COURTESY OF A-STATE WOMEN’S BASKETBALL INSTAGRAM

With the start of March Madness, men’s basketball is at the forefront of every sports fan’s mind. However, women’s basketball should be just as viewed and thought about. 

During the 2024 regular season, the WNBA had a record average attendance season with 9,807, the most over the last 22 years. However, that’s nothing compared to the NBA average attendance during the 2023-2024 season at 18,324, nearly double that of the women’s league average attendance.

However, the viewership numbers for women’s basketball are starting to get better than how they used to be in previous years. The NCAA tournament game, featuring the Caitlyn Clark- led Iowa Hawkeyes and the undefeated South Carolina Gamecocks had far more viewers than the men’s tournament, 19 million viewers for the women’s tournament while the men’s had 14.82 million viewers. 

There’s no real reason for these attendance gaps throughout the basketball leagues though as the only real difference between women’s basketball and men’s basketball is who is on the court. 

Many people do believe, however, that’s where the problem stems from as people say women’s games aren’t as fun as men’s because of pacing and play style.

When it comes to Arkansas State, there’s a major difference between going to a women’s game vs a men’s game in terms of attendance.

The men’s games racked in a total attendance of 77, 542 while the women’s game had 22,122, nearly three times less than the men’s games. 

The main issue with this is that many of the promotions and events are given during the men’s games. Two nationally televised games brought record breaking attendance into First National Bank Arena, with 6,212 fans in attendance for the game against Appalachian State. 

The women didn’t lose a single game in January, which should have been a good incentive to the fans, who don’t want to show up when we’re losing games, to come and watch. 

The women played just as good as the men did this season, with both teams going to the Sun Belt Championship. It was the women’s team that took home the hardware. Yet, the attendance and the watch parties were vastly different. 

Only 847 were in attendance for the women’s championship while 3,187 went to watch the men’s championship. The difference there could be within James Madison’s fans or Troy’s fans, but statistically, there’s no way it wasn’t partially the fault of A-State fans.

Meanwhile back in Jonesboro, the men’s game watch party took place in the basketball arena while the women’s game was in the student affairs lounge.

It’s a start for sure, but fans still need to show up and show out for their college’s women basketball team, especially if they’re having their “year of firsts” like Arkansas State did this past season.

Categories: Sports