“We are all in the storytelling business – whether we are creating a compelling story or pitching it… we all have platforms now, the athletes have platforms, and that first person perspective is very powerful.”
–NBA Executive Vice President of Communications Mike Bass
So it was on Wednesday at the Crowne Plaza Times Square, with the Sports Business Journal’s annual Game Changers event, celebrating the power and success of women in sport with focus throughout the day on storytelling, and the power of building voices for change. From the WWE’s Stephanie McMahon, the WNBA’s Chiney Ogwumike and many stops before and after, the value of advocating and growing through positive storytelling was a key takeaway.
However, so was a stark fact pointed out at the day’s opening by AP Global Sport Editor Michael Giarrusso; women’s sports still have a long way to go to get their due. But why? If the stories are compelling, the purchasing power of women has never been stronger, the advocates for healthy lifestyle keep growing, and the ability to self story tell is expanding, why still are women’s sports, with the platforms that exist, still struggling to find a voice consistently?
One of the biggest reasons remains perception in a business still dominated by older males; that the audience, and with that audience residual ad dollars are not yet there, and to the eyeballs goes the coverage. But maybe, given some of the anecdotes but forth by pros like Mike Bass and veteran Boston based writer and storyteller Shira Springer, the pendulum may be swinging a bit. Some examples.
The Lynx and The Athletic. The Athletic has prided its growth on giving space and telling stories in print that “traditional” media, i.e. city by city news sites, have either stopped covering or have limited bandwidth to consistently do so. However in some cases, the WNBA still has not cracked The Athletic code. One of those places was Minnesota, where the home standing Lynx have had a steady history not just of oncourt success but of charismatic and compelling life stories of players and staff. In presenting the case constantly and being bit respectful and diligent, the WNBA was able to not just break through but to get consistent and expanded team coverage throughout the course of the summer. The stories, according to the league, also quickly became popular reads on the site, providing a great example for an exploitable niche not just for the Lynx, but, perhaps, for other WNBA markets going forward. The Athletic, looking to always disrupt and innovate to gain viewers behind a paywall, delivered on a test, and the test produced great results for all. Ceiling breached in Minny and great news for the league.
Getting To The “Intenders.” While Springer did not say what market it was, she told a story about a Midwestern news site that pay walled its content, but noticed that a good amount of its sports “Intenders,” meaning those people who took their share of free articles a month and then opted to wait for another month without crossing into the valuable and consistent world of in-depth paid content, were reading what was being presented in women’s sports, again especially basketball. The result? A query went out to those “Intenders,” asking if there was more women’s sports storytelling would they cross the divide and ante up as fulltime subs. When the response was yes, the site added and promoted more women’s coverage, and low and behold, the “Intenders” crossed the line. Asking, tracking and more importantly, noticing a needle mover, again as a test, created wins for the consumer, for the teams , for the outlet, and most importantly, for the athletes whose stories needed to reach a wider audience.
Now example two is a great test case, which maybe will be replicated by other markets as the tide moves towards more compelling needs for coverage for women’s sports, or for that matter niche sports that are seeking to find new voices. It solved a critical puzzle that always comes up in a business; is there demand and can money be made. Yes, and yes. Very straightforward.
In the past there have been great examples of how sports like NASCAR found that breakthrough behind the power of their fans. There are stories of write-in campaigns, back before the beauty of email, where sports desks were flooded with letters demanding more coverage of races and drivers, especially in Midwestern cities. The voices were heard and the coverage grew. The same has been true for the expansion of high school sports coverage in a time when hyper-local is being more and more valued. Parents, grandparents, coaches, fund ways to engage with the decision makers at news sites, and coverage is amped up, especially around the more traditional sports like football and boys and girls basketball.
Now what about the dollars? That is always the biggest question, especially as ad sales at traditional news sites continue their steady march backward, and said sites struggle to find ways to enhance and monetize opportunities like social, video and audio. If someone wants to spend the dollars, the space will be found, even if the cries of editorial and advertorial voice are still being heard. However again when the rubber meets the road, happy balances can be found. Another NASCAR case in point is the anecdote of USA Today, one which editorial is always quick to say is somewhat untrue. When big sponsor dollars were flowing into NASCAR, the powers that be went to some select outlets, including “America’s newspaper,” and looked to spend money, with a caveat. If we take out ads, large scale ads, we want them adjacent to coverage of NASCAR, or Motor Sports. What? No consistent NASCAR coverage? Then it makes less sense to us to spend. Hence the editorial adjacency, not the advertorial (as editorial control still rested with that side of the house) was developed and expanded. Dollars. Coverage, happy consumers, great stories, cash flows, all happy.
So here we are back in the fall of 2018, with a panel that also included UConn’s Mike Enright, talking about the storytelling in mass media of women’s sports. Giarrusso to his credit, admits that AP’s coverage is limited by staff and driven by audience demands, with spots for breakthrough, must see events like the US Open, Women’s World Cup and the Olympics. The rest is a struggle, no matter how grand the story. NFL, MLB, NBA drive the coverage, and that won’t be changing fully for some time.
However in a time when share of voice is controlled by the content creator and audience can be built off that content, can’t women’s sports, or again, niche sports, storytelling find its audience and expand? In theory yes, and there have been sites like the short lived Knockout Times, and the longer life but now gone Excel Sports that have had the stories and created a niche, but struggled to find a large audience or the ad dollars to support. ESPNW has had its fits and starts and remains the largest platform sports with a women’s perspective, and Springer pointed out others that were growing, both in audio and video and printed word, like Unusual Efforts and the Burn It Down Podcast, but even with great content, the audience is somewhat limited. Bass pointed out that the power of the NBA and WNBA brand helps buoy the stories of the players to a larger audience as well, but how much that resonates for return reader’s ebbs and flows with the storylines.
In the end, as someone who has lived and worked on the fringes, it takes time and effort, lots of both, to find new places to story tell and then to make sure the stories get shared time and again. The advances in social have made that story amplification a lot easier in recent years, but it still requires a great deal of work of posting, and making sure the people whose stories are being told are sharing and promoting as well. That last piece, the stretching of the amplification that is available, is the most critical and often overlooked element of growing voice and storytelling. Marrying the content to advocates, and making sure those advocates aggressively share on all their platforms to audiences big and small, is a huge time consuming step. Tagging people creatively and selectively is also very important and is becoming more and more of a skill that needs to be enhanced, especially on the niche and emerging sports side. It takes time, but much like the old fashioned letter writing campaign, the amplification to show vale can be justified and is scalable.
In short, clicks still rule.
There is also a great deal to be said about making sure your core audience is sated and doing their part to story tell, and if they are not, staying on them with reminders is key. In an era of getting out the vote, getting out supporters to not just a trend, but share good stories us critical, and as we look for that casual fan, the passionate one always has to be the first step. Don’t lose your base of thousands to try and chase millions.
In the end, will there be some equal footing for just great stories regardless of gender or race somewhere down the line. Meh. That’s a tough one, because traditions, and dollars and audience size still are ruled by the big four men’s sports. However that is not to say that vibrant storytelling about women can’t continue to grow, and should be championed and exploited in a positive manner. While those on the way up in this business always look to the next rung for coverage, national or international, it’s easy to forget that the right website, or video content that can be amplifies by all stakeholders can resound to a wider audience than anticipated over time. There is also a lot to be said for the drum beating of a constant flow of smaller but well done outlets telling a similar story that resonate high in search; seeing the same name, or storyline, in multiple places over multiple days has its own effect of making what was once small potatoes a great big salad, and that can lead to wider notice and a more cumulative coverage effect as time goes by. But it takes time, and frankly for emerging coverage, it takes some dollars to promote. It does not happen with one click and one story. It takes consistent and compelling storytelling, along with old fashioned quality relationships with media influencers big and small. The result, and its amplification well-coordinated, can be really worthwhile, so long as the story is good, and the platform makes sense.
The ability to creatively storytell has never been greater, and that is tremendous news for those looking to break through. It’s crowded, there is still lots of envy to be on the biggest and widest platforms, but that takes lots of time in a very fluid media environment. What’s important and encouraging is the dogged persistence to find louder and louder voices, and it appears that is moving along. How loud and how long is still a bit in flux, but the progress is there. Maybe sometimes not fast enough but it is there, especially for the dogged and determined.
