September 8, 2025 • 33 mins
Risa Isard, the Director of Research & Insights at Parity, joins Sarah to discuss the biggest takeaways from two new reports on women’s sports, including why women’s sports fans are so valuable. Plus, the history of racism in WNBA media coverage and proof that fans who watch alone aren't alone.
- Parity's research (including both reports Risa discussed) can be found here
- Read Risa's op-ed on why women's soccer fans are so valuable here, her op-ed on "iso-fans" in the WNBA here, and her op-ed on race in WNBA media coverage here
- Leave us a voicemail at 872-204-5070 or send us a note at goodgame@wondermedianetwork.com
- Follow Sarah on social! Bluesky: @sarahspain.com Instagram: @Spain2323
- Follow producer Misha Jones! Bluesky: @mishthejrnalist.bsky.social Instagram: @mishthejrnalist
- Follow producer Alex Azzi! Bluesky: @byalexazzi.bsky.social
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Good Game with Sarah Spain, where we're manifesting
a long sunny fall this year, first Indian summer, long
Indian summer, but then real actual fall, several months of it.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Please.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
It's Monday, September eighth, and on today show, we'll be
talking to Resa Eard, the director of Research at Parody,
about the biggest takeaways from two new reports on women's sports,
plus the history of racism and WNBA media coverage, and
why women's sports fans are the most valuable fans.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
And we're not just saying that the research proves it.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
That conversation with Resa is coming up right after this,
joining us now.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
She was recently hired.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
As the director of research at Parody, a company that
helps connect athletes in women's sports with businesses interested in
sponsoring them.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Before that, she spent a whole lot of time.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
In classrooms, including two years as a professor of sport
management at Yukon. While an undergrad at Duke, she created
her own major social change at the intersection of culture,
gender and sport. And then we got her PhD from
the University of Massachusetts with their dissertation that actually sounds interesting.
Women's professional sport and stigma. Her hobbies include surfing and
making educational children's worksheets about Title nine, it's Resa Iard.
(01:13):
I'm not surprised you when producer Alex our friends if
your hobbies include making worksheets.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
It was such a great day. It was such a
great day.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
As I mentioned in your intro these days, you're the
director of research at Parody, but you've been in the
women's sports space for a long time, even though I'm
guessing no one else was making Title nine worksheets for
you growing up. Now you have filled that hole amongst others.
Can you tell us about how you first got interested
in researching women's sports?
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Yeah, I think you know.
Speaker 4 (01:38):
I got interested in researching really just because for a
long time I was a fan, and so for me,
I think it actually all goes back to nineteen ninety seven.
I was a really impressionable young girl growing up in Phoenix, Arizona,
surrounded by the energy that launched the w like the
most successful women's sport league that we've had in US history,
and so I saw really early up close in personal
(02:00):
like how powerful women athletes were and what they meant
to me as a girl athlete. But I also saw
the disparities at a really young age, and so from
that moment on, I was really just committed to doing
whatever I could, wherever I was, with whatever I had.
And you know, I was never someone who like dreamed
of being a pro athlete. I think I was a
largely above average but basically mediocre athlete, and I loved sports,
(02:22):
but in the classroom I had good grades, and so
it was really just you know, what are the skills
or the talents or the areas that I can excel
in that I'm passionate about where I can hopefully help
make a difference for women's sports. And so that led
me down a lot of rabbit holes, you know, early
jobs with the Mercury, reading the collective bargaining agreement in
the eighth grade at bedtime, just like you know, being
(02:44):
really nerdy really early and soaking it all up so
that hopefully I was prepared for a moment like this.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Oh my god, I love that we need people like you,
because that's not my wheelhouse, digging through cbas and understanding
the nitty gritty of contracts. But okay, so you're rising
up the academia, and I imagine if you're a smart,
accomplished person. There plenty of folks trying to pull you
in different directions or suggest areas of focus. Did you
ever have any trouble convincing people that women's sports were
(03:10):
worth researching and worth your time?
Speaker 4 (03:12):
Honestly, I feel like probably pretty lucky to say no.
I think the folks I surrounded myself with like saw
that this was something I was really passionate about, and
we're just like, we're going to get out of her
way whether we get it or not.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Like she's she's doing something, she's going somewhere.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
I actually remember years ago I was talking with an
undergrad mentor and I wasn't sure yet about getting my PhD.
And you know, I was like, I don't know about
this whole thing, and he was like, look, you're actually
going to study something that really matters, Like you're not
going to just be another He was a historian, so
he was kind of, you know, self deprecating. He was like,
you're not just going to go be another historian of
like you know these ten years. And don't get me wrong,
(03:50):
I love history. My undergrad honor thesis was on the
history of Title nine, so like here for all of
the history of women's sports. But I think people saw
that this moment was going to come, and I think
they just saw how much I lit up when I
was doing this work.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
And you know, if all else sales like go do
what makes you light up?
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yeah? I love that and it's so true.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Especially even just five six, seven years ago, there was
such a dearth of both coverage and research and interest
in this space that has since blown up, and so
I imagine it was difficult in some cases to find
the information you were pursuing or to get access to things,
if not that many people were asking for it. So
part of what you're doing now is creating the kinds
of studies that everyone can look at and pull from,
(04:33):
especially when they're trying to make pitches or arguments as
to why investing in women's sports is smart. So this
new role director of research for Parity. For folks who
aren't familiar, can you give us kind of an overview
of what Paroity is and the work that the company does.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
Absolutely?
Speaker 2 (04:47):
So.
Speaker 4 (04:47):
Parody was founded in twenty twenty and our mission is
to close the gender, income and opportunity gap in professional sports.
So everybody who's listening here today knows pretty obviously that
women athletes make up just a fraction of global sponsorships
and media coverage, and they're often excluded from the most
meaningful brand deals, and so Parody works directly with athletes
and brands to address this inequity by connecting our roster,
(05:11):
our community of more than eleven hundred athletes over three
hundred lilympians across eighty five plus different sports, with purpose
driven brands that really want to tap into the women's
sports audience, that want to put their money where their
mouth is. And in doing that, we're really focused on
the financial empowerment and visibility for women athletes across our research,
our partnerships, the campaigns we work with them, all of that.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
So you represent the athletes, but you're also contributing to
the space by creating information and data that allows not
just the connections with your athletes and brands, but just
the overall space to be better informed.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:43):
Absolutely, I mean, I think we do our job best
if the research that we're doing contributes to the broader ecosystem. Certainly,
right with our partners, we can run some proprietary analyzes.
We can make sure that you know the latest and
greatest is going towards them and directing their strategy and
their partnership deals. But above all else, we believe that
a rising tide lifts all boats. So we absolutely want
(06:04):
our research out there as far and wide as it
can be to support every single person, brand, leader, athlete
in the women's sports ecosystem to do what they're doing
as well as they can do it so that women
athletes make as much money as they can.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Director of research sounds pretty fancy schmancy, So what exactly
do you do and did that exist before you were hired?
Speaker 4 (06:23):
So Parody did have a person that was leading some
research for them before I joined this role. They did
a lot of things, and so I am the first
person at Parody to kind of be focused on research
twenty four to seven. And so my job is really
to think about what's our strategy and research, what are
the studies we want to run, and then go do
those studies right? So, what's our data, what's our analysis,
what's the story we're telling?
Speaker 3 (06:44):
How are we putting it out there?
Speaker 4 (06:46):
I have an amazing team of colleagues who are so
good at all of what they do too, to help
inform the research and make sure it's serving our clients
and then you know, using that data, like I said,
both externally so that everybody in the women's sports ecosystem
can be as smart as we can be, and then
using really also to drive extra value to our brand clients.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
There was just a new report that was released. This
was pretty fascinating.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
It was about fan behavior and beliefs in the women's
soccer space. This is your baby, if you will so
tell us some of the big takeaways from this particular report.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
Absolutely, you know, I think everyone who's listening here, we've
all seen the data that the women's soccer audience is
super engaged, loyal, passionate. I mean, I think probably everyone
listening to this is that right, Like my guess is
a huge number of you know, your listener, Sarah, have
been the folks that are actually spending against brands, Like
I can't count the number of brands I have bought
(07:34):
from because they sponsor women's sports.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
And so we know that's happening across the board.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
What's really interesting about the women's soccer audience is like
they're over indexing even above and beyond like your baseline
women's sport consumer who was already so loyal so passionate,
so engaged. We've kind of been joking like the women's
sports fans might just be the most valuable audience in
sports because they're not just watching, they're acting, and they're
doing so at a rate even greater and higher and
(08:02):
faster than other women's sports fans, which we just think
is an awesome.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Story to tell.
Speaker 4 (08:06):
It's not actually a story we set out to tell,
but it was just in the data and it was
kind of screaming at us, and we really wanted to
name it and give women's soccer fans their flowers and
let brands know this is a great place to spend
your money.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
I mean, I'm a prime example of someone who has
been intentional about using products and buying products that I've
seen step up when leagues needed it, step up and
support the players that I care about. Dumb it down
for folks who are not in this space, who maybe
don't understand how the research is conducted and what you're
looking for, and then we'll come back to some of
the details you just spelled out.
Speaker 4 (08:40):
Absolutely, So, I think every great research project just starts
with a question when I talk about it, you know,
in my undergrads it's like, what are you noticing or
what are you curious about?
Speaker 3 (08:48):
What do you want to know more about?
Speaker 4 (08:50):
Like it's just a question, and then you think about, Okay,
if this is my question, what do I need to
do to find the answer to that? What data can
I collect? What data's already out there? Need to collect
new data? Who do I need to hear from to
be able to understand that? And so at parody for
our last several reports we've partnered with survey Monkey. They've
been fantastic for us in helping us survey a really
(09:11):
strong gen pop audience so that we're not just hearing
from women's sports fans. We're not just hearing from you know,
listeners of Good Game with Sarah Spain. We're actually hearing
from anybody who's ever taken a survey on survey Monkey,
which is, you know, like more than two million people
that they have serviced, and.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
So we're hearing from those folks.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
We're asking them questions about what sports are they watching,
and how do they think about athletes, and what about
these different brands and brand categories? And then that all
comes back in a spreadsheet and I spend a lot
of time writing fancy formulas or just doing some other
kind of analyzes with those numbers to arrive at some
answers as to what are we seeing here, how are
(09:49):
fans engaging, what are they telling us about themselves?
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Yeah, and certainly what we understand about the relationship between
sports fans and brands and sponsors is that the goal
is to first get eyeballs on your name, your company,
be familiar, maybe recognize it on a shelf, and you
choose it because you remember hearing about it. But there's
a difference in the way that might operate for fans of,
say men's sport. I always make the example of if
a beer sponsors the NFL, I'm not like, oh my gosh, wow,
(10:16):
oh my gosh, that's so good of them to make
sure the NFL is going to succeed. I'm going to
go out and buy that beer. They're going to get
millions of eyeballs. But maybe fans don't see them in
a different light because they are supporting the NFL.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
That's not the case for women's sports.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
People do change their opinions about brands, often as a
result of their decision to get into the women's sports space.
So you mentioned that women's sports fans potentially are the
most valuable because one of the findings of the report
is not just now we've heard of your brand, or
now we know what your brand does, but we actually
actively change our buying behaviors as a result of you
(10:49):
showing up. So more than one in four women's soccer
fans have made a purchase because of a brand sponsorship,
making them fifty eight percent more likely to do so
than other women's sports. So this isn't just women's sports fans,
which we know over index compared to everyone else, but
soccer fans specifically. What do you think it is about
the soccer world? Disposable income? Is that part of it?
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Is that what we learned?
Speaker 3 (11:11):
You know, it's a great question. I really think it's
a few things about women's soccer.
Speaker 4 (11:15):
I think first and foremost we have to talk about
the supporter community in women's soccer and just the way
that teams are already building really deep and meaningful and
authentic relationships with these fans, and so when brands enter
that space, fans are there for it. And so there's
a community around being a women's soccer fan that's different
than what you might find in other women's sports. I
(11:37):
think that's a huge part of it. I also think
women's soccer has had its moments of really deep important
reckoning of times that we all know the players were
not treated with the respect that they deserve, and the
brands that stuck by those players, the brands that are
investing in that, I think there's a little bit of
extra gratitude and appreciation and recognition for stepping up for
(11:59):
these athletes who haven't always had people who had their backs,
and so I think those combined really help women's soccer
fans step up over and above how all other women's
sports fans are.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Yeah, I think the community aspect is really smart because
one of the things that we hear about women's sports
fans is they sometimes feel isolated. They don't have as
many people to talk about their favorite teams and players too,
and in the soccer world, there is a built in
sort of place to join to create community around this
thing that you love and care about, and then in
that they can have discussions about supporting and working with
(12:33):
brands that seem to be doing right by the.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
People that they care about.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
For this study specifically about women's soccer fans, are there
any unanswered questions that you're hoping to do a future
reporter or understand better in the future.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
That's a great question, you know.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
I think we just kind of want to track this,
Like I am excited to continue to see how this develops.
I'm excited to see how brands activate off of this
and what great stories we can tell. And I also
think Parody's really well positioned, given our community of nearly
twelve hundred athletes, to really shine a light on the
athlete experience and what is it for them, And so
(13:07):
I'm excited for us to continue doing work not just
with fans and not just with brands, but also making
sure that athlete voices are heard and elevated as part
of these conversations. Everything we do at Parody is about
women athletes and elevating them and their stories and closing
that gender and income opportunity gap.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
So I'm excited for our research to do that too.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
We got to take a quick break more with Risa
right after this. Earlier in the summer, Parody released a
broader report. This was on marketing and fan purchasing behavior
just in women's sports in general. So what conclusions can
you share from that Broader Report.
Speaker 4 (13:46):
Yeah, absolutely, So we spent a lot of time talking
about soccer across the board. Basketball leads the way in
terms of the number of fans across the US for
women's basketball, and so we think that's really exciting and
a story worth elevating. And also we can't ignore all
of the new leagues that are emerging, you know, as
part of this incredible movement, that are making a huge impression.
(14:08):
And so we've seen a lot of traction actually with
the GSL, with the PWHL, right with Unrivaled, with a
lot of leagues that are emerging really kind of getting
off to a great start, and so that was a
really exciting part of that report as well.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
The GSL, the Gamebridge Super League. We've talked about that
a few times on the show, though not super in depth.
That's sort of the league competing to be alongside the NWSL,
though most of the best players in the US are
still choosing the NWSL. You mentioned those emerging leagues. What
I think we're finding from some of them is incredible
dexterity as a result of being brand new and because
of their size, not being regulated quite the same way,
(14:45):
not having sort of like traditional history or connection to brands,
and they're not connected to men's leagues that have relationships
that they're required to be beholden too, like we often
see with say the WNBA Unrivaled feels a little more
dexterous right now, although we'll see how that changes as
they continue to age and grow. When you look at
that larger study of women's sports, I think we hear
at the show and you've probably talked about them a
(15:05):
million times, But are there a couple quick takeaways that
maybe the average person doesn't realize when you talk about
how fans of women's sport above and beyond anyone else
might be the most valuable.
Speaker 4 (15:15):
Yeah, so trust in women athletes is at an all
time high. Year over year, we have seen the trust
in women athletes grow. We call this the believability boosts,
Like consumers believe women athletes believe in the products that
you know they're endorsing. And this is actually, you know,
true even for people who tell us they never watch
(15:36):
women's sports. Fifty eight percent of people who never watch
women's sports actually tell us they still have pretty significant
trust in women athletes when it comes to kind of
the products they're promoting and the collaborations they're part of,
and I mean, I think that's a phenomenal statistic, Like
more than half of people who literally are never watching
this actually care what these folks have to say as influencers,
(15:56):
as endorsers for products, and so I think that's really exciting,
especially paired with all the research we know about how
sponsorship drives purchase intention and the fact that like fans
just want more, they want more brands in this space.
I don't know a lot of places that consumers are
saying please, I'd like more advertising, like please feed me more,
But in women's sports were like, please, I would like
(16:17):
you right to feed me some advertising. And so I
think it's a great opportunity for brands to do that,
and to do that in partnership with women athletes, because
we know that those athletes first strategies really resonate most.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Yeah, there's been a lot of research into that that
just putting a female athlete in the campaign changes how
much people click on it, watch it, and then buya
as a results of it.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
I think women athletes areu on this.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Really cool sweet spot where I think a lot of
us are kind of tired of quote unquote just influencers.
It started out with, Oh, we believe you because you're
the average person, and now we're like, we don't believe
you because you're the average person who will just get
paid to tell us that you like literally anything that
anyone will pay you to tell us about, you probably
haven't even tried it, and also probably just photoshop is
why you like look better in the APA photo.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Whereas women athletes.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Are more relatable than men's in that they're not millionaire
billionaires who are probably just driving cars we can't afford
and wearing watches we can't afford, they're more likely to
be closer to our economic kind of status, but they're cooler,
more talented, more visible, more fit. Like they they're aspirational,
(17:22):
but in a way that we feel like we can
still touch, and so then we believe them and we
want to be like them in a way that I
think it's very hard for male athletes to pull off,
because we're just like cool, Lebron, you love sketchers. I
know he's not a sketchers but like anytime many athletes
like sketchers, that's the only thing I wear. I'm like, sure,
no offense sketchers come support the show.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
We're always looking for sponsors. All right. Back to you.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
A few years back, you were you're actually pursuing your PhD.
You published a study looking at race in WNBA media.
Your finding's got a lot of buzz, including pagebackers giving
you a shout out on stage at the SP's that
famous speech that we all remember where we were like,
holy how house page backers already this evolved at that age.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
But talk about that research for folks who aren't familiar
with it.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Can you give us a little overview of what you
and your co author found and why it stood out
to so many folks, including page.
Speaker 4 (18:07):
Absolutely, and that was pretty exciting. My phone was blowing up.
People were like, did you see pages speech? And I
was like, I have no idea what you're talking about.
I wasn't in a time zone that was very friendly
for watching the SP's at that time.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
And then I went and I was like, wait, wait, wait,
I know that data. That's really cool.
Speaker 4 (18:22):
So yeah, absolutely, we were in a study based on
the twenty twenty WNBA season affectionately known the Leubble season
less affectionately right this summer that our country was embroiled
in a really important racial reckoning following George Floyd's murder,
following you know, Breonna Taylor's murder, and media companies and
brands and leagues and you know, basically everybody at the
(18:45):
time was saying black lives matters and say her name.
And actually the WNBA court and worn up shirts reflected
this sentiment, given players vocal advocacy around it, and so
that was really exciting. And also black wa players, who
that season made up approximately eighty percent of the league.
They also won eighty percent of the postseason awards. They
(19:06):
were MVP, Rookie of the Year, Defensive Player of the Year,
Most Improved Player, and six women. They weren't getting credit
in the media so overwhelmingly. We ran a study where
we just actually counted the number of times that players
got mentioned in the media across a six month period
from shortly before the season was supposed to kick off
until a bit after the season ended. We looked at
(19:27):
it across the entire league, We looked at it across
that like I said, those six months, and across three
different media partners, two of whom were actually official partners
media partners.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
Of the WNBA that season.
Speaker 4 (19:38):
And what we found, even when you control for on
court production like points and rebounds, is that white athletes
got significantly more coverage than their black counterparts, their black teammates, right,
the people who are literally playing these games with them
making up the majority of the league. And you know,
there's some other nuances there about what we found too,
when you think about not just a player's race, but
(19:58):
also how they expressed themselves. Right, who's a little bit
more masculine, who's a little bit more feminine. And I
just also want to connect this to how important this
is when it comes to pay equity, because media coverage
is just free advertising, like.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
That's all it is.
Speaker 4 (20:12):
And so when you have this kind of disparity in
media coverage, you're going to see that kind of disparity
in the kinds of endorsement deals and contracts that players
can command. And so we kind of felt like it
wasn't surprising that at the time Stewie was actually the
only w player in a decade to have a signature shoe.
Nothing against Dewey, She's an amazing player, but that feels
a little bit off in a league that has so
(20:34):
many amazing players, you know, eighty percent of whom are black,
So big picture about the study and you know the
findings and really the implications on it.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Yeah, I remember really soon after college because I wasn't
in the marketing advertising space learning about ad equivalency and
really understanding what it means to say, we would have
spent this much money for you to see this, and instead,
because media covered it for we got the equivalent of
this many dollars. And that's such a great point to
(21:04):
make because of course that's not the intention of media,
but it's a result of it. And so when athletes
aren't covered and given publicity and talked about, and their
efforts and accolades and points and rebounds and all the
things they are accomplishing aren't the stories aren't told, they
end up not being just harmed in terms of people
not knowing who they are, but the kind of sponsorships
that they're offered, and even sometimes subconsciously, the way the
(21:26):
refs call the game, the way teams think about signing
them as free agents, like, all of it becomes part
of their story in a way that is unfairly weighted,
very heavily on how the media does their job, which
is why this show is so important to us and
why I think things are changing.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
You know.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Asia Wilson was the twenty twenty WA MVP. She received
half as much media coverage that season as Sabrini and Escu,
who was the first pick in the draft, played in
just three games before she got a season ending injury.
A lot of enthusiasm about Sabrina the triple doubles coming
out of Oregon the end of her season prematurely there was,
of course, there's a lot of excitement about her arriving,
(22:01):
but she got hurt, she didn't really play, she's white
and ends up getting twice as much covered as the
person who was the MVP. That's a great example of
how you can build mythology around a player at the
expense of another player who is more deserving of creating
those myths. Do you think things have changed since this
is a topic that has been covered and talked about since,
particularly in part because of your research.
Speaker 4 (22:23):
Yeah, I will just I also always want to say too, right,
like the players aren't to blame for this. Nobody who's
a player did anything wrong to get media coverage right
like this. What we were able to do and what
I think is so important about the research that we
ran is like we can look across at the time,
one hundred and forty four athletes, right, we can look
across twelve teams, across six months, across three media partners,
(22:45):
and so you're really seeing like a system of patterns,
not and you can see a great kind of point
examples on these one on ones that we've just talked about,
and those are true in the data. But this isn't
always a one on one comparison, Like this is just
a pattern across the board, and I think that's so important.
And no, I don't think we've made a lot of
progress on this, you know. I laugh sometimes that like
(23:08):
maybe a little bit of hubris. In the title of
the op ed where we launched this was make this
the season we end discriminatory sports coverage.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
That was May of twenty twenty one.
Speaker 4 (23:17):
And I think people who have tuned into the W
in the last few years knows that this issue hasn't
gone away. We're still seeing preferential treatment of several athletes.
We're seeing black athletes, you know, not always having their
names pronounced correctly. Like we're just seeing these kinds of
biases continue to be perpetuated. I do know from some
(23:38):
media executives who reached out to me afterwards that some
companies have actually taken steps to put different policies and
practices in place to like make some progress. And so yes,
I think in small ways we've made progress, and I
think in big ways we've had in conversations.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
But on the whole, I think if.
Speaker 4 (23:54):
We ran this study again, I don't think we would
find very different outcomes.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Do you think that would be really statistically offset by
Caitlin Clark in particular, though, because while I do believe
there's no doubt that she has swallowed a giant percentage
of coverage, particularly coverage in spaces that did nothing at
all before and have stepped in to do a little bit,
And it's really just about her, because I think there
(24:23):
are some really great pieces of progress, Asia Wilson's signature shoe,
the incredible campaign around her from Nike, the statues. I
think that we've had a lot more moments now. Part
of it also might be that, you know, the last
year and a half, I've spent all of my time
on women's sports instead of my previous jobs where I
spent some on women's and some on men's, and I
wasn't as deeply invested. So I'm seeing more personally surely
(24:47):
as a result of that, but it also feels like
we're more aware of it and more thoughtful about it.
It's just that the Caitlin Clark of it all is
so giant that you'd almost have to take her out
just to see if everything else settled a little more
evenly than it used to.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Is that fair?
Speaker 3 (25:02):
Yeah? I do think that's fair.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Let's talk about twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
You publish some research about the sort of isofans in
the WNBA. First of all, can you tell us what
an isofan is and what your research found about it?
Speaker 2 (25:14):
And I have a feeling it relates to what we
just discussed.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (25:17):
Yeah, So ISO fans are fans who when you ask them,
who do you share your fandom with, they say nobody,
Like I don't have anyone to talk about it with.
I don't have anyone to watch games with. I don't
have anybody to go to games with. I'm just a
fan in my own bubble, and I don't know anyone
else to share this passion with.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
And so we did.
Speaker 4 (25:38):
We ran a study with myself and some co authors,
and we really just wanted to understand how WNBA fans
were connecting to one another, to teams, and then like what.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
That meant for their engagement.
Speaker 4 (25:48):
We were caught really by surprise when we got this data,
because even when you look at it in men's sports,
the numbers are fairly low.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
When you look at WNBA fans.
Speaker 4 (25:57):
In this initial study, twenty eight percent of told us
that they were ISO fans, and that was four times
as high as a comparable NBA sample and much much
higher than really anything like you see in men's sports.
And so we actually kind of thought it was a fluke,
such that we recollected data and ran it again.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
And found the same thing. So it was not a fluke.
Speaker 4 (26:21):
What is exciting is that when we recollected data just
more recently in partnership with Wasserman and the Collective, we
found that the number of isofans has declined, but we've
also seen a greater emergence of we call them duo fans,
so people who say, like I had someone, I have
one person.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
To share my fandom with, but I don't have a
whole club. I don't have a whole crew.
Speaker 4 (26:44):
I'm not like rolling deep to games or the sports
bra or wherever I'm going to watch it.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Yeah, I'm actually not surprised by that. It's something that
I've noticed across the space for a long time, and
I've encouraged things like companies to start doing company outings
to women sporting events because the natural cultural practice is
let's go to a Cubs game. Oh, let's all go
to a Bulls game. It's like a thing that's part
(27:09):
of life. And that's from media coverage. That's from traffic, news, weather,
and sports and every day it's just the men's games.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
And here's what's happening.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
It's from advertising, it's from marketing spend, it's from it
being a part of your life all the time, to
the point where even if you don't care about it,
you kind of know about it. And women's sports requires
going to find it, and so you can do that alone.
And you might do that alone if you don't know
that other people are also interested. But thankfully you mentioned
the sports bra. There are women's sports bars popping up
(27:37):
all over the country. There's some companies and brands that
are starting to align around bringing people together to watch together.
There is an understanding from brands that women like to
watch in communal spaces. Even if that means something like
a message board or a Twitch stream that's running alongside
a life broadcast. So do you think that's going to
change just as a part of the larger storytelling that's
(27:58):
being done around women's sports welcoming more people under the ten?
Speaker 3 (28:02):
Yeah, I do.
Speaker 4 (28:03):
I mean I think that's what the shift in the
data has shown us, right, is that we have fewer
ISO fans now. They are still far more prevalent in
women's sport than they are in men's sport, but the
number is shifting. I also think in the second data collection,
we really wanted to better understand who isofans were, like,
what is this experience because we didn't expect to find
them in the first studies, so we did an admittedly
(28:24):
terrible job at learning anything more about them other than.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
That they exist.
Speaker 4 (28:28):
And so I think what's interesting is actually, like, there's
some folks who say that they want to be an
ISO fan, Like it's not a problem to solve. But
what is interesting is even in that case isofans engage
much less they have They're like less strong in their
fan identity, they consume less, they spend less, And so
what that says to us is that even if someone
wants to be an isofan, and not all of them do.
(28:50):
Some of them said they wish they had more people
and that they would choose to join a group. But
in all cases isofans are just underserved, like they're not
being met where they're at, whether they want to stay
an ice sofian or not. There's an opportunity here for
us to invest in these fans who are showing up,
overcoming the barriers alone, to show up for women's sports
(29:10):
and deserve to be seen in our spaces.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Rees, is there anywhere people can read this research of
yours or find it publicly?
Speaker 3 (29:17):
It's a great question. A lot of it.
Speaker 4 (29:19):
It's in some academic journals, some of it lives in
sports business journals, off eds. I'll definitely share links with
your team and you can put them in the show
notes for folks. And then, of course, parody actually just
debuted a new research page. I'm super stoked about it.
It's parody noow dot co slash Women's Sports dash research.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
Okay, nobody wrote that down, So we'll put it in
our show notes and we will direct them to the
link there where they can find it. You know, I'm
so grateful you came on. I love talking about this
stuff and I think it's so fascinating and interesting for
folks to know how much what they're doing is actually
helping the leagues and the players that they like, but
also for brands and sponsors that are listening. And to
the last point that you said, I want to give
(29:59):
a shout out to super Slice Marcus Sisson, who has
written in asking for us to create a community around
this show, and so I want everybody listening to know
that we're actually talking about it behind the scenes.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
We are just not sure about where.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
And when we'll be able to bring everyone together, but
she suggested potentially a slack or a discord or somewhere,
and we do want to be able to bring all
of our slices together to talk about episodes of the show,
what they want to see more of, just get to
know each other, because we do understand that women's sports
fans are looking for more community and for more folks
that are knowledgeable to talk about this stuff with, and
they're all gathering to listen to us, and now we
(30:32):
just have to connect them to each other.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
So we promise we're working on it.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
And this interview with Reesa is just going to push
our little butts along to get moving on it and
make it happen faster.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Thanks so much for the time. I appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
Thanks so much, Sarah. I look forward to being at
your gatherings with your slices.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Thanks again to Resa for hanging out. We got to
take another break when we come back. The email bystander
effect is real, y'all.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
Welcome back, slices.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
We love that you're listening, but we want you to
get in the game every day too, So here's our
good game play of the day. Check out Reesa's research.
We'll link to both of the reports Parody published this
summer in the show notes, along with a bunch of
other op eds Resa has written over the years, including
the ones about isofans in the WNBA and the role
of race in media coverage. And you know we love
to hear from you. We'll be back next week with
(31:24):
our regular Monday through Friday schedule, so in the meantime,
send us a note with things you'd like to see
us cover this fall. You know, we tell you every
single episode that we love to hear from you, and
some of you write us on the daily, but some
of you are like, nah, I don't need to reach
out with my thoughts and feelings. I'm sure other people
are doing it. Come on, we want to hear from you,
specifically you the person right now listening to this. That's
(31:45):
like I always have things to say, but I never
really actually send an email.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Send that email. We want to get it.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
Our email as always is good game at wondermedianetwork dot com,
or you can leave us a voicemail at eight seven
two two oh four fifty seven, and don't forget to subscribe,
rate and review.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
It's real easy slices.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Watch a fresh batch of pens, rating ten out of
ten perfect lines drawn review. Even though I no longer
have a reason to buy perfectly color coordinated school supplies
matching binder, notebook pen for each subject, obvi, I still
find ways to celebrate back to school shopping, including a
gorgeous new pack of multi colored paper Mate flare felt
(32:27):
tip pens every fall. The best of all the pens,
in my opinion, writes like a marker, but sharper, bold
and beautiful, but doesn't bleed through the page. Adds a
bit of whimsy and delight to any written correspondence. Paper
calendar entry or birthday card. Ah. I miss the joy
of writing things on paper, but on the rare occasion
that I still do, it's a paper mate moment for me.
(32:50):
This was not an AD, but it should have been
paper mate moment. Call me paper mate. Now it's your turn,
rate and review. Thanks for listening. We'll see in a
couple day. Good Game, Resa, Good Game, ISO fans for
staying committed even when you're watching alone. You super cute
daily planners taunting me from the shelves, tempting me into
(33:10):
buying you, even though I know I'll never ever use you,
because my phone is in my pocket all day and
you're in some room I can't remember and not conveniently
located when my schedule changes for the eleventeenth time in
one day. Good Game with Sarah Spain is an iHeart
women's sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment.
You can find us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
(33:32):
or wherever you get your podcasts. Production by Wonder Media Network,
our producers are Alex Azzie and Misha Jones. Our executive
producers are Christina Everett, Jesse Katz, Jenny Kaplan, and Emily Rudder.
Our editors are Emily Rutter, Britney Martinez, Grace Lynch, and
Gianna Palmer. Our associate producer is Lucy Jones. Production assistance
(33:52):
from Avery Loftist and I'm Your Host Sarah Spain
Welcome to Good Game with Sarah Spain, where we're manifesting
a long sunny fall this year, first Indian summer, long
Indian summer, but then real actual fall, several months of it.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Please.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
It's Monday, September eighth, and on today show, we'll be
talking to Resa Eard, the director of Research at Parody,
about the biggest takeaways from two new reports on women's sports,
plus the history of racism and WNBA media coverage, and
why women's sports fans are the most valuable fans.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
And we're not just saying that the research proves it.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
That conversation with Resa is coming up right after this,
joining us now.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
She was recently hired.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
As the director of research at Parody, a company that
helps connect athletes in women's sports with businesses interested in
sponsoring them.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Before that, she spent a whole lot of time.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
In classrooms, including two years as a professor of sport
management at Yukon. While an undergrad at Duke, she created
her own major social change at the intersection of culture,
gender and sport. And then we got her PhD from
the University of Massachusetts with their dissertation that actually sounds interesting.
Women's professional sport and stigma. Her hobbies include surfing and
making educational children's worksheets about Title nine, it's Resa Iard.
(01:13):
I'm not surprised you when producer Alex our friends if
your hobbies include making worksheets.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
It was such a great day. It was such a
great day.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
As I mentioned in your intro these days, you're the
director of research at Parody, but you've been in the
women's sports space for a long time, even though I'm
guessing no one else was making Title nine worksheets for
you growing up. Now you have filled that hole amongst others.
Can you tell us about how you first got interested
in researching women's sports?
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Yeah, I think you know.
Speaker 4 (01:38):
I got interested in researching really just because for a
long time I was a fan, and so for me,
I think it actually all goes back to nineteen ninety seven.
I was a really impressionable young girl growing up in Phoenix, Arizona,
surrounded by the energy that launched the w like the
most successful women's sport league that we've had in US history,
and so I saw really early up close in personal
(02:00):
like how powerful women athletes were and what they meant
to me as a girl athlete. But I also saw
the disparities at a really young age, and so from
that moment on, I was really just committed to doing
whatever I could, wherever I was, with whatever I had.
And you know, I was never someone who like dreamed
of being a pro athlete. I think I was a
largely above average but basically mediocre athlete, and I loved sports,
(02:22):
but in the classroom I had good grades, and so
it was really just you know, what are the skills
or the talents or the areas that I can excel
in that I'm passionate about where I can hopefully help
make a difference for women's sports. And so that led
me down a lot of rabbit holes, you know, early
jobs with the Mercury, reading the collective bargaining agreement in
the eighth grade at bedtime, just like you know, being
(02:44):
really nerdy really early and soaking it all up so
that hopefully I was prepared for a moment like this.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Oh my god, I love that we need people like you,
because that's not my wheelhouse, digging through cbas and understanding
the nitty gritty of contracts. But okay, so you're rising
up the academia, and I imagine if you're a smart,
accomplished person. There plenty of folks trying to pull you
in different directions or suggest areas of focus. Did you
ever have any trouble convincing people that women's sports were
(03:10):
worth researching and worth your time?
Speaker 4 (03:12):
Honestly, I feel like probably pretty lucky to say no.
I think the folks I surrounded myself with like saw
that this was something I was really passionate about, and
we're just like, we're going to get out of her
way whether we get it or not.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Like she's she's doing something, she's going somewhere.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
I actually remember years ago I was talking with an
undergrad mentor and I wasn't sure yet about getting my PhD.
And you know, I was like, I don't know about
this whole thing, and he was like, look, you're actually
going to study something that really matters, Like you're not
going to just be another He was a historian, so
he was kind of, you know, self deprecating. He was like,
you're not just going to go be another historian of
like you know these ten years. And don't get me wrong,
(03:50):
I love history. My undergrad honor thesis was on the
history of Title nine, so like here for all of
the history of women's sports. But I think people saw
that this moment was going to come, and I think
they just saw how much I lit up when I
was doing this work.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
And you know, if all else sales like go do
what makes you light up?
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yeah? I love that and it's so true.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Especially even just five six, seven years ago, there was
such a dearth of both coverage and research and interest
in this space that has since blown up, and so
I imagine it was difficult in some cases to find
the information you were pursuing or to get access to things,
if not that many people were asking for it. So
part of what you're doing now is creating the kinds
of studies that everyone can look at and pull from,
(04:33):
especially when they're trying to make pitches or arguments as
to why investing in women's sports is smart. So this
new role director of research for Parity. For folks who
aren't familiar, can you give us kind of an overview
of what Paroity is and the work that the company does.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
Absolutely?
Speaker 2 (04:47):
So.
Speaker 4 (04:47):
Parody was founded in twenty twenty and our mission is
to close the gender, income and opportunity gap in professional sports.
So everybody who's listening here today knows pretty obviously that
women athletes make up just a fraction of global sponsorships
and media coverage, and they're often excluded from the most
meaningful brand deals, and so Parody works directly with athletes
and brands to address this inequity by connecting our roster,
(05:11):
our community of more than eleven hundred athletes over three
hundred lilympians across eighty five plus different sports, with purpose
driven brands that really want to tap into the women's
sports audience, that want to put their money where their
mouth is. And in doing that, we're really focused on
the financial empowerment and visibility for women athletes across our research,
our partnerships, the campaigns we work with them, all of that.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
So you represent the athletes, but you're also contributing to
the space by creating information and data that allows not
just the connections with your athletes and brands, but just
the overall space to be better informed.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:43):
Absolutely, I mean, I think we do our job best
if the research that we're doing contributes to the broader ecosystem. Certainly,
right with our partners, we can run some proprietary analyzes.
We can make sure that you know the latest and
greatest is going towards them and directing their strategy and
their partnership deals. But above all else, we believe that
a rising tide lifts all boats. So we absolutely want
(06:04):
our research out there as far and wide as it
can be to support every single person, brand, leader, athlete
in the women's sports ecosystem to do what they're doing
as well as they can do it so that women
athletes make as much money as they can.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Director of research sounds pretty fancy schmancy, So what exactly
do you do and did that exist before you were hired?
Speaker 4 (06:23):
So Parody did have a person that was leading some
research for them before I joined this role. They did
a lot of things, and so I am the first
person at Parody to kind of be focused on research
twenty four to seven. And so my job is really
to think about what's our strategy and research, what are
the studies we want to run, and then go do
those studies right? So, what's our data, what's our analysis,
what's the story we're telling?
Speaker 3 (06:44):
How are we putting it out there?
Speaker 4 (06:46):
I have an amazing team of colleagues who are so
good at all of what they do too, to help
inform the research and make sure it's serving our clients
and then you know, using that data, like I said,
both externally so that everybody in the women's sports ecosystem
can be as smart as we can be, and then
using really also to drive extra value to our brand clients.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
There was just a new report that was released. This
was pretty fascinating.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
It was about fan behavior and beliefs in the women's
soccer space. This is your baby, if you will so
tell us some of the big takeaways from this particular report.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
Absolutely, you know, I think everyone who's listening here, we've
all seen the data that the women's soccer audience is
super engaged, loyal, passionate. I mean, I think probably everyone
listening to this is that right, Like my guess is
a huge number of you know, your listener, Sarah, have
been the folks that are actually spending against brands, Like
I can't count the number of brands I have bought
(07:34):
from because they sponsor women's sports.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
And so we know that's happening across the board.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
What's really interesting about the women's soccer audience is like
they're over indexing even above and beyond like your baseline
women's sport consumer who was already so loyal so passionate,
so engaged. We've kind of been joking like the women's
sports fans might just be the most valuable audience in
sports because they're not just watching, they're acting, and they're
doing so at a rate even greater and higher and
(08:02):
faster than other women's sports fans, which we just think
is an awesome.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Story to tell.
Speaker 4 (08:06):
It's not actually a story we set out to tell,
but it was just in the data and it was
kind of screaming at us, and we really wanted to
name it and give women's soccer fans their flowers and
let brands know this is a great place to spend
your money.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
I mean, I'm a prime example of someone who has
been intentional about using products and buying products that I've
seen step up when leagues needed it, step up and
support the players that I care about. Dumb it down
for folks who are not in this space, who maybe
don't understand how the research is conducted and what you're
looking for, and then we'll come back to some of
the details you just spelled out.
Speaker 4 (08:40):
Absolutely, So, I think every great research project just starts
with a question when I talk about it, you know,
in my undergrads it's like, what are you noticing or
what are you curious about?
Speaker 3 (08:48):
What do you want to know more about?
Speaker 4 (08:50):
Like it's just a question, and then you think about, Okay,
if this is my question, what do I need to
do to find the answer to that? What data can
I collect? What data's already out there? Need to collect
new data? Who do I need to hear from to
be able to understand that? And so at parody for
our last several reports we've partnered with survey Monkey. They've
been fantastic for us in helping us survey a really
(09:11):
strong gen pop audience so that we're not just hearing
from women's sports fans. We're not just hearing from you know,
listeners of Good Game with Sarah Spain. We're actually hearing
from anybody who's ever taken a survey on survey Monkey,
which is, you know, like more than two million people
that they have serviced, and.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
So we're hearing from those folks.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
We're asking them questions about what sports are they watching,
and how do they think about athletes, and what about
these different brands and brand categories? And then that all
comes back in a spreadsheet and I spend a lot
of time writing fancy formulas or just doing some other
kind of analyzes with those numbers to arrive at some
answers as to what are we seeing here, how are
(09:49):
fans engaging, what are they telling us about themselves?
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Yeah, and certainly what we understand about the relationship between
sports fans and brands and sponsors is that the goal
is to first get eyeballs on your name, your company,
be familiar, maybe recognize it on a shelf, and you
choose it because you remember hearing about it. But there's
a difference in the way that might operate for fans of,
say men's sport. I always make the example of if
a beer sponsors the NFL, I'm not like, oh my gosh, wow,
(10:16):
oh my gosh, that's so good of them to make
sure the NFL is going to succeed. I'm going to
go out and buy that beer. They're going to get
millions of eyeballs. But maybe fans don't see them in
a different light because they are supporting the NFL.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
That's not the case for women's sports.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
People do change their opinions about brands, often as a
result of their decision to get into the women's sports space.
So you mentioned that women's sports fans potentially are the
most valuable because one of the findings of the report
is not just now we've heard of your brand, or
now we know what your brand does, but we actually
actively change our buying behaviors as a result of you
(10:49):
showing up. So more than one in four women's soccer
fans have made a purchase because of a brand sponsorship,
making them fifty eight percent more likely to do so
than other women's sports. So this isn't just women's sports fans,
which we know over index compared to everyone else, but
soccer fans specifically. What do you think it is about
the soccer world? Disposable income? Is that part of it?
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Is that what we learned?
Speaker 3 (11:11):
You know, it's a great question. I really think it's
a few things about women's soccer.
Speaker 4 (11:15):
I think first and foremost we have to talk about
the supporter community in women's soccer and just the way
that teams are already building really deep and meaningful and
authentic relationships with these fans, and so when brands enter
that space, fans are there for it. And so there's
a community around being a women's soccer fan that's different
than what you might find in other women's sports. I
(11:37):
think that's a huge part of it. I also think
women's soccer has had its moments of really deep important
reckoning of times that we all know the players were
not treated with the respect that they deserve, and the
brands that stuck by those players, the brands that are
investing in that, I think there's a little bit of
extra gratitude and appreciation and recognition for stepping up for
(11:59):
these athletes who haven't always had people who had their backs,
and so I think those combined really help women's soccer
fans step up over and above how all other women's
sports fans are.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Yeah, I think the community aspect is really smart because
one of the things that we hear about women's sports
fans is they sometimes feel isolated. They don't have as
many people to talk about their favorite teams and players too,
and in the soccer world, there is a built in
sort of place to join to create community around this
thing that you love and care about, and then in
that they can have discussions about supporting and working with
(12:33):
brands that seem to be doing right by the.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
People that they care about.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
For this study specifically about women's soccer fans, are there
any unanswered questions that you're hoping to do a future
reporter or understand better in the future.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
That's a great question, you know.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
I think we just kind of want to track this,
Like I am excited to continue to see how this develops.
I'm excited to see how brands activate off of this
and what great stories we can tell. And I also
think Parody's really well positioned, given our community of nearly
twelve hundred athletes, to really shine a light on the
athlete experience and what is it for them, And so
(13:07):
I'm excited for us to continue doing work not just
with fans and not just with brands, but also making
sure that athlete voices are heard and elevated as part
of these conversations. Everything we do at Parody is about
women athletes and elevating them and their stories and closing
that gender and income opportunity gap.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
So I'm excited for our research to do that too.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
We got to take a quick break more with Risa
right after this. Earlier in the summer, Parody released a
broader report. This was on marketing and fan purchasing behavior
just in women's sports in general. So what conclusions can
you share from that Broader Report.
Speaker 4 (13:46):
Yeah, absolutely, So we spent a lot of time talking
about soccer across the board. Basketball leads the way in
terms of the number of fans across the US for
women's basketball, and so we think that's really exciting and
a story worth elevating. And also we can't ignore all
of the new leagues that are emerging, you know, as
part of this incredible movement, that are making a huge impression.
(14:08):
And so we've seen a lot of traction actually with
the GSL, with the PWHL, right with Unrivaled, with a
lot of leagues that are emerging really kind of getting
off to a great start, and so that was a
really exciting part of that report as well.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
The GSL, the Gamebridge Super League. We've talked about that
a few times on the show, though not super in depth.
That's sort of the league competing to be alongside the NWSL,
though most of the best players in the US are
still choosing the NWSL. You mentioned those emerging leagues. What
I think we're finding from some of them is incredible
dexterity as a result of being brand new and because
of their size, not being regulated quite the same way,
(14:45):
not having sort of like traditional history or connection to brands,
and they're not connected to men's leagues that have relationships
that they're required to be beholden too, like we often
see with say the WNBA Unrivaled feels a little more
dexterous right now, although we'll see how that changes as
they continue to age and grow. When you look at
that larger study of women's sports, I think we hear
at the show and you've probably talked about them a
(15:05):
million times, But are there a couple quick takeaways that
maybe the average person doesn't realize when you talk about
how fans of women's sport above and beyond anyone else
might be the most valuable.
Speaker 4 (15:15):
Yeah, so trust in women athletes is at an all
time high. Year over year, we have seen the trust
in women athletes grow. We call this the believability boosts,
Like consumers believe women athletes believe in the products that
you know they're endorsing. And this is actually, you know,
true even for people who tell us they never watch
(15:36):
women's sports. Fifty eight percent of people who never watch
women's sports actually tell us they still have pretty significant
trust in women athletes when it comes to kind of
the products they're promoting and the collaborations they're part of,
and I mean, I think that's a phenomenal statistic, Like
more than half of people who literally are never watching
this actually care what these folks have to say as influencers,
(15:56):
as endorsers for products, and so I think that's really exciting,
especially paired with all the research we know about how
sponsorship drives purchase intention and the fact that like fans
just want more, they want more brands in this space.
I don't know a lot of places that consumers are
saying please, I'd like more advertising, like please feed me more,
But in women's sports were like, please, I would like
(16:17):
you right to feed me some advertising. And so I
think it's a great opportunity for brands to do that,
and to do that in partnership with women athletes, because
we know that those athletes first strategies really resonate most.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Yeah, there's been a lot of research into that that
just putting a female athlete in the campaign changes how
much people click on it, watch it, and then buya
as a results of it.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
I think women athletes areu on this.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Really cool sweet spot where I think a lot of
us are kind of tired of quote unquote just influencers.
It started out with, Oh, we believe you because you're
the average person, and now we're like, we don't believe
you because you're the average person who will just get
paid to tell us that you like literally anything that
anyone will pay you to tell us about, you probably
haven't even tried it, and also probably just photoshop is
why you like look better in the APA photo.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Whereas women athletes.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Are more relatable than men's in that they're not millionaire
billionaires who are probably just driving cars we can't afford
and wearing watches we can't afford, they're more likely to
be closer to our economic kind of status, but they're cooler,
more talented, more visible, more fit. Like they they're aspirational,
(17:22):
but in a way that we feel like we can
still touch, and so then we believe them and we
want to be like them in a way that I
think it's very hard for male athletes to pull off,
because we're just like cool, Lebron, you love sketchers. I
know he's not a sketchers but like anytime many athletes
like sketchers, that's the only thing I wear. I'm like, sure,
no offense sketchers come support the show.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
We're always looking for sponsors. All right. Back to you.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
A few years back, you were you're actually pursuing your PhD.
You published a study looking at race in WNBA media.
Your finding's got a lot of buzz, including pagebackers giving
you a shout out on stage at the SP's that
famous speech that we all remember where we were like,
holy how house page backers already this evolved at that age.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
But talk about that research for folks who aren't familiar
with it.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Can you give us a little overview of what you
and your co author found and why it stood out
to so many folks, including page.
Speaker 4 (18:07):
Absolutely, and that was pretty exciting. My phone was blowing up.
People were like, did you see pages speech? And I
was like, I have no idea what you're talking about.
I wasn't in a time zone that was very friendly
for watching the SP's at that time.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
And then I went and I was like, wait, wait, wait,
I know that data. That's really cool.
Speaker 4 (18:22):
So yeah, absolutely, we were in a study based on
the twenty twenty WNBA season affectionately known the Leubble season
less affectionately right this summer that our country was embroiled
in a really important racial reckoning following George Floyd's murder,
following you know, Breonna Taylor's murder, and media companies and
brands and leagues and you know, basically everybody at the
(18:45):
time was saying black lives matters and say her name.
And actually the WNBA court and worn up shirts reflected
this sentiment, given players vocal advocacy around it, and so
that was really exciting. And also black wa players, who
that season made up approximately eighty percent of the league.
They also won eighty percent of the postseason awards. They
(19:06):
were MVP, Rookie of the Year, Defensive Player of the Year,
Most Improved Player, and six women. They weren't getting credit
in the media so overwhelmingly. We ran a study where
we just actually counted the number of times that players
got mentioned in the media across a six month period
from shortly before the season was supposed to kick off
until a bit after the season ended. We looked at
(19:27):
it across the entire league, We looked at it across
that like I said, those six months, and across three
different media partners, two of whom were actually official partners
media partners.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
Of the WNBA that season.
Speaker 4 (19:38):
And what we found, even when you control for on
court production like points and rebounds, is that white athletes
got significantly more coverage than their black counterparts, their black teammates, right,
the people who are literally playing these games with them
making up the majority of the league. And you know,
there's some other nuances there about what we found too,
when you think about not just a player's race, but
(19:58):
also how they expressed themselves. Right, who's a little bit
more masculine, who's a little bit more feminine. And I
just also want to connect this to how important this
is when it comes to pay equity, because media coverage
is just free advertising, like.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
That's all it is.
Speaker 4 (20:12):
And so when you have this kind of disparity in
media coverage, you're going to see that kind of disparity
in the kinds of endorsement deals and contracts that players
can command. And so we kind of felt like it
wasn't surprising that at the time Stewie was actually the
only w player in a decade to have a signature shoe.
Nothing against Dewey, She's an amazing player, but that feels
a little bit off in a league that has so
(20:34):
many amazing players, you know, eighty percent of whom are black,
So big picture about the study and you know the
findings and really the implications on it.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Yeah, I remember really soon after college because I wasn't
in the marketing advertising space learning about ad equivalency and
really understanding what it means to say, we would have
spent this much money for you to see this, and instead,
because media covered it for we got the equivalent of
this many dollars. And that's such a great point to
(21:04):
make because of course that's not the intention of media,
but it's a result of it. And so when athletes
aren't covered and given publicity and talked about, and their
efforts and accolades and points and rebounds and all the
things they are accomplishing aren't the stories aren't told, they
end up not being just harmed in terms of people
not knowing who they are, but the kind of sponsorships
that they're offered, and even sometimes subconsciously, the way the
(21:26):
refs call the game, the way teams think about signing
them as free agents, like, all of it becomes part
of their story in a way that is unfairly weighted,
very heavily on how the media does their job, which
is why this show is so important to us and
why I think things are changing.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
You know.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Asia Wilson was the twenty twenty WA MVP. She received
half as much media coverage that season as Sabrini and Escu,
who was the first pick in the draft, played in
just three games before she got a season ending injury.
A lot of enthusiasm about Sabrina the triple doubles coming
out of Oregon the end of her season prematurely there was,
of course, there's a lot of excitement about her arriving,
(22:01):
but she got hurt, she didn't really play, she's white
and ends up getting twice as much covered as the
person who was the MVP. That's a great example of
how you can build mythology around a player at the
expense of another player who is more deserving of creating
those myths. Do you think things have changed since this
is a topic that has been covered and talked about since,
particularly in part because of your research.
Speaker 4 (22:23):
Yeah, I will just I also always want to say too, right,
like the players aren't to blame for this. Nobody who's
a player did anything wrong to get media coverage right
like this. What we were able to do and what
I think is so important about the research that we
ran is like we can look across at the time,
one hundred and forty four athletes, right, we can look
across twelve teams, across six months, across three media partners,
(22:45):
and so you're really seeing like a system of patterns,
not and you can see a great kind of point
examples on these one on ones that we've just talked about,
and those are true in the data. But this isn't
always a one on one comparison, Like this is just
a pattern across the board, and I think that's so important.
And no, I don't think we've made a lot of
progress on this, you know. I laugh sometimes that like
(23:08):
maybe a little bit of hubris. In the title of
the op ed where we launched this was make this
the season we end discriminatory sports coverage.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
That was May of twenty twenty one.
Speaker 4 (23:17):
And I think people who have tuned into the W
in the last few years knows that this issue hasn't
gone away. We're still seeing preferential treatment of several athletes.
We're seeing black athletes, you know, not always having their
names pronounced correctly. Like we're just seeing these kinds of
biases continue to be perpetuated. I do know from some
(23:38):
media executives who reached out to me afterwards that some
companies have actually taken steps to put different policies and
practices in place to like make some progress. And so yes,
I think in small ways we've made progress, and I
think in big ways we've had in conversations.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
But on the whole, I think if.
Speaker 4 (23:54):
We ran this study again, I don't think we would
find very different outcomes.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Do you think that would be really statistically offset by
Caitlin Clark in particular, though, because while I do believe
there's no doubt that she has swallowed a giant percentage
of coverage, particularly coverage in spaces that did nothing at
all before and have stepped in to do a little bit,
And it's really just about her, because I think there
(24:23):
are some really great pieces of progress, Asia Wilson's signature shoe,
the incredible campaign around her from Nike, the statues. I
think that we've had a lot more moments now. Part
of it also might be that, you know, the last
year and a half, I've spent all of my time
on women's sports instead of my previous jobs where I
spent some on women's and some on men's, and I
wasn't as deeply invested. So I'm seeing more personally surely
(24:47):
as a result of that, but it also feels like
we're more aware of it and more thoughtful about it.
It's just that the Caitlin Clark of it all is
so giant that you'd almost have to take her out
just to see if everything else settled a little more
evenly than it used to.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Is that fair?
Speaker 3 (25:02):
Yeah? I do think that's fair.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Let's talk about twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
You publish some research about the sort of isofans in
the WNBA. First of all, can you tell us what
an isofan is and what your research found about it?
Speaker 2 (25:14):
And I have a feeling it relates to what we
just discussed.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (25:17):
Yeah, So ISO fans are fans who when you ask them,
who do you share your fandom with, they say nobody,
Like I don't have anyone to talk about it with.
I don't have anyone to watch games with. I don't
have anybody to go to games with. I'm just a
fan in my own bubble, and I don't know anyone
else to share this passion with.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
And so we did.
Speaker 4 (25:38):
We ran a study with myself and some co authors,
and we really just wanted to understand how WNBA fans
were connecting to one another, to teams, and then like what.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
That meant for their engagement.
Speaker 4 (25:48):
We were caught really by surprise when we got this data,
because even when you look at it in men's sports,
the numbers are fairly low.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
When you look at WNBA fans.
Speaker 4 (25:57):
In this initial study, twenty eight percent of told us
that they were ISO fans, and that was four times
as high as a comparable NBA sample and much much
higher than really anything like you see in men's sports.
And so we actually kind of thought it was a fluke,
such that we recollected data and ran it again.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
And found the same thing. So it was not a fluke.
Speaker 4 (26:21):
What is exciting is that when we recollected data just
more recently in partnership with Wasserman and the Collective, we
found that the number of isofans has declined, but we've
also seen a greater emergence of we call them duo fans,
so people who say, like I had someone, I have
one person.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
To share my fandom with, but I don't have a
whole club. I don't have a whole crew.
Speaker 4 (26:44):
I'm not like rolling deep to games or the sports
bra or wherever I'm going to watch it.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Yeah, I'm actually not surprised by that. It's something that
I've noticed across the space for a long time, and
I've encouraged things like companies to start doing company outings
to women sporting events because the natural cultural practice is
let's go to a Cubs game. Oh, let's all go
to a Bulls game. It's like a thing that's part
(27:09):
of life. And that's from media coverage. That's from traffic, news, weather,
and sports and every day it's just the men's games.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
And here's what's happening.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
It's from advertising, it's from marketing spend, it's from it
being a part of your life all the time, to
the point where even if you don't care about it,
you kind of know about it. And women's sports requires
going to find it, and so you can do that alone.
And you might do that alone if you don't know
that other people are also interested. But thankfully you mentioned
the sports bra. There are women's sports bars popping up
(27:37):
all over the country. There's some companies and brands that
are starting to align around bringing people together to watch together.
There is an understanding from brands that women like to
watch in communal spaces. Even if that means something like
a message board or a Twitch stream that's running alongside
a life broadcast. So do you think that's going to
change just as a part of the larger storytelling that's
(27:58):
being done around women's sports welcoming more people under the ten?
Speaker 3 (28:02):
Yeah, I do.
Speaker 4 (28:03):
I mean I think that's what the shift in the
data has shown us, right, is that we have fewer
ISO fans now. They are still far more prevalent in
women's sport than they are in men's sport, but the
number is shifting. I also think in the second data collection,
we really wanted to better understand who isofans were, like,
what is this experience because we didn't expect to find
them in the first studies, so we did an admittedly
(28:24):
terrible job at learning anything more about them other than.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
That they exist.
Speaker 4 (28:28):
And so I think what's interesting is actually, like, there's
some folks who say that they want to be an
ISO fan, Like it's not a problem to solve. But
what is interesting is even in that case isofans engage
much less they have They're like less strong in their
fan identity, they consume less, they spend less, And so
what that says to us is that even if someone
wants to be an isofan, and not all of them do.
(28:50):
Some of them said they wish they had more people
and that they would choose to join a group. But
in all cases isofans are just underserved, like they're not
being met where they're at, whether they want to stay
an ice sofian or not. There's an opportunity here for
us to invest in these fans who are showing up,
overcoming the barriers alone, to show up for women's sports
(29:10):
and deserve to be seen in our spaces.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Rees, is there anywhere people can read this research of
yours or find it publicly?
Speaker 3 (29:17):
It's a great question. A lot of it.
Speaker 4 (29:19):
It's in some academic journals, some of it lives in
sports business journals, off eds. I'll definitely share links with
your team and you can put them in the show
notes for folks. And then, of course, parody actually just
debuted a new research page. I'm super stoked about it.
It's parody noow dot co slash Women's Sports dash research.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
Okay, nobody wrote that down, So we'll put it in
our show notes and we will direct them to the
link there where they can find it. You know, I'm
so grateful you came on. I love talking about this
stuff and I think it's so fascinating and interesting for
folks to know how much what they're doing is actually
helping the leagues and the players that they like, but
also for brands and sponsors that are listening. And to
the last point that you said, I want to give
(29:59):
a shout out to super Slice Marcus Sisson, who has
written in asking for us to create a community around
this show, and so I want everybody listening to know
that we're actually talking about it behind the scenes.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
We are just not sure about where.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
And when we'll be able to bring everyone together, but
she suggested potentially a slack or a discord or somewhere,
and we do want to be able to bring all
of our slices together to talk about episodes of the show,
what they want to see more of, just get to
know each other, because we do understand that women's sports
fans are looking for more community and for more folks
that are knowledgeable to talk about this stuff with, and
they're all gathering to listen to us, and now we
(30:32):
just have to connect them to each other.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
So we promise we're working on it.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
And this interview with Reesa is just going to push
our little butts along to get moving on it and
make it happen faster.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Thanks so much for the time. I appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
Thanks so much, Sarah. I look forward to being at
your gatherings with your slices.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Thanks again to Resa for hanging out. We got to
take another break when we come back. The email bystander
effect is real, y'all.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
Welcome back, slices.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
We love that you're listening, but we want you to
get in the game every day too, So here's our
good game play of the day. Check out Reesa's research.
We'll link to both of the reports Parody published this
summer in the show notes, along with a bunch of
other op eds Resa has written over the years, including
the ones about isofans in the WNBA and the role
of race in media coverage. And you know we love
to hear from you. We'll be back next week with
(31:24):
our regular Monday through Friday schedule, so in the meantime,
send us a note with things you'd like to see
us cover this fall. You know, we tell you every
single episode that we love to hear from you, and
some of you write us on the daily, but some
of you are like, nah, I don't need to reach
out with my thoughts and feelings. I'm sure other people
are doing it. Come on, we want to hear from you,
specifically you the person right now listening to this. That's
(31:45):
like I always have things to say, but I never
really actually send an email.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Send that email. We want to get it.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
Our email as always is good game at wondermedianetwork dot com,
or you can leave us a voicemail at eight seven
two two oh four fifty seven, and don't forget to subscribe,
rate and review.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
It's real easy slices.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Watch a fresh batch of pens, rating ten out of
ten perfect lines drawn review. Even though I no longer
have a reason to buy perfectly color coordinated school supplies
matching binder, notebook pen for each subject, obvi, I still
find ways to celebrate back to school shopping, including a
gorgeous new pack of multi colored paper Mate flare felt
(32:27):
tip pens every fall. The best of all the pens,
in my opinion, writes like a marker, but sharper, bold
and beautiful, but doesn't bleed through the page. Adds a
bit of whimsy and delight to any written correspondence. Paper
calendar entry or birthday card. Ah. I miss the joy
of writing things on paper, but on the rare occasion
that I still do, it's a paper mate moment for me.
(32:50):
This was not an AD, but it should have been
paper mate moment. Call me paper mate. Now it's your turn,
rate and review. Thanks for listening. We'll see in a
couple day. Good Game, Resa, Good Game, ISO fans for
staying committed even when you're watching alone. You super cute
daily planners taunting me from the shelves, tempting me into
(33:10):
buying you, even though I know I'll never ever use you,
because my phone is in my pocket all day and
you're in some room I can't remember and not conveniently
located when my schedule changes for the eleventeenth time in
one day. Good Game with Sarah Spain is an iHeart
women's sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment.
You can find us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
(33:32):
or wherever you get your podcasts. Production by Wonder Media Network,
our producers are Alex Azzie and Misha Jones. Our executive
producers are Christina Everett, Jesse Katz, Jenny Kaplan, and Emily Rudder.
Our editors are Emily Rutter, Britney Martinez, Grace Lynch, and
Gianna Palmer. Our associate producer is Lucy Jones. Production assistance
(33:52):
from Avery Loftist and I'm Your Host Sarah Spain
Host
Sarah Spain
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