In the wake of March Madness, women’s basketball is receiving more attention than ever. The championship final between the University of Iowa and the University of South Carolina drew in an average of 18.7 million viewers according to NPR, marking the first time a women’s final has ever seen a larger television audience than the men’s, which averaged 14.8 million viewers according to The Athletic.
The Iowa versus South Carolina game also made waves as the most-watched basketball game, college or professional, since 2019 as reported by NPR.
Despite the recent surge in fan support, media coverage of women’s basketball has yet to match the growing viewership of the sport; prominent news outlets still tend to focus more on men’s games.
Sierra Walker (‘25) observed that even during the excitement of March Madness, she rarely came across news about the women’s tournament unless it came from a family member.
“The women were having more interesting games, so [my brother] was sending a lot of information about that,” Walker said, “which I think is interesting because if someone who really likes basketball is going to talk about how the women are playing better than the men, but still The New York Times is almost only publishing about the men and only the champions of the women.”
“My brother would be like ‘Here’s a breakdown of all the games that happened this week; all the women’s ones were the interesting ones,’ and meanwhile The New York Times is like ‘The men had a game, here’s a thing,’” Walker said.
This discrepancy in the amount of media coverage that women’s and men’s games receive is not limited to basketball, but can be seen across nearly all sports.
An article from Forbes wrote that today, women’s sports receive an average of around 15% of the share of sports coverage across all forms of media including television broadcasts, social media, digital publications and streaming. Five years ago, that number was only around 5%.
Media coverage may have tripled in recent years, but this number still pales in comparison to that of the men’s coverage, especially considering that an estimated 40% of athletes are women, based on an article published by the University of Pittsburgh’s career center.
Even with marginally higher coverage, most people will only come across news related to women’s sports on rare occasions. Devan Sutaria (‘26), a member of Drew’s baseball team, noted that he still only sees women’s sports coverage a fraction of the time.
“I’ve seen it more in the last month than I have probably in the last year combined,” Sutaria said. “Before, it was like two percent of all the sports I consumed were women’s sports, but now it’s probably up to 15% or 20%.”
The lack of media coverage of women’s sports is not a result of lower interest, as more and more people are tuning into women’s games and following female athletes’ accomplishments.
Sutaria expanded on his growing attention to women’s sports amid the excitement of March Madness, expressing enthusiasm for increased media coverage.
“I like that the social media outlets for sports have been throwing a lot more women’s sports in there,” Sutaria said. “I never had previously [looked for women’s sports] until this past month and like the women’s March Madness tournament … I was actively clearing my schedule to watch the Iowa basketball games, with Caitlin Clark of course, but that was the first time I’d ever done that.”
Sutaria’s account shows how sports fans who want to regularly see updates on women’s sports often have to seek them out by following specific outlets.
“I follow many social media pages that center around women’s sports, and both ESPN and SportsCenter cover both women’s and men’s sports,” said Lauren Geiger (‘24), a four-year member of Drew’s soccer team.
Unequal coverage for women’s sports has additional impacts beyond what is seen on the surface level of the media. Since men’s sports and individual male athletes enjoy nearly 6 times more media coverage, they also receive the vast majority of name, image and likeness deals.
According to Sports Business Journal, male student-athletes receive 66% of deals from NIL collectives, meaning that female athletes receive just over one-third of the amount being spent on NIL deals across the country despite making up nearly half of all athletes.
NIL has been directly correlated with the amount of media coverage that athletes receive; an Indiana University thesis study found that media exposure has a large impact on the NIL benefits afforded to athletes.
The same study argues that equality in NIL opportunities requires universities to push external media platforms to provide female student-athletes with equal sports broadcasting opportunities, as increased exposure creates greater opportunities for athletes to gain sponsorship.
Despite being a small school, Drew has provided steady coverage of women’s sports through the athletics department for years. The athletic communications branch of the department publishes articles after each game and student-athlete milestones for all sports, offering far greater recognition of female athletes’ accomplishments than most major news outlets will provide for national championships.
“Drew does a great job of equally covering both men’s and women’s sports,” Geiger said. “Coverage of different sports will be different depending on what school you attend and what the popular sports are. Drew is lucky in that we don’t have a football team, so fall sports, like soccer and field hockey, really shine.”
This is not the case everywhere, as proved by the minuscule coverage that women’s sports receive in the general media. Even when the women are noticeably outshining the men, such as during March Madness, they are still relegated to the background of sports media.
As the viewership from this year’s March Madness highlighted, there is an ever-growing fan base for women’s sports and the superstar athletes changing the game, leaving many wondering why the amount of media coverage does not match the viewers.
Given that women make up nearly half of all athletes, there is no question that women’s sports deserve an equal share of the media coverage.
The jump from 5% to 15% of sports media coverage being focused on women is a step toward equal coverage, but there is still a long road ahead to close the gap between men’s and women’s sports before women can receive the recognition that they deserve.
Charlotte Wells is a senior majoring in French and English with a concentration in writing and communications and minoring in humanities.
