How the WNBA deftly defies free-markets
You’re supposed to like the WNBA.
You’re supposed to be outraged that the number one WNBA draft pick makes 1/150th her NBA counterpart (see here).
You are supposed to believe that the only reason no one watches the WNBA is because no one is telling them to (see here).
The WNBA is a thing and if you don’t recognize it as such, well you are sexist (see here).
For years, we the American public has been subject to a large-scale brain washing Operation called “Make Sue Bird Culturally Relevant.”
You don’t believe me?
Look at the sports coverage within America’s most prominent newspaper the New York Times.
In 2020, the Grey Lady devoted 10.2% of its sports coverage to the WNBA. In comparison, the NHL garnered 6.4% of the total (see here).
(In case you were wondering, over 20mm people went to regular season NHL games (see here) and the league generated over $2.33 billion in revenue. Less than 1mm people go (see here) to the WNBA and the league makes less than $50mm (see here) per year in revenue. In other words, the NHL is arguably 200x more popular than the WNBA but receives half the coverage.)
“But the WNBA is a cultural phenomenon that is growing in popularity…”
Again, you are wrong.
WNBA attendance is crashing. In 2002, the Washington Mystics averaged over 16,000 fans a game. Today it is less than 4,000 (see here).
Less people outside of the media care about the WNBA than ever before.
But the WNBA is about to turn the corner and make money?
Also not true - the WNBA has never made a profit and consistently lost over $10mm every year of its twenty-five existence (see here). The loss isn’t narrowing – it is expanding.
If the WNBA was operating under the laws of normal free markets, it would have been dissolved years ago like the XFL or the North American Soccer League.
But it doesn’t. It exists within a protected class that abides by the law of woke economics.
Woke economics dictates that what matters is not whether a product makes money, but whether it promotes certain progressive values.
In this case, the NBA is happy to fund this money losing venture because the WNBA endows the NBA with a progressive respectability – pay $10mm a year to maintain the illusion that you care about women’s empowerment etc.
For a league with $8 billion in annual revenue, that small tax is worth it.
Woke economics doesn’t just exist in our sports leagues but across our entertainment landscape.
Entertainment companies promote products that appeal to certain progressive sensibilities that are decidedly not popular with the public.
If you want proof of this, look at the bifurcation within reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.
From the Chappelle specials that the critics eviscerated but audience members loved to the new woke Lord of the Rings series on Amazon that the critics loved but audiences hated, audiences and critics split hard when the subject matter is clouded by overt politics.
But if wokeness is not popular, why do executives greenlight woke projects?
The answer is twofold.
Firstly, companies don’t want to get yelled at on Twitter.
If you make a historical drama set in Elizabethan England, there are whole armies of twitter trolls who will yell at you if you don’t cast at least a few actresses of color to play her courtesans. As historically inaccurate and absurd as that is.
Secondly, for the last several years, you didn’t have to make money if you were an entertainment executive.
Free money from the Fed meant that the bottom line didn’t impact valuation – the way it is normally supposed to. Ergo there was no need to pay attention to what audiences actually wanted. You could devote yourself to gaining status through virtue signaling.
However, this is all changing now.
The free money is going away and entertainment companies actually have to make content that audiences like and not just appease the tiny but loud progressive voices on Twitter.
We saw this in the last earnings call of Warner Brothers Discovery, which owns HBO Max and Warner Studios. CEO David Zaslav made it clear that they were now focused on actually being profitable.
This meant among other things cancelling a remake of Batgirl that they had already spent $90mm completing.
Zaslav was of course called a racist and sexist on Twitter for doing so but better to suffer Twitter then lose more shareholder money on something stupid that won’t perform (see here).
So, if you are wondering when the barrage of overtly political woke content will disappear – my guess is by 2024.
Hollywood made a lot of it during the pandemic – the progressive coastal elite spent too much time quarantined in their own echo chambers.
But the tide is turning, and the market is now dictating things again.
But then again if the WNBA can defy the laws of free market economics forever, then I suppose so can woke virtue signaling content that audiences hate.