By Ryan Wollersheim

This June marks the 50th anniversary of the passage of Title IX legislation: a portion of the Education Amendments of 1972 which requires that schools and universities receiving public funds must ensure gender equity across a range of areas. This includes equal opportunities for female athletes at the collegiate level. To this day, Title IX stands as a landmark moment in the history of not just collegiate women’s athletics, but women’s sports in general; Title IX helped lay the foundation for the eventual growth and development of professional women’s sports within the United States. As a result, the availability and attention for women’s sports has grown exponentially since 1972. There now exists high level women’s competitions across all divisions of the NCAA, as well as professional women’s leagues for marquee sports such as basketball (the WNBA), soccer (the NWSL) and golf (the LPGA) among others. Yet, there still remains glaring gaps in the overall treatment of female athletics, both at the institutional and societal levels. 

Anyone who watched the 2022 Men’s Basketball NCAA Tournament is likely familiar with one recurring advertisement campaign by Buick. The campaign, entitled ‘See Her Greatness’, included commercials that highlight unforgettable moments from a range of collegiate women’s sports, including basketball, hockey and swimming. However, the irony is that many people never had the chance to forget these moments because so few actually saw them live. Buick’s ads followed these moments up by explaining that “while 40% of athletes are women, they get less than 10% of the media coverage,” based on data that Buick sourced from Dr. Cheryl Cooky of Purdue University. 

This fact belies one of these glaring gaps: while there have been great leaps in the amount of attention provided to female athletics, the level of coverage for these sports often falls short. Fans of University of Wisconsin sports need not look beyond their own backyard to find an example of this gap in coverage via the UW Women’s Soccer team. 

During head coach Puala Wilkins’ 15-season tenure at the helm of UW’s Women’s Soccer, the program has had one of its longest stretches of sustained success since its introduction in 1981. The Badgers have reached the NCAA Division 1 Women’s Soccer Tournament in eight of these 15 seasons, including second-round appearances in all but one of the past six seasons (the only missed tournament appearance came in the 2020-21 spring campaign when the field of included teams was reduced from 64 to 48 due to COVID-19 concerns). 

So, while the women’s soccer team has been one of Wisconsin’s most consistent programs over the past decade, the team has received rather limited coverage over this span. Based on Google search results for news articles since 2016, the Badger Women’s Soccer program has received just 20 online news pieces that were not published by either a student publication or the university’s athletics department. 

Given the year-to-year consistency, as well as the overall popularity of UW athletics, it is fair to ask why the state of media coverage for this team is relatively so scant. An easy answer would perhaps be that it stems from the fact that women’s sports simply do not receive the same level of coverage as men’s programs. However, the true answer is likely not this simple. Badger women’s sports have received strong support over the years from fans and media alike. This has especially been true in recent years with programs like the women’s hockey and volleyball programs. Both teams currently receive consistent media coverage and fan support. 

The attendance numbers for women’s hockey and volleyball ranked first and second respectively in the nation compared to the number of fans for these sports at other Division 1 programs around the nation. This is also unsurprising considering the level of success for these two Wisconsin sports teams: the hockey team is a perennial powerhouse that has won six national championships since the 2005-06 season; likewise, the volleyball team has reached the Elite 8 of the NCAA Tournament in seven of the last nine seasons, culminating with a championship in 2021. The women’s soccer program has not quite reached these lofty heights with just one national runner-up to its name. Yet, the team has still been successful enough that it should merit greater coverage and fan attention than a mere 20 professional media articles.

Another answer could be that UW fans are just not as attracted to soccer in general. The UW Men’s Soccer team similarly receives limited media coverage and could indicate a lack of interest in the sport overall. This might be true, if not for the sizable existing support for soccer in the city of Madison. Wisconsin State Journal general sports columnist Jim Polzin has worked in the local Madison media for nearly two decades and has seen first-hand the overall popularity of soccer in the local area.

“[The Badgers] have had a really good program for a long time and they’re constantly in the run up to the NCAA tournament,” Polzin said. “So it’s a program that’s fun to watch. I mean, the thing to me too that makes it interesting is this is a soccer town. In the Madison area, soccer is big here. That’s something I’ve really noticed over the last 15 or 20 years, that people love soccer. So I think this town would embrace a really good program and do embrace, to some degree, a program.”

A perfect example of this local support for soccer can be found in Forward Madison FC, Madison’s professional club. Since the team’s inaugural 2019 season, Forward has packed its home stadium, Breese Stevens Field, with fans regularly ranging from 2,000 to 5,000 at any given game. While the team’s attendance was limited during the COVID-19 hampered 2020 season, which also extended into parts of the 2021 season, the online attention provided to this team has still been vast. The professional club, belonging to the second division of the United Soccer League, has over 21,000 followers on both Twitter and Instagram (4,000 more than the social media followings of the UW men’s and women’s soccer teams combined). 

The UW men’s and women’s soccer teams were also the two lowest-ranked athletics programs in terms of both average and total home attendance for the 2018-19 academic year (the most recent year with a publicly available annual report on the UW Athletics website). The men’s team averaged 583 fans over ten home games – exactly 120 more fans than the 463-person average over nine home matches for the women’s team. One of the likeliest factors for this reason could be the location and status of the team’s home stadium at the McClimon Track/Soccer Complex. The stadium, which has hosted these two teams since 1993, is located on the far west side of campus near the Goodman Softball Complex. Both teams only attract, on average, around a third of the facility’s total capacity for soccer events, which caps out at 1,611. The stadium includes general bleacher seating and a zero-dollar entrance fee for regular-season games. When combined with the relatively easy transportation options (public buses that run just outside the stadium and a large adjacent parking lot), these factors should make it an easy place to attend a game. 

This potential was shown as recently as this past season for the UW Women’s Soccer team when, on Sept. 5, a total of 1,171 fans attended the team’s game against non-conference opponent Baylor. This attendance number was the highest the women’s soccer program has had since Oct. 8, 2015 when 1,450 fans watched the team’s 1-0 win over Minnesota that season. 

Former UW Women’s Soccer assistant coach Marisa Kresge was stunned when she first saw the crowd that had amassed for this game against Baylor. 

“We had no idea how people knew about the game and why they all came out,” coach Kresge said. “We were shocked. [Head coach Wilkins] and I were looking behind us at all the fans and we’re like, ‘What’s happening? Why is everybody here for a women’s soccer game?’ But it was a moving weekend and people were looking for something to do; so, I guess it was in a newsletter that went out to students that we had a game.”

The stadium last underwent renovations prior to the start of the 2013 season including the installation of a new natural grass turf. This was followed by a subsequent field replacement consisting of “bluegrass sod” that was completed in February of 2020. However, this venue still appears to leave something to be desired. According to the UW Athletics 2017 Master Plan, “When assessing adequate facilities, this soccer venue ranks last in the Big Ten. Providing upgraded facilities is a priority for the program. Most of the shortfall is in the support facilities, spectator seats, and locker rooms.” Most notably, the complex lacks established locker rooms for either home or visiting teams. Nor are there permanent restroom facilities available on site. 

This plan includes proposed developments for a variety of UW athletic facilities, including the addition of a new $9.2 million seating and press box structure at McClimon. This proposed structure would also house two full locker facilities as well as storage, bathroom, and concession areas. The 2017 Master Plan did not include any expected timeline for the completion of said project, however, and as of yet, it does not appear as though any tangible headway has been made in the five years since. 

This then begs the additional question as to whether this is a classic “chicken or the egg” situation. Is the attendance low due to a general lack of interest, or does this indicate a general lack of overall support for the programs? Would attendance be better if the program was given the proper promotion and media exposure it is likely due?

This lack of coverage can be attributed, at least partially, due to the shrinking of the broader media landscape. Traditional media outlets around the country have suffered due to slumping readerships which have impacted how these publications can cover sports generally. 

“The changing landscape of media, just in terms of shrinkage of space and shrinkage of workforce, I think has impacted not only women’s sports, but also non-revenue sports in general,” Polzin said. “We just don’t have the bodies and, in some cases, the space to cover things like we used to.”

The scarcity of resources for media outlets means they have to be more specific about which sports they give their time and attention to. Not only is it difficult to find people who are both able and willing to cover all these sports, they have to provide substantive returns on this coverage investment. Both men’s and women’s soccer is played during the fall season which is traditionally dominated by staple sports like UW football or the the Green Bay Packers. This coverage cycle eventually gives way to other, more mainstream, programs such as basketball and hockey. People’s attention spans for a wider range of sports during the fall may be smaller than any other time of the sports calendar year, thus crowding out the lesser known sports and teams. Dedicating the time and resources needed to properly unearth stories and coverage that can help capture the hearts and minds of potential fans simply becomes a matter of opportunity costs for many potential publications. 

This story is similarly true for the amount of funds that most universities are willing to invest in non-revenue sports such as soccer (along with the majority of women’s sports). Whether it is right or wrong, schools will always devote the majority of resources to sports that are profitable while limiting their financial commitment to those that do not. According to data from the Wisconsin State Journal’s article breaking down UW’s revenues and spending across a multitude of categories, the women’s and men’s soccer programs operated at a financial loss of around $1.3 million and $1.1 million, respectively. 

However, recent developments in the attention and space provided to women’s sports is beginning to show a change in this reasoning. The past few years have shown that women’s sports are extremely valuable media commodities which broadcasters are now willing to shell out the cash to cover. 

In April, the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament, which began 40 years ago, expanded its field of teams to 68 for the first time ever, thus matching the concurrent men’s tournament known as “March Madness” that has been a revenue-generating behemoth for years. The returns were historic as the NCAA Women’s Final Four averaged 3.5 million viewers through ESPN’s broadcasts via cable and concurrent streaming services. This made the 2022 Women’s Final Four the most watched in ten years, while the championship game garnered its largest viewership since 2004 with 4.85 million tuned in at any given time. 

ESPN negotiated its current rights to broadcast the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament in 2004 for just under $37 million per year. With this current contract expiring in 2025, Desser Media Sports estimates its current value lies between $81 to $112 per year. So long as the financial value for women’s sports is there, the corresponding financial investment, both internally and externally, should stand to follow as well. 

The same returns on investment rationale has held true for women’s soccer at the professional level. In November of 2021, the National Women’s Soccer League title game, aired on CBS, averaged a record 525,000 viewers – a mark which more than doubled the ratings from the same championship game in 2019. This strong end-of-year showing was matched by a similarly impressive performance to kick off the 2022 season as the NWSL’s Challenge Cup, also broadcast on CBS, achieved nearly half a million viewers. 

While the same level of investment has yet to come for collegiate women’s soccer, recent showings have demonstrated there is similar potential there as well. The 2020 NCAA Women’s College Cup Championship game between Florida State and Santa Clara averaged 149,000 viewers, marking the most-viewed women’s collegiate soccer title game on record. This game was aired on ESPN2, but, with continued investment, there’s no reason these numbers should not continue to grow and possibly even justify a broadcast spot on ESPN’s flagship channel one day as well. 

These highs cannot be achieved however unless there is similar investment that makes them possible. Promotion at every level will be what makes these investments worthwhile. This includes everything from the local grassroots footholds of fandom to broadcasts of championships that capture the attention of fans from around the nation

Ahead of the 2022 regular season, the NWSL and the league’s players association reached their first-ever collective bargaining agreement – a compact which guaranteed that minimum salaries would increase by 160 percent going forward. Investments such as this, which help make the idea of playing professional soccer a real possibility in the futures of young girls around the country, are what will continue to attract the best talent to the sport and make it the stable, elite-level platform that it is becoming. 

Such NWSL professionals include former Badgers Jordyn Bloomer of Racing Louisville, Victoria Pickett of the Kansas City Current, Camryn Beigalski of the Washington Spirit and Rose Lavelle of the OL Reign. Lavelle, a former first overall pick in the NWSL, is most known for her achievements on the world stage, winning the 2019 FIFA World Cup Championship with Team USA and a bronze medal in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. 

“I kick myself now because like, I never went to watch Rose Lavelle play here,” Polzin said. “I knew she was a great player, right? Like I was, I was aware of her. But did I know she would become a US Women’s National Player? And now you watch her on TV and I’m like, ‘man, why don’t I go down to campus and see her play?’ That’s a regret and shame on me.”

Providing successful programs, like UW Women’s soccer, with the proper promotion and subsequent attention can help ensure that fans and media alike are not left kicking themselves for missing the rise of future stars like Rose Lavelle ever again.