There has been a lot of consternation on the internet about this.
That photo was from The Women's Las Vegas Invitational where Indiana was playing Auburn. Two big, power conference schools in women’s basketball, playing each other in a room similar to where you would hold a craft show.
A lot of people were…..not happy. Much of the criticism was that women were playing in conditions that men’s Division I programs would not be asked to participate in. That isn’t entirely true; the Battle For Atlantic is played in a hotel ballroom in the Bahamas, for example.
But it goes beyond that.
Indiana coach Teri Moren, whose team beat Auburn and Memphis in the tournament to remain unbeaten through seven games, didn't let the success paint over an experience she thinks represented "a couple steps backwards" for women's basketball.
"We have an obligation to grow our game, and we completely missed on this opportunity because you have a lot of really good teams that are here representing their conferences," Moren said. "It would've been a great opportunity. ... This was a major miss, in my opinion, in terms of helping to grow this game."
Moren explained that the site coordinator apologized for the setup, but she also wants to see contrition from those who were "making promises" in the process of inviting her team to the tournament. According to Moren, the tournament was "not what was described to us as far as what the venue was going to look like, what the setup was going to look like."
I have no doubt that the programs that agreed to participate were sold a rotten bill of goods regarding what was promised to their teams when they agreed to participate. They were promised a setup similar to what a Division I men’s program would expect and they didn’t get it. That criticism is understandable.
But there also needs to be some sort of reality check here about attendance and whether teams should be playing in a ballroom. Here is the average per-game attendance of NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Games since 2010 compared to NCAA Division I men’s basketball.
Women’s
2011: 1,642
2012: 1,634
2013: 1,533
2014: 1,579
2015: 1,565
2016: 1,592
2017: 1,586
2018: 1,622
2019: 1,625
2020: 1,604
2022: 1,358
Men’s
2011: 5,237
2012: 5,190
2013: 5,129
2014: 5,014
2015: 4,939
2016: 4,914
2017: 4,799
2018: 4,607
2019: 4,593
2020: 4,689
2022: 4,313
The data are pretty clear here. Over three times as many people attend Division I Men’s college basketball games every year compared to Division I Women’s college basketball games.
Also, don’t forget that the rights fees to the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament earn over $1 billion a year for the NCAA. ESPN meanwhile pays $34 million a year to the NCAA for a rights package of 29 NCAA sports championships that also includes the NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Tournament. If you generously assume that the entire rights fees are for the women’s tournament, the NCAA earns twenty-nine times as much money on the Men’s tournament.
As much as people want to pretend that people should be as invested in women’s sports as men’s sports, they just aren’t. The attendance and revenue figures tell us this. And yet, people are surprised to find that a women’s college basketball team is playing in a tournament in a ballroom.
That the teams appear to have been lied to is one thing and its own separate thing. But one truth remains clear; if there was actual interest in this tournament it would have been held in one of the many capable arenas in the Las Vegas area.1
There is also one other inconvenient truth about all of this too. Men’s college basketball also has terrible tournaments in terrible locations that are held with absolutely no interest. As I said, there is at least one men’s tournament that is held in a hotel ballroom. There may be others.
I understand the argument that this tournament was not what it was promoted to be. I understand that. But let that argument not be construed to the idea that women’s college basketball should be treated the same as men’s college basketball when the economics and the data suggest otherwise.
There are, by my count, nine indoor arenas in Greater Las Vegas. Not counting Allegiant Stadium, the domed stadium.