As a lifelong fan of women’s sports, thinking about things like media rights or federal sports policy never really crossed my mind while watching Caitlin Clark drain threes from half court or Dawn Staley make history year after year. But looking back now, I better understand that none of those moments happen without the system behind it all. From basketball to softball, the system helps ensure female athletes have a platform, resources, and a future in the games we love.
However, potential changes to the Sports Broadcasting Act should give us pause regarding the unintended consequences for women’s sports. Some of the talk has centered around potentially pooling media rights in college sports under a centralized system. On the surface, that makes sense and sounds like a more efficient way to handle broadcasting rights. But the real question is who will ultimately bear the cost of that policy change.
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The current system has provided a way for college athletics departments to create and sustain opportunities for female athletes and programs beyond just revenue sports. Because football and men’s basketball are typically the main revenue drivers, conferences structure their media rights deals in a way that allows the popularity of football and basketball to support a much broader athletics ecosystem. That ecosystem includes scholarships for female athletes, travel, facilities, and other benefits that primarily go toward female athletes.
But with recent suggestions to modernize the model by taking the two big-money drivers and putting them on their own, it isn’t hard to see what the ripple effect will be. If schools and conferences lose critical resources, difficult budget decisions will follow. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize it would be bad news for women’s sports.
As imperfect as the current system may be, it is the reason so many women have the chance to compete today.
Opportunities in women’s sports that stem directly from the current system open doors that go far beyond the field or the court. In many cases, the access to education and additional opportunities it provides would otherwise not be possible.
The pipeline to athletic opportunities matters. Not only for the elite athletes that make up revenue sports but for the thousands of women who benefit from being part of a team, competing at a high level, obtaining an education that sets them up for the rest of their lives, and from having an opportunity at all.
Beyond that, the current system sets up women’s sports for success by fueling not only increased access to opportunities and resources but also increased visibility. Quite literally, the future growth and participation in women’s sports hinges on sustaining the progress we’ve made in bringing more visibility to our sports through the current model. These games are as popular as ever, thanks to the levels of access we are providing viewers, families, fans, and, most importantly, the next generation of young female athletes we are inspiring daily.
It’s not that our system can’t evolve. We’ve seen positive evolution in recent years that has brought about even more visibility and resources than before. But there is a difference between improving our model and replacing it with a worse process in the name of modernizing the system.
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Our culture has spent decades fighting to get female athletics to the place it is today in America. Once programs lose that support, it will take decades more to crawl back to even where we are today. This isn’t just about the SBA or businesses or media rights; it’s about access. It’s about visibility. And it’s about equity for every young female athlete with dreams.
That’s worth protecting.
Yemisi Egbewole is a former adviser and chief of staff to the White House Office of the Press Secretary.
