Women’s teams now have almost equal resources as men’s. Why are people still not watching?
By: Piper Winton , Valentina Serrano-Gonzales & Aureli Dominguez
On Thursday, November 7, the so-called basketball school, Duke University, had only 5,600 in attendance for arguably the biggest game of the women’s basketball season against the number one in the nation, South Carolina.
Two weeks later, 9,200 fans watched Duke’s men’s team beat unranked Southern Indiana during Thanksgiving break, when students weren’t even on campus.
Only six miles away is Riverside High School. It’s a different world, but the basketball teams draw similarly lopsided crowds.
On January 12 at 6:45 pm, the crowd watching the women’s basketball game was almost silent. As the team trailed Hillside in the second half, the few students there were on their phones and the only people paying attention were family members.
At 7:00, people started to slowly file in and the gym filled in anticipation for the next game: the men’s.
As soon as the clock hit 7:15, music started blaring and cheerleaders began performing on the court. The men rushed in from the locker room and the dead gym came alive.
“As the women’s game goes on, attendance rises,” said men’s coach Brian Strickland. “Whether they are excited about the start of the men’s game or the end of the women’s game, it’s not for me to decide.”
Resources, funding and social media impact are thought to have a major impact on attention and attendance. But while all these factors have increased greatly, the gap in fan interest is still wide.
According to Duke Athletics, the womens team had a total attendance of 34,133 across all home games during the 2022-2023 season. The men’s had 149,204.
Photos By: Piper Winton
Resource gaps
According to a study on gender inequality conducted by the NCAA, women now receive up to 40% of school athletics funding. While there still is a gap, the increase in funding has been significant.
Majority of resources at the college level are similar between men’s and women’s sports, if not the same.
“We have a similar amount of staff, but as for resources, their things are a lot bigger,” said Jadyn Donovan, a freshman on the women’s basketball team.
Both teams have performance staff, including nutritionists and mental health advisors. There’s also media staff, coaches, athletic directors and academic advisors. They both have post-practice meals and practice in the same facility, but the men’s training room is bigger. The men’s team also has an ice tub, a tv room with video games and reclining seats and only flies private when traveling to away games.
“When you walk into our practice facility, all of their things are very close and convenient and ours is all spread out,” said Donovan. “They have their gaming room right next to everything. And I have to walk all the way to the other side of the building just to get to my locker room.”
At Riverside, men’s and women’s teams receive nearly identical resources, but different sports have different needs.
18 counties in North Carolina just received $68.2 million for athletic facility renovation and upgrades of the state’s total $30 billion budget. Durham is not one of the 18 counties, leaving the district to rely on federal and private funding to supplement their athletics budgets.
Riverside offers 17 sports teams over the course of a year. When operating these sports teams, having the proper equipment, space, concessions, uniforms and coaches are just a few components that teams might need to have a successful season.
At Riverside, each team is provided with these basic necessities.
“Every team, whether they be a boy or girl counterpart team, will get the same thing,” said Riverside athletic director Robert Duncan. “There’s not a difference in the resources they’re given. I think it’s a difference in the perception of what people assume was paid for and what the cost of operating that support is.”
Duncan, who has also coached football and track and field, explained that all these factors differ depending on the general sports interest and roster.
“It’s a huge stock difference just looking at the number of people who participate in those teams,” he said. “If you look at a team like soccer, we may carry 30 people for the entire program, whereas a football team may have 30 people per roster, so 30 people in the JV and 30 people on the varsity in a given year.”
Junior Zoe Cordell has experienced this herself. She plays for the women’s soccer team and was also a kicker for the football team last year.
“There’s a lot of equipment, since there’s different groups that train, like offense and defense,” she said.
Cordell also said that more participants means more equipment, especially for football. And some teams use facilities like the weight room more than others.
Fundraising is another aspect that plays a big role in athletics at Riverside, and while the amount fundraised does differ per team, it’s based on the individuals who support the team, not the school itself.
“Anything that is provided for the team, such as food, comes from fundraising, not from Riverside Athletics,” said Strickland. “[For example, my] JV got sent off with snacks and water, and varsity is getting subway tonight. So it all depends on how much we fundraise.”
“As far as for men’s and women’s soccer each team fundraises with the same goal of $10,000,” said Sarah Cade, Riverside’s head women’s and assistant men’s soccer coach.
Besides fundraising and resources, both teams practice during a 90 minute session focused on conditioning and skill and have the same number of paid positions on the coaching staff.
Cordell said that the amount of time teams spend training at school varies widely.
“It’s hard to compare football and soccer, because football practices are three hours every day,” Cordell said. “You go to the weight room, you go out to the field, and sometimes there’s film sessions. It’s a lot more commitment.”
Instagram and endorsements
Social media is another resource that drives fan interest. These posts share team information such as game times and statistics, as well as highlights, to bring attention to the sport, not just from students and faculty, but also from the community.
At Riverside, the Pirates Athletics Media club promotes all different sporting events. They have students cover games, post on Instagram and keep the school informed about scores and dates. But even though this club is for all sports, men’s games get covered more often.
“Men’s sports have more people wanting to cover them,” said senior Lauren Powrie, president of Pirates Athletics Media.
If no one is signed up to cover a game, Powrie’s job is to assign them to one. She often has to assign people to cover sparsely-attended women’s sports. This ensures all sports get covered, but the men’s coverage is often more comprehensive due to fan enthusiasm.
Throughout the 2023-24 season, the men have had a total of 9 instagram posts on the Pirates Athletic media account, while the women have only had 4. The account also had a TikTok about men’s basketball reach 40 thousand views while their most viewed video about a women’s sports team only reached 1,051.
The Riverside women’s soccer account, however, is an outlier compared to the low views of the other women’s sport teams. A video on the team’s TikTok made in April of 2023 reached 34.5 thousand views and an Instagram reels made in November of 2022 got 11.3 thousand. On the other end of the spectrum is Riverside’s gymnastics account, which has one video with 32 views.
Frequent posts that share updates, practice info, photos and highlight videos does help grow an audience. Cade has seen this personally. On days when the women’s soccer account posts, more people show up for the game.
“I have seen social media play a role in attendance,” she said. “The girls team does a really good job of marketing, which definitely helps.”
Social media plays a big role in college athletics as well. At Duke, both the men’s and women’s teams have a social media staff, yet the men’s team has 1.3 million followers while the women’s has 97.4 thousand.
“We try to post more frequently now that we are in season but I know the men’s team posts a lot of IG reals and stuff,” said Donovan.
The women’s basketball team’s content comes from shootarounds, practices and halftime game updates, while the men’s content is fan-connected, posting gameday outfits, Coach Schyer high fiving fans, and reels about things barely even basketball related such as TikToks of players dancing.
With 10.4K followers, TJ Power, a freshman on Duke’s men’s basketball team, is aware of the benefits of having a large social media presence. He has seen firsthand how the women’s team is trying to grow theirs.
“The women’s coach is great and she’s been marketing the team very well,” said Power. “Social media presence has gone up a lot. I don’t know how quickly that will help with attention or attendance, but I think eventually it’s going to start to stack up.”
The NIL provides students with the opportunity to earn money from their sport. Before it was enacted in July of 2021, student-athletes could not sign endorsement deals, charge money for autographs or get commission for merchandise before they went pro.
Now, student-athletes have a claim to their name, number and image, which plays a major role in social media presence and attention as well.
Almost every player on the men’s team has an agent. Agents can talk to the head coach. They also provide their player with feedback, resources such as personal trainers, potential endorsement deals and connections to the NBA.
“It’s like we are getting compensated for the attention we bring to the school and all the work we put in,” said Power.
At Duke, athletes are making up to 1 million dollars through the NIL. Out of the top 16, only 1 is a woman, track and field athlete Emily Cole.
“The NIL is still new, so I know we are trying to get more involved in that and I know we have a plan for next year,” said Donovan. “[Our coaches] are going to make sure we have similar resources and opportunities for NIL deals as the guys do but, I don’t think we will ever be able to match the guys in terms of people who want to interact with them.”
Outside of the stadium, the women’s team doesn’t draw much attention.
Donovan’s recognition for being on the women’s team is limited to pictures with old people, while the men are offered NIL deals by simply walking into a restaurant.
“We hang out with [the women’s team] a good amount and even in public people ask us for pictures and don’t even realize those are women’s basketball players,” said Power.
“I feel like where it’s different is that in men’s basketball it is very easy to get paid, but for the women it is like you have to have some sort of extraordinary personality, a certain look about you or an event that sets you off,” said Power. “There are increasingly more female athletes getting NIL stuff, especially on the individualized side, like people like [LSU gymnast] Livvy Dunne, where it’s based on their image.”
Why not watch good basketball?
From being the only girl in her co-ed church league to playing at Duke, Donovan has experienced a lack of attention at every level.
Donovan grew up in Prince George County, MD, and attended Sidwell Friends high school, where she was on the number-one basketball team in the nation. Despite that title, the team was often overlooked.
“Men’s basketball was bigger,” said Donovan. “We would only have big turnouts when there were big games, and our league was pretty terrible, so no one would really come to our games. But the guys would play the same terrible team, and fans would still go.”
On a regular basis, parents and other family members were the women’s fanbase at Sidwell Friends.
“Having your school show up for your games was something we really appreciated, but it was rare,” says Donovan. “It was annoying because we were really good. Why not come watch good basketball?”
Despite women’s team’s success, more attention towards the men’s team is a common theme.
Power saw the same occurrences at his high school, Worcester Academy, where he and his sister were on the basketball teams.
”We had some high-profile kids on our team, so we pulled in a lot of people,” said Power. “We probably had 600-700 people at a game, and when playoff time came around, it was in the thousands.”
The women’s team at Worcester had high-profile players as well, like Aliyah Boston, the WNBA’s number-one pick in 2022, and Oluchi Okanawa, the twenty-seventh-ranked player in the class of 2023 who now plays for Duke. But attendance still lagged.
“There was definitely an attention dropoff between the boys and girls,” said Power. “I would say there would probably be 150 people at the women’s games. It’s a lot less.”
Riverside has had star players on women’s teams, too.
The Pirates had their best season in school history 2014-2015, finishing 22-3 overall and 9-1 in the conference. Ranked number-one in the state at times, the team’s top three players all landed division-I scholarships.
It was then-captain Moné Jones’ senior year. Jones was the conference player of the year, all-state selection and McDonald’s All-American nominee.
Even at its best, she said the women’s team didn’t truly have the spotlight.
“[Students are] always going to support the guys, whether they’re good or bad,” Jones told The Pirates’ Hook during a 2022 interview. “They’re always going to show up for those games.”
And as more students recognized that the team was really good, more came to games and backed the team.
“It varied,” she said. “We did have a decent crowd. But for women’s basketball, if you’re good or not, your crowds are just not going to be the same as men’s,” she said.
Nearly a decade later, even though the resources and commitment to each team is similar, the gap in attendance is still big.
Riverside basketball players Corey Hairston Jr. and Shameia Holder have seen the same problems at their games. The stands during the women’s games are primarily empty, with a few families watching, but during the men’s game, families from both sides show up and the student section is overflowing.
“Opponent doesn’t even play a big role in our game,” said Holder. “It’s just dry either way.”
Cordell sees similar trends at Riverside in other sports.
“For football, our home side is mostly filled,” she said. “But for girls soccer games sometimes we’ll get like eight people. If we’re nice to the boys team they’ll come.”
Getting students to attend high school games can be a challenge. Assignments, work, practice and income are all factors, but they aren’t gender specific.
“We’ve tried to incentivize people to come with the athlete pass,” said Strickland, who is also Riverside’s assistant athletic director. “I mean $10 isn’t cheap. It’s tough for our demographic and our school to do 10, 11 home games, paying $10 each game.”
Even for schools where games are free, like Worcester Academy, women’s games are severely under attended. And attendance deficits can grow even larger in college athletics.
“In high school, we at least had outside support, so we didn’t feel as bad,” said Donovan. “But at Duke, there’s not nearly as much. It is really really obvious when it’s a women’s basketball game versus a men’s game.”
The atmosphere at Duke men’s basketball is a big reason Power chose Duke.
“Our crowd gives us superpowers,” he said. “The energy they bring makes you feel like you can do something you never thought you could do.”
None of that energy shows up for the women’s games.
“It’s just like a couple of old people, like love them, but really that is our only fanbase,” said Donovan. “Sometimes there might be grad students who have nothing better to do though.”
“It’s disappointing because, like, this is D1 basketball,” said Donovan.
Nellie Purdy also contributed to this story.
