By Casey Dobson<\/p>\n
Ahead of International Women\u2019s Day 2020, CBC Sports announced they would be committing to gender balanced sports coverage across all of their platforms. This was groundbreaking news, especially considering a 2016 study<\/a> conducted by the Canadian Women and Sport Foundation. The study uncovered that national sports networks dedicated 4% of their 35,000 hours of coverage to women\u2019s sports. It also found that these networks committed 11% of their coverage to sports showing both genders. All of these numbers in an Olympic year, meant there was a plethora of high quality women\u2019s sport action to choose from.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Once the pandemic hit, there was a heavy uptick in the casual fan\u2019s appetite for women\u2019s sports.\u00a0 Televised sports at the time had become as dry as a desert. The WNBA saw a 15% increase in viewership over the course of their 3 game Championship series. There was also a 493% jump seen by the NWSL for their final game. Certainly these numbers are a result, in part, to this being the first year these games were accessible with a regular cable TV package. Still, it proves that the tides were turning. Over the same time frame, Sport Media Watch found that all other team sports saw a drop off in viewership.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n This meant that the NWHL Bubble was happening at an ideal time. The appetite for women\u2019s sports was at an all time high. This is evidenced by the deal the league struck with NBC Sports Network to broadcast the semifinals and final games live on national television for the first time ever. Leading up to that, t<\/span>he numbers from the NWHL Twitch streams<\/a> were incredibly encouraging as well. <\/span>NWHL commentator Josh Appel spoke to the benefits of the platform.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201c[it] gives a chance for people who may not be seeking that to find an NWHL game, and there you go, there\u2019s another fan,\u201d he explains. \u201cWe had a ton of viewers \u2014 one of the games I did was on the homepage of Twitch and we were featured on there. We had 30-something thousand people watching one of our games,\u201d Appel recalls.<\/span><\/p>\n On the note of the league being able to attract new fans, scholarly research has spoken to the efficacy of this tactic. To grow the game instead of going after the traditional hockey fan.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n David Berri, a Southern Utah University economics professor, believes this is the best course of action. Berri says that women\u2019s leagues are wise to be seeking out different types of fans. Ultimately they are targeting a new audience altogether, unlike the longstanding male leagues. His reasoning is that, to be a fan one must be emotionally invested in the team itself. But a man who doesn\u2019t like women\u2019s sports in general isn\u2019t going to make that type of investment.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n