Just in time for the WNBA season, Dr. Nola Agha (and colleagues) have published two research papers related to the league. The first project, published in Sport Marketing Quarterly, was actually started with Cohort 50 in 2019! In sport, individual fans are viewed as members of larger collectives where shared identities and interpersonal relationships drive consumption behaviors such as attending, discussing, and watching the sport. Given the unique characteristics of women’s sport, they investigated differences between consumption networks in men’s and women’s sport by measuring the strength of fan-to-fan ties among WNBA fans. The most unexpected finding was that 28% of the WNBA fans in the sample had no one with whom they attended, watched, or discussed the WNBA, a group they called “IsoFans”. In comparison, these types of isolated fans were only 6.5% of the NBA sample. In an op-ed in the SportsBusiness Journal, Dr. Agha’s co-author, Dr. Risa F. Isard, argued that these IsoFans present an opportunity for the WNBA to create targeted experiences and increase fan community.
In her second research paper published in the Journal of Sports Economics, Dr. Agha and colleagues investigated the role of skin color and national origin in the allocation of playing time. These types of bias have been found in men’s professional basketball leagues in the US, Spain, and China, but no investigation had ever analyzed the role of discrimination in the WNBA, despite the international composition of its players. She and her co-authors analyzed every year of the WNBA from 1997 to 2022 and found no evidence of this type of employer (coach) discrimination due to skin color and national origin. Instead, the variables that mattered most in receiving playing time were points and assists, with a small benefit if a player had international experience. The results suggest that the WNBA, which is known for its social and civic engagement, is as inclusive on the court as it is off the court.
For more detail, you can find links to the full articles below:
Fan networks in women’s sport: An egocentric analysis of social fans and IsoFans
The Effect of National Origin and Skin Color on Playing Time in the WNBA
- Official publication (must log-in via USF to see the full paper)
- Open-source paper
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