Sure, sports are about athleticism — but what actually keeps fans invested? Journalist Kate Fagan takes a fascinating deep-dive into lesser-known moments in women’s sports history and its media coverage, revealing why stakes and storylines are at the heart of what makes sports riveting.
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#TED #TEDTalks #sports
Jessica Cleveland
December 16, 2022 at 2:15 pm
Oh wait it’s Tedx. That explains everything.
oyeahjustcomenting
December 16, 2022 at 2:22 pm
I think men can’t appreciate women being better at us in anything physical. We want to dominate the world. it’s sexist but I don’t know if it’s possible to change our psyche. Are young boys capable of looking up to powerful female role models? I can’t say I know of any young boys who do😅 perhaps the issue is far bigger than sports: take professional careers ~~
Hector M
December 16, 2022 at 2:29 pm
I hate sports. It’s boring.
Md Lamim
December 16, 2022 at 3:06 pm
Please add Bangla subtitles in video
Mr Rod
December 16, 2022 at 3:06 pm
I am very passionate about my dislike of watching any sport.
Alexis Despland
December 16, 2022 at 3:36 pm
are the percent of weomens sportsstories covered equally woefull in all contries i doubt it.
Shen Storm
December 16, 2022 at 3:42 pm
As someone who has no interest in watching sports, I was hoping this would tell me why I don’t or why people do…
Ondřej Bronec
December 16, 2022 at 4:15 pm
The same – funnily enough I think answering that question would help woman’s sports more. It is great to say “find storylines” and “devote time to woman sports”, but it doesn’t matter at all if it does not force the stereotipical middle-aged man to turn on his tv to watch it on a Sunday afternoon.
Ligia Sommers
December 16, 2022 at 3:47 pm
Amazing 🎉🙏🏻🌹✨🙏🏻🎉
Brett
December 16, 2022 at 3:55 pm
Good presentation. But I still consider women’s sports to be lesser than men’s. When it comes down to it, while spectating a game, one can’t help but think that there are better players being presented elsewhere, for the sport you’re watching.
yoganaraska
December 16, 2022 at 4:40 pm
But if the women are competing against women and not “better” men, how could it be less entertaining if they’re playing at the same level as each other.
Alex
December 16, 2022 at 9:29 pm
@yoganaraska why pay to go to watch an amazing singer when you can go to a karaoke bar and see bad singers for free?
yoganaraska
December 16, 2022 at 9:56 pm
@Alex so why watch anyone box but heavyweights?
vsml
December 16, 2022 at 4:12 pm
This is sth I ask myself, whats the point or pleasure in watching sports…
ty Ty
December 16, 2022 at 4:30 pm
Contrasting personal story here. Recent reluctant F1 racing fan. Worked at a race in Miami this year. Interesting spectacle. There were other races before and between the practice and qualifying races. Beautiful street cars and male and female drivers. I had a terrible view and could only see a few seconds of any car before it left my view. Most people (myself included) did not watch the lower tier races at all. When the best cars hit the track behavior changed. Even though I didn’t have a “story line” I watched the best. I didn’t know the driver in the car of where they came from, but was fascinated. I still find it hard to recognize the teams.
The lower tier drivers spent a lot of money and time. Some were men, some were women. I appreciate their effort but didn’t invest in the sport.
TheSunshineHome
December 16, 2022 at 4:41 pm
TED has gone really downhill
Comeshot
December 16, 2022 at 5:03 pm
Men’s sports, like football and basketball, are entertaining because they play into the strengths of a man; high intensity, strength/speed, and physical.
Women’s sports, like beach volleyball and gymnastics, are entertaining because they play into the strengths of a woman; nimble, sexy, little to no direct contact with opponent
the WNBA is not playing to the strengths of a woman and, as such, is less entertaining. Why would you want to watch basketball played at a high school level when you could watch basketball played at a professional level?
Perry Wagle
December 17, 2022 at 8:15 am
I found that collegiate women basketball players in a scrimmage were way more interesting to me because they were more my size, and I could empathize with what they were doing. The men’s scrimmage following that was, in comparison, a bunch of alien lumbering giants. Possibly worthy of note is that I was playing a lot of coed ultimate Frisbee at the time.
TAKI4
December 16, 2022 at 5:09 pm
Dark duck 09
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December 16, 2022 at 5:14 pm
In the future, people will dress like nerds in 80’s movies
Galliano Vandecaveye
December 16, 2022 at 5:27 pm
As a cycling fan, I can say that it’s actually men who watch women sports… Can’t take that factor out of the equation that half of the world population doesn’t always show the same interest into sports. So obviously the money, screentime,… is going to be less unfortunately.
bob
December 17, 2022 at 3:43 pm
Agreed. I watch a lot of cyclocross this time of year. Often the women’s race is far better than the men. If Mathieu Van der Poel is racing it’s often over after a couple laps. I have several male friends who also love it. Don’t know a single woman who watches.
Brittany Wilcox
December 16, 2022 at 6:01 pm
I HATE watching sports! It makes me jealous that I’m not out there playing the sport🤣. I’ve always been this way. I’m highly competitive and just cannot wrap my head around it not being incredibly boring to watch others do it
Ryan Obray
December 17, 2022 at 10:56 pm
Doesn’t it blow you away how amazing people the players are though? To me, growing up playing a sport makes it all the more fun to watch because you REALLY understand just how talented they are at that level. It’s like a clinic in awesomeness.
Brittany Wilcox
December 17, 2022 at 11:11 pm
@Ryan Obray no🤣 either I think I can do it better than them or I get jealous lmao
Ryan Obray
December 17, 2022 at 11:19 pm
@Brittany Wilcox 😂 Fair enough
Aaron Davis
December 16, 2022 at 6:10 pm
The market has decided….mens sports have won, maybe womens sport got a late start, but I don’t ever really seeing them being on the same level. When given a chance most people are going to prefer to watch mens sports over womens sports.
BBALL ANALYTICS
December 16, 2022 at 6:58 pm
Sports is a voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles. In the greater GAME of LIFE, where the rules are vague and devoid of a manual defining winning… sports acts as a refuge with understandable and quickly achievable objectives and rewards. Another element to sports is BIRGing (Basking in Reflected Glory) and CORFing (Cutting off Reflected Glory).
BBALL ANALYTICS
December 16, 2022 at 7:01 pm
Maybe women’s sports gets less coverage than men’s because women are not as athletic and thus less exciting? Just a thought.
Brian McInnis
December 16, 2022 at 7:14 pm
Speak for thyself.
ṠḀṁṳṙḀḭ
December 16, 2022 at 7:40 pm
Bad boy 53
m
December 16, 2022 at 7:49 pm
Men have gathered to prepare for conflict or sport for 10’s of thousands of years.
Andrea Melissa Morales
December 16, 2022 at 9:28 pm
I love beauty pageants and people who like or participate in them get a lot of backlash for it objectifying women, so when we like something that we identify with like beauty pageants we get criticized and when we try things like sports we can never reach the popularity that men do. It’s about empowering each other to be able to pursue whatever we want without judging each other
Ryan Obray
December 17, 2022 at 11:12 pm
Great perspective. Along those lines though, I am truly concerned about female competition being damaged by gender politics. There’s such a strong push to normalize transgender competition that giving an undeserving “W” as a show of support is more important than the competition itself. If you follow beauty pageants, I probably don’t need to elaborate on specific examples. I think women deserve better than to have to add politics to their list of competition.
Andrea Melissa Morales
December 18, 2022 at 10:03 am
@Ryan Obray I couldn’t agree more! It gets to a point where the whole point becomes to push certain ideas and they start changing the meaning of the whole thing and whoever doesn’t agree is looked down upon
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December 16, 2022 at 10:11 pm
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Marcel Marechal
December 17, 2022 at 4:31 am
This is gross and misleading. Get this off the net
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Answer
December 17, 2022 at 7:40 am
Itelligente ted 20
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December 17, 2022 at 8:25 am
@Naranjo Tracey
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At
December 17, 2022 at 2:56 pm
Women are worse at sports? What is the point here? And why isn’t this high school presentation titled as the TED X that it is
DuckieMcduck
December 17, 2022 at 3:18 pm
Kate starts with an example where people loved watching a woman perform a sport record, ignores her storyline, then goes on about a hypothesis where people care about storylines in mainstream sports and not what they are actually doing. Legit cannot hope for AI to start making my media because the whiplash of how bad people are at it draws me to near dissociation
Isabella Taylor
December 18, 2022 at 7:33 am
She is literally using the example of the woman as a device to argue how ESPN and other media outlets haven’t given women’s sports a voice and are blaming it on consumer demand. It’s like you didn’t even watch the speech. 😅
DuckieMcduck
December 19, 2022 at 4:12 am
@Isabella Taylor lmao. You seem to be the one who didn’t understand what she presented. Her main hypothesis was that people watch sports for stakes and storylines. She uses it as indictment for women sports reporters who don’t enable their storylines and therefore may be causing women sports to be unpopular; yet she did this after ignoring the storyline for her original success story of a sportswoman which defeats her hypothesis in special type of fever dream fashion. Want another shot?
Isabella Taylor
December 19, 2022 at 7:45 am
@DuckieMcduck exactly – and mainstream media outlets don’t give women’s stories the long term storylines they deserve like the men’s. That’s the whole point. 😂
DuckieMcduck
December 19, 2022 at 1:53 pm
@Isabella Taylor That literally did not change the fact everyone wanted to watch her so her storyline was in fact irrelevant, what mattered was what she was doing. Want it drawn next time?
bob
December 17, 2022 at 3:36 pm
Sure, sometimes. Other times it’s because women’s sport is almost unwatchable. I’m personally a cycling fan and women’s cycling is fantastic, often better than the men. Motor racing is another; I’d love to see more women racing. Some think they aren’t strong enough, that’s nonsense. Lilou Wadoux races endurance, raced the 24 Hours of LeMans with no problems, and she is TINY! So there’s no reason women can’t do that just as well as men. But other sports like soccer or hockey are excruciating to watch. The skill level isn’t there, and the speed that makes hockey so exciting is just gone. Women just cannot face the fact that people don’t watch because the skill level is so low, so they have to blame someone else. The patriarchy doesn’t make women skaters look like they’re stuck to the ice they’re so slow.
Julia Henriques
December 17, 2022 at 4:03 pm
Another interesting point to consider, though, is that the situation in other countries, while not perfect by any means, is not as dire as in the US. It must also be broken by each sport, since some clearly favour women more than others. Internationally, voleyball coverage is reasonably equitable, tennis coverage is reasonably equitable, judo coverage is reasonably equitable, athletics coverage is reasonably equitable, and so on and so forth (if you look you’ll find a dozen more examples). Internationally, coverages that are not equitable are slooowly moving in the right direction. In countries that can get invested in those women’s stories, they thrive more often. Maybe such data doesn’t tell us much about the state of women’s sports in general, but about the state of US mainstream sports culture in particular. That’s some food for thought.
Vista Lover
December 17, 2022 at 6:21 pm
Population: Over 50% of humans are women
Female Viewership: Kim Kardashian = 12.8 million views per hour. Women’s sports = 8 views per week
How about women try supporting women’s sports to start things off? Nobody is saying men shouldn’t watch women’s sports. But seriously if you don’t even attempt to try to get women’s viewership, why are you even encouraging more views on women’s sports. Makes no sense
Charles Staudt
December 17, 2022 at 10:01 pm
EXCELLENT 👏 CHARLES STAUDT FROM BRAZIL 🇧🇷🇩🇪
Ryan Obray
December 17, 2022 at 10:49 pm
I hear Kate’s argument here and while I fully respect her perspective, I do feel like this topic often times isn’t accompanied by other statistics that I do believe matter. Before I mention them, something I’d add to her focus on stakes and storylines is pride. In many ways pride hinges on stakes but I believe that women’s sports get more attention specifically during the Olympics and the World Cup because everyone takes pride in proving that their country has the best athletes (men and women) in the world. I do think that her comment about the appeal of watching the absolute apex competitors is why when those stakes and the associated pride are removed, there is far less interest.
When given the opportunity to watch men or women’s basketball (or other professional sport), I’d wager that a very, very high percentage of basketball fans would rather not watch women’s basketball because the physicality and pace simply not the same. Frankly, in comparison it’s just not fun to watch, which reflects in attendance, viewership and revenue. That takes me to the main point of what I’d really like to know. She mentioned the very low percentage of representation that women’s sports gets on Sports Center. I’m curious to know the statistics regarding the demographics of viewers. I think it’s safe to assume that the Sports Center consumer base is primarily male, which would make remaining focused on the apex competition a wise marketing strategy.
Again, I respect the points made but I’d sure like to know more about the seemingly obvious statistics that aren’t convenient to the narrative. Course the way things are going, at some point female sports at the highest levels may only be played by biological men anyway. This is also what weighs on the minds of dads when they have daughters.
Kennith Dixon
December 17, 2022 at 10:57 pm
I disagree with Mrs. Fagan. If you still work for CNN I have a solution. It’s two fold, both of which require shifting focus. Shame or force will not goad men into using their free time to do something that they don’t willfully want to do.
Women’s Gymnastics and Figure Skating is often more enjoyable than the Men’s circuit.
Synthetic_Future
December 17, 2022 at 11:44 pm
“Why People Love Watching Sports ”
I absolutely hate it. Can’t stand it. I’d rather get hit by a car (at low speed) than watch a full sport match no matter the sport.
Watching a playthrough of a game though when done by the right person? Yes please 😀
NoticeDesign
December 18, 2022 at 6:21 am
Women aren’t as good at sports as men are. Sorry. I’ve tried watching a WNBA game. We only care about the women in olympics and world cups because they represent our country and we’re rooting for our country.
Sameer Shah
December 18, 2022 at 7:37 am
Why the misleading title Ted??!!! 😅
Patrick
December 18, 2022 at 2:05 pm
I still don’t understand why people are so obsessed with the World Cup and other similar things, it makes no sense to me to purposely watch people running around on a field for hours and hours and then start screaming out of joy or anger at random moments, and continue to talk about it with everyone for weeks. I thought this video would help me understand but it didn’t.
Franta
December 18, 2022 at 8:55 pm
I consider myself highly pro-women-right, but i don’t agree with this at all. Although all she’s saying is completely trues, she leaves out other factors influencing the women sports statictic. (the factors that doesn’t suit her theory). People watch man’s sports more because it’s more intresting. Sports media gives people what they are intrested in and saying its sexist is a joke. There are some sports that women are better at, so they are watched more. But (unfortunetaly) overall man are way better at sports so it is the way it is. Try to push feminism, where its really needed and don’t waste peoples precious attencion on unimportant bullshit.
Invox
December 19, 2022 at 10:43 pm
Oh, this is about WOMEN sports… That explains the outfit, I guess.
marco ocampo
December 20, 2022 at 7:03 pm
I wish she would make a Ted talk about why people don’t watch me play sports in my local league. This is just not fair. WATCH MMMMMEEEEEE!!!!