A12| Friday, March 6, 2020 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
THE HOTTEST TICKETSin college
basketball have historically been for
games in which the athletes were
men. Thanks to a transcendent star
and a hotly competitive 2020 sea-
son in the women’s game, that’s
starting to change.
The popularity of women’s col-
lege basketball games is surging
this winter, with several programs
saying that women’s games now ac-
count for over 50% of basketball at-
tendance at their schools. In some
cases, the women are the hottest
ticket in town. Although the face
value of tickets to women’s games
is often slightly less than for the
men’s contests, the average resale
value for women’s games can be
nearly double.
Years from now, this phenome-
non might be called the “Sabrina
Effect,” after Oregon’s once-in-a-
generation guard Sabrina Ionescu.
Since her arrival on campus, atten-
dance at Matthew Knight Arena
for women’s games has skyrock-
eted. During the 2016-17 season,
when Ionescu was a freshman and
the Ducks’ men’s team made a run
to the Final Four, the women ac-
counted for just 19% of total atten-
dance. This season, with the Ore-
gon women currently ranked third
and the men ranked 13th in the re-
spective Associated Press polls, Io-
nescu’s team is responsible for
58% of basketball attendance in
Eugene.
“Ionescu is such a blessing to
women’s sport right now and in
particular to women’s basketball,”
said Nancy Lough, a professor at
the University of Nevada Las Vegas
who studies gender equity in
sports.
Oregon is not the only Pac-
school whose women’s basketball
team has seen a significant surge in
popularity. At No. 14 Oregon State,
the women’s team accounts for 60%
To be sure, these prices are a re-
flection of the relative competitive-
ness of the specific men’s and
women’s programs in question. The
Gamecocks women’s team are the
favorites to win the 2020 national
championship while the men’s team
is ranked 63rd in the NET and will
likely finish its season in the Na-
tional Invitation Tournament. The
same is true for the Huskies. The
women’s team is historically domi-
nant, albeit in the midst of a down
year for the program with three
losses this season; the men’s team
has experienced a prolonged dry
spell since winning the 2014 na-
tional championship.
Historically, women’s sports have
usually garnered widespread atten-
tion when a transcendent athlete
comes along and does something
unprecedented, explained Lough.
Think Serena Williams in tennis or
Mikaela Shiffrin in downhill skiing.
Women’s college hoops has that
this year in Ionescu: in February
the senior became the only player,
male or female, in college basket-ball to record 2,000 points, 1,
assists and 1,000 rebounds in his or
her career.
“ESPN quite simply couldn’t ig-
nore her,” said Lough.
The rising popularity of women’s
college basketball in 2020 is the
culmination of several trends. Most
significant is a generational shift
about who can be a fan of women’s
sports, says sports marketing con-
sultant Joe Favorito.
“The movement started with Ti-
tle IX, but it took a lot longer than
we thought,” he said. “We’ve now
reached a generation where it’s not
just OK, but it’s really not unex-
pected that, no matter if you are a
man, woman, boy or girl, if you
want to go see quality athletes,
some of those quality athletes that
you can root for may be women.”
That’s a major shift from the
prevailing attitude in sports mar-
keting that only women could reli-
ably be fans of women’s sports. Re-
cent studies, however, have proved
that just isn’t true: Lough’s re-
search found that 84% of sportsfans support women’s sports.
Second, the landscape of
women’s college basketball has
changed dramatically in recent
years.
For much of the 2000s, Connect-
icut women’s team dominated, win-
ning 10 of the last 20 national
championships. But as participation
in women’s basketball has risen, so
has the number of talented athletes
playing college hoops. Quite simply
there are too many great women’s
basketball players for all of them to
end up in Storrs, Conn.
There are a handful of programs
that could rightly be considered to
be on equal footing with UConn
now, including Baylor, Notre Dame,
Oregon, Mississippi State and South
Carolina. Of the teams ranked in
the top 10, not one is undefeated.
“The parity and what that sug-
gests is the women’s sports product
is way beyond what it’s ever been
before with the quality of the ath-
letes and what’s on the floor,” said
Lough. “That’s what’s driving the
ticket sales and the attendance.” BEN MARGOT/ASSOCIATED PRESSJASON GAY
Knicks Let Spike Lee Walk Out the Door
A standoff with a loyal customer is the latest signal of a tormented franchise that can’t seem to get it right
Spike Lee, left, gestures in a hallway at Madison Square Garden while arguing with security officers before a New York Knicks game on March 2.SPORTS
of total attendance, adjusted for the
number of games, according to
NCAA data, up from 48% in 2016-17.
Ditto at unranked California, where
women’s basketball attendance has
grown from 19% four years ago to
31% of the total in the 2019-20 sea-
son. At No. 7 Stanford, the share of
women’s attendance dipped from
45% in 2016-17 to 38% the following
season and is back up to 48% in
2019-20.
Attendance is also growing in
the Southeastern Conference,
where South Carolina and No. 9
Mississippi State play. Just over
50% of attendance in Columbia is
for women’s games. Mississippi
State’s women’s team accounts for
54% of all basketball attendance at
the school. Again, this is partially
due to the strength of the women’s
SEC teams on a national level com-
pared with the men. Still, this level
of sustained interest in college
basketball across the country is
unprecedented.
The increased popularity of the
women’s game is also driving up
prices on the secondary market. Se-
curing a seat to watch the Oregon
women play is more expensive than
seeing the men: women’s tickets go
for $49 on average, according to
data compiled for The Wall Street
Journal by Vivid Seats. while men’s
games require an average of $29 to
get in the door. Viewing ticket price
as a proxy for demand, the female
Ducks are the hottest commodity in
sports-mad Eugene.
This lopsided pricing dynamic on
the secondary market is also in
play at several other schools with
powerhouse women’s programs.
Getting in the door to watch the
No. 1 ranked South Carolina
women’s team costs $40 on aver-
age, while men’s tickets go for $23,
according to Vivid Seats. At Con-
necticut, women’s tickets cost $
on average compared with $33 for
the men.Sabrina Ionescu has helped boost interest in women’s basketball at Oregon.Women’sCollegeBasketball
IsonaHotStreak
renewals and rebuilds, the streams
of coaches and underperforming
stars, clinging to hope against all
evidence that he might see another
banner raised to the rafters. Lee
felt like the last true believer in the
Garden. The Knicks losing Spike is
akin to LBJ losing Cronkite.
And sure, I get it:What’s the big
deal, can’t he just use the other en-trance?But here’s where the Knicks
being the Knicks comes in. In a dis-
pute like this—which, if you drill
down, is really just an ordinary
customer/business standoff—cooler
heads are supposed to prevail.
Were the Knicks an ordinary busi-
ness, they might be privately
miffed that Spike took it to ESPN,
but they’d rightly conclude thatthere was zero upside in escalating
a public tangle with their most
high-profile customer. The only
mission would be to make it right.
For crying out loud, the manwants
to come to Knicks games.
If you don’t already know the
rest of the story, you’ve surely con-
cluded that cooler heads did not
prevail. Instead of letting Spike
win, the Knicks pettily snapped
back at Lee with a public state-
ment in which the team claimed
Lee was using a “false contro-
versy” to “perpetuate drama.” It
called the idea that Lee had been
victimized“laughable,”a knowing
charge from a club that has more
or less copyrighted the term. On
Twitter they included a grainy pho-
tograph of Lee in a handshake with
Dolan on the night in question,
suggesting the owner and director
had indeed repaired the situation
before Lee went on ESPN. In other
words, they tried to embarrass
Spike Lee.
And it is incredible, in what re-
mains a crowded, streetwise city of
schmoozers and fixers, that one of
the most iconic New York brandscan never read the room. The
Knicks change their players and
personnel—they just installed a
new president, Leon Rose, but the
petulant vibe stays the same. They
get it, you don’t, and dissent will
eventually get you exiled.
Now Spike is in exile, self-im-
posed. He is clearly taking delight
in going rogue—his fulminations
on ESPN were more than a little
winking, especially when delivered
to Stephen A., a Stradivarius of
winking fulmination. Lee’s protest
already has an expiration; he plans
to be back next year. The Nets are
making a cute bid, but Lee’s not in-
terested in shifting his NBA alle-
giance across the bridge. This, too,
should count for something to a
stubborn franchise coasting on ge-
ography and the inexplicable faith
of its customers. I don’t expect the
Knicks to stop being funny; I don’t
expect them to turn into well-run
contenders; I don’t expect a misbe-
gotten basketball city to suddenly
breathe to life. But Spike Lee has
paid a lot of money to watch a lot
of crummy basketball. Let him use
whatever door he wants. KATHY WILLENS/ASSOCIATED PRESSSometimes I wonder
what I would do if
the Knicks finally fig-
ure it out. On one
hand, it would be
wonderful. I am old
enough to know that,
no matter what the Yankees, Rang-
ers, Giants, Jets, Nets, or Mets ac-
complish, there is nothing quite like
New York City when the Knicks are
rolling. This noisy town lifts into a
whole extra gear. The Knicks don’t
even have to win championships.
They’d just need to be halfway com-
petitive for this melancholy hoops
mecca to spring to life again.
On the other hand, and strictly
from the self-interested position of
a sports columnist, the Knicks, as
presently constituted, are a regular
and deeply appreciated source of
unintentional comedy. Despite play-
ing in the best basketball city on
earth, there is no common-sense
scenario the Knicks cannot hilari-
ously bungle; Over the past couple
of decades, this franchise has be-
come the New England Patriots of
the self-inflicted disaster. It would
be insincere for me to not acknowl-
edge this levity has an upside.
These are challenging times, and
when the news is mostly grim, like
it is now, we can always laugh at
the Knicks, habitually walking
straight into a screen door.
This is a long way of getting to
the matter of the Knicks and Spike
Lee. Lee, the Brooklyn-born Acad-
emy Award winner, is easily the
most recognizable Knicks fan on
the planet. His fandom stretches
from his Brooklyn childhood,
sneaking into Madison Square Gar-
den to watch the championship
glory of Earl Monroe and Clyde
Frazier; to the high-scoring days of
Bernard King, which peaked as Lee
prepared his first feature, “She’s
Gotta Have It;” to the ’90s and the
sharp-elbowed Patrick Ewing-Pat
Riley era, which paralleled Lee’s as-
cent as an acclaimed filmmaker.
Lee’s fandom may best be remem-
bered for his infamous verbal joust
with Indiana’s Reggie Miller in the
1994 Eastern Conference Finals,
but his devotion is heartfelt. By
Lee’s own estimate, he has shelled
out millions for his prime seats at
the Garden. Even in these fallow
years, on the ocean floor of the
NBA standings, he is not hard to
find, courtside, usually decked in
orange and blue.
Until now. Lee says he is done
with the Knicks, at least for the re-
mainder of the 2019-20 season. On
Monday, Lee got into a dust-up at
the Garden over whether or not he
was using the proper stadium en-
trance. Lee says he was using the
same door he’d always used; an en-
try utilized by employees and me-
dia members. The team says it
merely wanted Lee to use an en-
trance around the corner that every
other VIP/celebrity is asked to use.
As disputes go, it is minor-league,
who-cares stuff, but the following
morning, Lee visited Stephen A.
Smith’s ESPN Ayahuasca tent,
“First Take,” and, in a rivetingly
defiant act, ripped the club’s han-
dling of the incident; the team’s
owner, James Dolan; the franchise’s
long decline; and basically dis-
owned the greatest joy of his New
York life.
At the risk of sounding like a
self-absorbed New Yorker—I know,
too late, sorry—this is a big deal. It
is fashionable these days for Knicks
fans to theatrically renounce their
fandom, but Lee is no mere fan. He
is more famous than any Knicks
player, and he has been profoundly
loyal. He has been there all the
time, through the good times and
many more bad ones, the umpteenBYLAINEHIGGINS
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estimatedthathespendsperyear
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