This week on The IX Sports Podcast Basketball Edition, hosts Jackie Powell and Howard Megdal are joined by Kate Riga, a reporter at Talking Points Memo, to discuss the WNBA’s impact on American domestic politics.
Before Riga joined the show, Powell and Megdal discussed the statement put out by a collection of sports leagues and their respective players’ associations condemning betting-related harassment of athletes and their families. Notably, none of the leagues represented were women’s sports leagues.
“It was particularly notable that the WNBA was missing from something that included the NBA, as we have discussed on here many times. Players are the victim of abuse because of sports gambling. We see it time and again, and women sports leagues are suffering from it for a variety of reasons, even more than men’s sports leagues. We have seen criticism of it from the WNBPA. I think it was a miss by these men’s sports leagues not to include women’s sports,” Megdal said.
The WNBA in American politics
Then Riga joined the show to talk about the proliferation of the WNBA in right-wing American politics. This year is not the first time it has come up, Riga said, but this time the attention has been more sustained.
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Riga said that the right-wing outrage about the WNBA is part of a greater project tied to Christian nationalism with traditional gender roles.
“And so, what could be a bigger threat in that landscape than the WNBA, a league of professional women athletes who at least — you know, recently, are starting to be paid you know, a lot of money for what they do, and it’s a league made up of predominantly Black women and many, many gay women, right?” Riga said.
“And then add on top of that that it’s becoming massively popular. The threat is growing, right? Like other people are kind of joining this bandwagon, and all of that has been scary to them for a long time,” she said.
Tune in to the episode to hear more from Riga, Powell and Megdal on the issue.
Court Vision
This week, Powell talked about a piece she wrote for NBC Sports about the relationship between the WNBA and FIBA, and how it has changed over time. This year, notably, there was a FIBA World Cup break — but that will not be happening in four years, since the next FIBA World Cup will not take place during the WNBA season.
“I’ve learned that the WNBA has, I guess, accrued something that I’d like to call informal influence, and this is a political science term that means it’s like there isn’t really legislation that is saying ‘Oh you have to acknowledge the WNBA more’ … but it’s more like side conversations and different circumstances changing that give the WNBA as an institution more power than it has ever had,” Powell explained.
Be sure to tune in to the episode to hear Megdal explain the race to the bottom of the ranks in the WNBA in search of the best draft pick next year.
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