Parker dropped 21 PTS, 10 AST, 9 REB, 4 STL, 2 BLK against the Seattle Storm on July 10th, making her the first WNBA player to have such a stat line!
Source: Best of Candace Parker vs. Seattle Storm – WNBA.com – Official Site of the WNBA
I was in the process of preparing an article to complain about the fact that Skylar Diggins is signed to Puma and Puma doesn’t have her on the website anywhere, and Skylar plays in Nike shoes. That reminded me that I’ve been complaining about problems with the WNBA and how sports brands could quickly resolve some of the issues. This then reminded me that I was cursing and angry about the pay of the WNBA:
To Supplement Pay, W.N.B.A. Players Put Their Safety at Risk – The New York Times
Which led me to start looking at the WNBA site so I could prepare to write another article about how the league could improve engagement. When I began to look at the site (I watched the Atlanta Dream beat the Phoenix Mercury yesterday) I remembered that I wrote this tweet during the game and no one responded:
@WNBA would benefit from a video overlay of the player's names/ colleges ala Amazon Prime's feature when you pause a video. It would help with player recognition & allow for a connection for those not familiar with athletes. My 10 y/o daughter just said, I don't know who they are
— Chris Burns (@archbyccb) July 9, 2018
That moved my mind towards another ramble… and isn’t this becoming a ramble? My bad. I just have so many ideas about how the league could get better, although numbers for viewership are improving. It just feels like the powers that be could really make the WNBA a better marketed product but they treat the league as an afterthought and that frustrates me… but what’s even more frustrating is that there isn’t a WNBA version of Ernie, Kenny, Shaq and Chuck which is really a part of the reason the NBA is so popular, which takes me back to the start of this post where I’m mad that Skylar is signed to a brand that doesn’t even have a basketball division on its website and that’s part of the problem.
Wow, I am really distracted and frustrated.
Watch this and feel better…Best of Candace Parker vs. Seattle Storm – WNBA.com – Official Site of the WNBA
Actually you can’t watch this right now on this site because the WNBA site doesn’t allow me to embed the video from the Source page which is a huge issue with the WNBA. The inability for me to quickly grab and embed a video into the website limits my interest in writing about the product consistently; or it could limit bloggers from writing about it.
This is Why More Female Athletes Don’t Have Signature Sneakers
A post like this could easily be a ten part series. There is so much to unpack, but ultimately this isn’t my job. I don’t get paid to run this site, so I write about sneakers because I run an online sneaker shop and I analyze the sneaker industry, which drives interest in footwear and apparel, and that’s where my money comes from, so I only get to write about the WNBA in the context of the sneaker industry, which sucks because brands aren’t doing enough. These are the same brands dumping ungodly amounts of money into shitty influencers and campaigns that fail to hit their mark over and over. Nike spends 8 Billion a year on advertising. A fraction of that money could be utilized to create team oriented marketing for footwear and apparel featuring WNBA athletes (and not just basketball shoes). This would increase the income by the players, promote recognition and if Nike planned it with the league, highlights could be featured on Nike platforms allowing for that ad money to convert into actual dollars for players. More money for players = more interest in participation, more competitiveness and more opportunities to grow the sport.
I’m all over the place here. I really do have some great ideas, but I’m just kind of frustrated.
In the perfect world the WNBA would hire 12 bloggers to cover every aspect of the 12 WNBA teams. Those bloggers will have access to the sneaker closets, practices, player interviews and they must do daily reports of highlights on the game. Those blogs will then be monetized in conjunction with the WNBA. The blogs won’t function like the team websites. They would function as an extension of the players. Each site will give a voice to the players telling us what they like about their cities, what books they are reading, speaking engagements, music playlists, etc. Because the simple fact is there isn’t enough daily coverage of the WNBA. Two days ago during the Dream vs Mercury game I could have covered the sneakers if I paused my tv and that post on the kicks would have gained considerable traffic because there were players rocking Jordan 11 Retros and a few other dope sneakers. Unfortunately I can’t tell you who was rocking those 11s because I can’t remember who was wearing what and the problem with the league is not the product, it’s recognition and the WNBA can fix that part.
Candace did drop an almost triple double and it would be really cool if I could have embedded the video here and you could watch it right now, but the WNBA wants to keep you on their platform I guess. My wimpy one thousand visits per day is nothing. Then again my measly one thousand derives from 85% direct traffic. That’s a dedicated number of readers. Now my sister site Housakicks (the sneakerhead side) gets 13,000 visits a day. Imagine if I posted the Candace highlight on both sites…
You get the picture.
