(and Other Women’s Sports)
This article has been a long time in the making. I have been stewing on this for months, if not years! The more I think about it the more I need to vent. What is it? IT is the abysmal amount of TV and print media coverage for women’s golf events on the local and national levels.
My frustration really maxed out the weekend of the LPGA Kraft Nabisco Championship. This is a MAJOR golf tournament for goodness sakes (edited version). The TV coverage was limited at best nationally, airing for 2 hours in the evening on The Golf Channel during the early rounds and faring slightly better for the final round with 3 hours of coverage on CBS.
The finish of the tournament was one of the most exciting climaxes we have witnessed in women’s golf with Brittany Lincicome 
squeezing out the win with a dramatic eagle on the 72nd and final hole. That evening while watching the local news I was hoping for a ‘mention’ of the event and a replay of that final hole. What happened?? Nothing! Zero! Zilch! As far as the Cincinnati, OH market was concerned there wasn’t even a LPGA Major golf event played that weekend. I can’t speak for all other markets but I feel safe in assuming it was pretty much ignored outside of Palm Springs, CA… and perhaps the Asian market.
This past week there were two women’s professional golf events being played in different parts of the world (LPGA-Corona Championship in Mexico and The Duramed FUTURES Tour Historic Brownsville Open in Texas) and NOTHING was covered on air. Meanwhile both the PGA and Nationwide Tour events received more than ample air time. I understand that contracts are established and negotiated between the respective tours and the television/media companies. I know the LPGA has a new 10-year contract with the Golf Channel and a new sponsor, JGolf, the Korean cable company that displaced SBS recently.
What I don’t understand is how in today’s world, the LPGA and Duramed FUTURES Tour are relegated to such limited and in most cases, non-existent coverage at so many of their events. The last we saw the women on TV was almost a month ago!!
Is this due to lack of interest in women’s golf?? Is it a lack of quality play?? Are the women not pretty enough (like all of the men that play are sooooo handsome, right??)? Perhaps it is the negotiating powers within the LPGA itself? I don’t know have the answers but I do know that the talent on these tours is deep and rich and they should be showcased as much as the men are.
There are two levels in play here, the national and the local sportscasters. Nationally women’s golf has been thrown a ‘bone’ in terms of airtime. Locally, there isn’t even a hint that women’s golf exists. To be fair, not even the non-major PGA events get a mention on most local TV markets but when the LPGA’s first major of the year goes completely unnoticed, the hairs on the back of my neck bristle!
Maybe Cincinnati is the only anti-women sports market in the world but I suspect it is only a part of the problem. If your market provides quality coverage please send in your comments. As for the national coverage that is up to the Tour officials to work on.
Thanks for letting me vent! Don’t get me started on this issue with all of the other women’s sports!!
As always, we appreciate you visiting Ladies on the Tee Golf Blog at www.sherrytabb.com. Please let us know what is happening in your area of the world!
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Tags: CBS, Corona Championship, Historic Brownsville Open, J-Golf, LPGA, Major Tournament, The Duramed FUTURES Tour, The Golf Channel, The Kraft Nabisco LPGA
I completely agree. And I think there are alot of us out there that are truly golf fans and hate having to use the internet for coverage. Print and broadcasting folks need to take note.
Chillie Falls’s last blog post..To Twit or Not To Twit: That Is The Question
At least provide live streaming on the internet while we wait for the broadcasting world to get clued in.
[...] Original post by Ladies on the Tee [...]
Hello Sherry:
I could not agree with you more about LPGA broadcasts. I attended the Nabisco last year and it was great event. Fans had to take buses to the entrance because there were just to many fans to park in assigned areas. And again you are right about the deep talent the LPGA has it is ranks. I understand your disappointment…I to, who love this game so much realize that WOMEN have game and WOMEN advertisers should and I pray one day take notice!!! Until then all fans of the LPGA and WOMEN GOLF should write blogs, join Women associations and pass the word.
Keep up the good work,
Lynn Stellman
CEO
Ladies Links Fore Golf
LL4G.com
Lynn.Stellman@LL4G.com
Lynn,
Thanks for taking time to comment. It isn’t just about the LPGA but the Duramed FUTURES as well. When you have players like Lorena Ochoa, Christie Kerr and Christina Kim (plus many others) that have found their way to the LPGA via the Duramed there needs to be greater attention focused on these young women in print and broadcast.
What’s the old saying…”You’ve come a long way, baby!” Well, we have a LONG way to go to get things balanced. Hopefully websites like yours and this one will help raise awareness and elevate the game for these incredible athletes and get more women and women owned businesses involved!
All the best,
Sherry
Print media is as bad as broadcast. Golf magazine rarely mentions women’s golf which is why I will not be renewing my subscription. Golf Digest does a slightly better job of acknowledging that women do, indeed, play golf, but as you say, we have a long way to go.
I understand there are some online golf mags sprouting that are directed towards the women’s game. Perhaps they will weigh in for us.
Sherry, it’s great to see this subject come to the forefront, finally. I love both men’s and women’s golf and actually see very little difference in it from a pro athlete point of view. They all have game! So, why no coverage, I don’t understand it either since Tennis somehow broke through this challenge years back and now have a strong presence in their sport. I do want to point out that I do not think it’s the Sportscasters who are to blame! I can only assume that this issue is advertiser driven and if more women supported (ok, if they were consumers that these advertisers valued) the products being sold on these shows, maybe we would see more women’s golf coverage? It’s a very difficult issue to understand (certainly for me as a manufacturer in this sport) and I’m hoping your blog and it’s participants will bring to the forefront some ideas or solutions that we can all rally behind. In my view, women’s Professional golf is just as exciting as men’s and when the viewers of these programs have purchasing power that advertisers recognize, the tables will turn.
Brian….well said. Women have too much purchasing power to be ignored. We just have to make that power work for us.
Terrific article.
The great thing about the LPGA is that there stars are usually near the top of the leaderboard every week. Also, the many of the best players in the world play almost every week. The LPGA delivers great golf as proof in just the last few tournaments…Corona Championship and Kraft Nabisco Championship…a major won on the 72nd hole, classic. Ochoa and Pettersen dueling in Mexico was how golf should be and it is very unfortunate for fans that there was no broadcast.
Maybe sometime in the 21st century the print and broadcast media and advertisers will figure out that they are ignoring the wrong group!
As Mark Twain has been credited with saying, “When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Cincinnati because it’s always twenty years behind the times.” If the real world hasn’t started getting women’s golf news yet, who knows when we will. One would think our local sports talking heads would want something fun and uplifting to report rather than the perpetual losers our local professional teams have become.
Cincinnati media will only acknowledge that which has a “hometown” connection. When the FUTURES Tour rolls into town next month I’ll be interested to see how much coverage it gets since only one player is local.
Diane, I won’t hold my breath waiting for Cincinnati sportscasters to ‘step up’. The ‘Old Boys Network’ is alive and well here in Cincinnati!
OK gang, here’s my suggestion after reading the comments above. Why don’t you/we use the incoming Cincinnati Duramed Tour to campaign the Broadcasters and Newspapers with all your local women AND men golfers and tell them (every station via phone, email and social networking) that you want coverage on this event and that you will starting watching which ever local station comes through with your request. I think if enough people tell them what they want to hear, they will respond accordingly. Hey, it’s worth a try!
Great idea, Brian. I will start the campaign and ask all of my golf friends, male and female, to join in.
go get’em and don’t take no for an answer! By the way, a lot of media are on both Twitter and Facebook, and it’s gives you more direct access to them.
I love a greengrass effort like this!
I had thought it was just over here in the UK that this happened with regard to this tournament, but I guess that was a little naive. I have rung, written to and emailed the BBC on several occasions over the past few years about their not giving the score on their regular sports bulleins, their not putting it as the main item on the golf page on their website and their continuing to describe the Masters, in their extensive coverage of that as ‘the first major of the season’. All it seems to no avail. Perhaps a few other people would like to try!! They are not the only offenders, and there are the odd honourable exceptions who do actually know which the first major of the season is, but as a self described public service broadcaster it really is inexcusable. I have read the suggestion that the tournament be moved to a little later, but there is so much sport going on that it might not make any difference to coverage, and of course how one major is ignored is part of your wider point about coverage generally.
Unfortunately you are correct in that decades of sport media research has proven that women get far less (6-8%) of sport coverage compared to their male counterparts. It is indeed frustrating!
Nicole LaVoi’s last blog post..The “success” of Twitter in promoting women’s sports: ‘Show me the money!’
Nicole, thanks for that stat ( I think). Not only is that frustrating, it is RIDICULOUS but until more women step it up and get involved by using their purchase power and voices to inlfuence the sponsors/advertisers we are just ‘spittin’ in the wind”!