October 26, 2005
Sheryl Swoopes Comes Out
ESPN: The Magazine (as opposed to ESPN: The Empire, oh please...) got today's big scoop in the form of an interview with WNBA MVP Sheryl Swoopes where she announces her exit from the closet:
"My reason for coming out isn't to be some sort of hero," Swoopes, a forward with the Houston Comets, says in the article. "I'm just at a point in my life where I'm tired of having to pretend to be somebody I'm not. I'm tired of having to hide my feelings about the person I care about. About the person I love.
"Male athletes of my caliber probably feel like they have a lot more to lose than gain [by coming out]. I don't agree with that. To me, the most important thing is happiness."
First of all, good for Swoopes. It's ridiculous that she had to hide in the first place, and I'm glad she's happy.
My friend Robert George has a question though:
I will be interested to hear what my friend Eric McErlain has to say about this from the various marketing perspectives: The WNBA has always tried to balance its marketing between its recognized lesbian audience and the "traditional" American-pie family; will the news make league executives nervous?
First of all, I want to make it clear that I don't make it a habit to talk to WNBA executives, and I doubt that I'll ever make it to their speed dial either. So what follows is just conjecture.
In short, I think this is a one-day story. The WNBA season is over, and even inside the Women's Hoops community, the focus these days is getting ready for the 2005-06 NCAA season. After all, this isn't the mid-1970s, and Swoopes isn't Martina Navratilova.
But while that's the short-term look, the league still has a longer-term problem that's only tangentially related to today's news -- and that's the fact that they are, at least in part, marketing to the wrong people.
Say what you want about Bill Simmons and Jay Mohr. Call them ignorant and bigoted if you like (though on this issue, I think the word juvenille is probably more appropriate), but the broadsides they've unloaded on the WNBA are the predictable result of trying to sell a product to a target audience that's not buying the sales job.
In short, they feel they're being assaulted (for whatever reason), and they don't want to be bothered anymore. We shouldn't exactly be surprised, after all, time and time again we talk about how feedback loops are more open and immediate than ever before. What Simmons and Mohr have done is heard the league's sales pitch, and instead of buying tickets and watching games, have told the league to leave them alone.
The league ought to listen, feel free to ignore folks like them, and look for ticket sales and television viewers in more hospitable climes. I think they'd be better off.
UPDATE: For more visit Deadspin and Women's Hoops.
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.ericmcerlain.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/5282
There's something that bothers me about your comments...though it's difficult to parse the disdain between your stated opinion and that of the tiresome legion WNBA-bashers of whom I have grown so weary.
When you say that they "are the predictable result of trying to sell a product to a target audience that's not buying the sales job," I can't help but think you're advising the league to market to a particluar demographic, and to 'leave all us normal people alone'.
In my opinion, what Mohr and others have done is far more than tell "the league to leave them alone," they've encouraged people to narrow down all the lifelong effort, skill, sacrifice and sweat put forth by every athlete in the sport with their (possible) sexual preferences. That's missing the point isn't it? It's dismissive and condescending.
I do have friends, however, that have attended just 1 WNBA game, and don't plan to attend another because they weren't comfortable in the company of the fans there. So be it. But do we tell the league to stop marketing itself to the general public? Have they lost the right to do so simply because some people aren't comfortable with seeing women holding hands?
Posted by:
at October 26, 2005 02:16 PM
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in,
.
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)
12:45 PM
![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.ericmcerlain.com/offwingopinion/nav-commenters.gif)