Colin Cowherd: “You’ve heard of the official ‘gold medal count’. How about the television ratings official count? The ratings are in… EVERYTHING exploded in Paris with one exception… Women’s basketball. The ratings couldn’t even beat the Toyko Olympics that happened during COVID. The men with fading older stars got 20 million viewers and over doubled the last Olympics. Even BREAKDANCING was a hit, and yet the women who won gold – attendance down, ratings flat. How?? Everything else exploded… Because there was a giant wave in women’s basketball, and they forgot their surfboard. Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese should have been on this team. Women’s basketball had a moment, and they couldn’t meet it. The reality is that they’re too insular. They’re too loyal to the niche women’s basketball media. Stop it. Ruffle feathers. Who cares if you leave some talented, albeit not-that-popular players off for Caitlin Clark? This was a MOMENT. I’m not here to lecture but this is a teaching moment. You’ve heard of that saying ‘a disruptor’… Caitlin Clark was the disruptor. Conor McGregor was a disruptor and he kind of ended boxing. Dana White leaned into it. When you get these ‘moments’, grab your surfboard and ride it. Don’t get insular, don’t get precious, don’t lecture us that we ‘didn’t watch the sport’. Everything exploded in Paris except women’s basketball. And now, the Premier League starts Friday, college football is ten days out, Dodgers and Yankees will headline a very interesting postseason, NFL Preseason… and the WNBA will be off the agenda. I spent the whole summer talking women’s basketball, we were like ‘this is amazing, this is fascinating.’ Caitlin Clark is Taylor Swift in sneakers and now it’s over. Nobody is going to care.
It was a moment; it was your time. This should have been the Olympics of Katie Ledecky, Simone Biles, and the women’s basketball team, and it was the only thing that was flat or down from Tokyo. 2028 in Los Angeles they will crush but that’s four years down the road. That’s not the ‘moment’.
The WNBA was just flying regular commercial flights like you and I. Caitlin arrived and you now have a two-year deal for their own flights. This was it; this was the moment. They say in business it’s all about timing and location. This was both. Paris was the location and the timing was now, and you left your surfboards at home.”
Listen to Colin Cowherd of Fox Sports Radio’s The Herd explain why women’s basketball should be kicking itself following their lackluster TV ratings at the Paris Olympics, saying the sport robbed itself of a once-in-a-generation chance to capitalize on the boundless popularity of Caitlin Clark playing on the US women’s team.
Check out the segment above as Colin can’t get over how incompetent the Olympic selection committee looks in leaving off star-studded rookies Clark and Angel Reese, saying this was women’s basketball’s ‘moment’ and they completely blew it, adding that with college football, NFL, Premier League soccer, and the MLB postseason on the horizon, the WNBA will now drift into irrelevance after nuking their monumental opportunity in Paris.
