By Joshua Scheer
Moving a potentially decisive Finals game to a weekday morning tells fans exactly where women’s basketball stands in the pecking order.
The WNBA would like to grow its audience. Apparently, some of us will need to ask our bosses for permission to join it.
Game 6 of the WNBA Finals between the Golden State Valkyries and Atlanta Dream is scheduled for Thursday, October 29, at 12:30 p.m. Eastern. For those of us on the West Coast—including fans in the Valkyries’ own market—that means 9:30 in the morning. On a workday. With a championship potentially on the line.
That is a remarkable way to treat the biggest event in your sport.
Game 3 averaged 1.71 million viewers—the largest WNBA Finals Game 3 audience since 1999 and a 31% increase over last year—yet the reward for that enthusiasm is a potential championship clincher scheduled when much of the audience is at work.
I came to this series as a relatively new WNBA fan, but sports journalism is familiar territory. Before my work at ScheerPost, I worked with AFR and SiriusXM as a sports radio host and producer. I was working in the field during the WNBA’s early days and remember being in awe of players such as Rebecca Lobo, Lisa Leslie and Sheryl Swoopes. Although basketball wasn’t my beat, that admiration continued over the years with players such as Diana Taurasi.
And no one can talk about women’s basketball without mentioning Cheryl Miller, whose extraordinary playing career was cut short by knee injuries before the WNBA existed. She was the greatest player in the world and certainly in her household that included her brother Reggie, an NBA Hall of Famer. The documentary Women of Troy, about her USC team, is well worth watching. That team also featured Cynthia Cooper, another early legend who belongs in any debate about the greatest WNBA player of all time.
My sports journalism days are long behind me, but watching games—and now these Finals—at Untamed Spirits, a local bar dedicated to women’s sports, pulled me back in. The atmosphere, the fans and the basketball made me excited to be part of it.
The fans were passionate, knowledgeable and invested. Being surrounded by that energy made me want to come back. After the Valkyries’ latest victory, I checked the schedule, looking forward to watching the next game with that same crowd.
Then I saw the time.
A league had managed to turn my excitement about a possible championship celebration into a question about whether people could get away from work.
The explanation involves moving the game to Atlanta’s larger State Farm Arena, where the Hawks also play. The WNBA’s announcement says Game 6 was originally scheduled for 8 p.m. Eastern. Under the revised arrangement, the women play at lunchtime and the Hawks host the Cleveland Cavaliers that evening. The Hawks did move their tipoff back to 8 p.m. to accommodate the doubleheader.
That adjustment deserves acknowledgment. It also leaves the basic hierarchy painfully clear: An early-season NBA game retains the evening. A potentially championship-deciding WNBA game gets the hours when millions of people are working or attending school.
Would the NBA accept this arrangement for its Finals?
Would anyone seriously propose moving a potentially decisive men’s championship game to a weekday morning in one finalist’s home market, then congratulate the organizations involved on their flexibility?
I would like someone in league leadership to answer that question without disappearing into a fog of scheduling jargon.
Commissioner Cathy Engelbert’s announcement thanked the parties for their “collaboration and flexibility” and said the larger arena would give “thousands more fans the opportunity” to experience Game 6.
More seats are a real benefit. The Dream’s usual home holds approximately 3,500 people; State Farm Arena holds about 17,000. And the Dream announced Wednesday that Game 6 had sold out. Fans have once again demonstrated how much they want this.
But fans overcoming an obstacle does not vindicate the people who left it in their way.
A sellout cannot tell us how many workers could not attend, how many students could not watch or how many supporters elsewhere lost the chance to gather with friends. It cannot measure the celebration that might have happened at a neighborhood bar, or the casual viewer who might have become a committed fan over the course of an evening.
And for fans stuck at work, there’s the consolation prize: an 8 p.m. Eastern replay on USA Network and CNBC—because apparently the vision for women’s basketball’s future is the NBA’s 1979–81 past, when Finals games aired on tape delay and fans could experience the biggest moment of the season after it had already happened.
I know that last opportunity exists because I was experiencing it.
Places like Untamed Spirits do work that a league’s marketing department cannot manufacture. They give people somewhere to discover women’s sports together. They make room for the regulars who know every player and the newcomers still learning the teams. They turn a televised game into a shared experience—and give people a reason to return.
What consideration did those businesses receive in this decision? Did anyone assess the effect of shifting a championship game out of the evening? Did anyone ask what that would mean for the gathering places helping build the audience the league says it wants?
I am not claiming to know how much revenue any particular bar will lose. That is precisely the kind of question league officials should have considered and should now answer.
The burden extends beyond businesses. Watching live requires control over your time. Taking a Thursday morning off is easier for some people than for a cashier, a teacher, a delivery driver or anyone whose paycheck depends on being at work.
A recording can preserve the game. It cannot preserve the experience of a room erupting together when a championship is won.
And the explanation that scheduling is complicated becomes considerably less persuasive when the conflict was apparently foreseeable.
According to an open letter from Dream ownership, the team raised concerns about clashes with NBA games two months earlier and repeated those concerns during the playoffs. The owners said the issue did not receive sufficient attention or urgency. That is their account, and the WNBA owes fans an explanation of how those warnings were handled.
A Finals appearance is uncertain. The need to plan for one should not be.
Were other dates considered? Other venues? What broadcast or contractual restrictions narrowed the options? Who had authority to resolve the conflict, and when did they act?
I sent questions to WNBA communications about the scheduling decision, its effect on fans and businesses, and the alternatives considered. At the time of writing, I had received no response.
Those questions deserve answers. Thanking a list of powerful organizations for cooperating does not explain why ordinary fans are the ones being asked to rearrange their lives.
ScheerPost does not usually cover sports, but the questions here are familiar: Who gets priority? Whose time matters? Who absorbs the inconvenience when institutions make decisions?
Women’s basketball cannot receive equal treatment only when equal treatment is convenient. The commitment has to survive an arena conflict, a broadcast negotiation and a men’s regular-season schedule.
The players have delivered a championship series. Fans have filled the seats and built communities around it. Businesses have opened their doors and put women’s sports at the center of the room.
League leadership should be expected to meet that commitment with competent planning.
I went to Untamed Spirits, watched these games and wanted more. That should be a league’s easiest opportunity.
Instead, its invitation to a possible championship celebration arrived with a condition: Hope you can get Thursday morning off.
I’m with them call in sick.
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