More people need to watch women’s sports, especially when it is a sport that is also played by men: basketball, hockey, etc.

Even when I Google-searched, “how many people watched the Olympic women’s hockey gold medal game,” the first link it gave me outside of the AI Overview was about the men’s hockey gold medal game.

Sports Business Journal estimated that the number of viewers peaked at about 7.7 million people, which is quite impressive and has put the gold medal game as the most-watched women’s hockey game.

However, when you look at how many people watched the men’s gold medal game, the NHL reported that 26 million people watched the game at peak viewership.

When looking at basketball viewership, the NBA gets significantly more viewers than the WNBA.

The NBA reported more than 87 million people watched games on television in 2025, while the WNBA reported about 53 million viewers watching televised games in 2025; this number for the WNBA was the highest that it had ever been.

Even at UCA, our women’s basketball team did very well in its conference this season, but there were not many people in the stands at any of its games, while the men had a decent showing of fans at all home games.

However, when you put sports that are primarily played by women into the conversation, they get a lot more viewership. Take volleyball, for example. Whenever the Sugar Bears play at home, the Prince Center is always filled to the brim with people watching the game, nearly every seat is taken and people are standing along the walls or sitting on the stairs of the bleachers.

When the Sugar Bears played in the Farris Center, they had a lot of people there watching.

Collegiate volleyball nationally receives roughly 190,000 viewers during regular-season matches, according to ESPN Press Room.

But you cannot help but wonder what would happen if UCA had a men’s volleyball team. Would there still be such an impressive number of audience members for the Sugar Bears, or would the numbers dwindle down now that there is a men’s team? Would you watch the men or the women play?

It also feels a little bit demoralizing that at UCA, a lot of the women’s sports teams are called the Sugar Bears rather than the Bears. Why does the university feel the need to differentiate between the men’s and women’s teams and why is it that not every women’s team has the title of “Sugar Bears” or why are they not just the “Bears”?

The beach volleyball team is the Beach Bears and the women’s soccer team is called the Bears. Every other women’s athletic team is called the Sugar Bears.

If you look at the UCA website about the history of the Bear mascot, it says that the women’s teams used to be called the Bearettes but it was changed to the Sugar Bears. Why not just change it to the Bears for all of the sports?

This also brings up the topic of schools differentiating men’s and women’s teams by adding “Lady” to the beginning of the mascots. For example, Jonesboro High School’s men’s teams are called the Hurricanes while the women’s teams are all called the Lady Canes.

It feels like there just has to be some sort of separation between the men’s and women’s sports; the women have to have some degree of separation from the men. They can’t be on the same level. They have to make the women seem softer or less aggressive.

People often argue that men’s sports are more entertaining to watch than women’s sports because men are just “better athletes,” but in my opinion, women’s sports are just as entertaining because the athletes have to fight ten times harder.

They have to push so much harder than men to break into conversations on social media, take Caitlin Clark, for example. She became a household name during the 2023-24 season at the University of Iowa. Her ability to shoot the ball efficiently shot her into fame, along with her infamous rivalry with Angel Reese. Clark and Reese are now both playing professionally and have helped bring more viewers to the WNBA.

Though women’s sports viewership has increased since COVID, it is still nowhere near where viewership of men’s sports is, and this is something that needs to be changed.