Women's sport is always hard to attract crowds. Not because of the standard, because of a lot of cultural issues.

It's OK for women to watch men's sport, but if men watch women's sport they are seen as filthy perverts leering.

Male competitions of the same standard generally attract even fewer fans, so I don't really buy that argument.

Perhaps some advertising and promotion wouldn't go astray. I had no idea the game was on.

"Male competitions of the same standard generally attract even fewer fans" ??

Not sure where that is coming from. A good few male players could have learnt a thing or two - or three - from some of the play and players on show in last night's game.

Some referees could have learnt how not to do it, but that's a different discussion.

Scheduling is definitely an issue but is not something that can be changed for this season at this stage.

I believe the answer lies in promotion/awareness, though exactly how to achieve that is not clear, since it's an on-going issue.

Probably only option is 'word of mouth' - which is pretty much the most effective form of advertising anyway. These days that probably translates to 'word of twitter' or 'word of facebook' but the principle is constant - lots of positive talk, on-going even if there's no obvious immediate improvement.

Less of the 'Male competitions of the same standard generally attract even fewer fans' - which I honestly don't understand, given the quality [international and WNBA] of players in the WNBL - and more of:
'should have seen that pass
'should have seen that black guard's pull-up jump shot
'should have seen Abby, she dominated everything
'jeez the defence was aggressive
'they just keep on winning
'the coach is back after his cancer scare
'it's only $10
'parking is easy
... and so on.

Most of the above points are valid, all to some degree.

Promotion - a few observations...
During the last few weeks here in Adelaide I have seen on multiple channels of nightly news/sports segment the following;

Every 36ers import arrival at the airport

An interview with Joey

An interview with Diamonds coach and separately on a different night an interview with Diamonds players, video of Diamonds at training

Interviews with players and coach of the Reds as they start their season this week in Brisbane (not even at home)

The only time the Lightning were mentioned was a story about coach Lucas health. Nothing since.

Surely it would only require one person involved with the Lightning to be tasked with creating a dialogue on a weekly basis with a tv channel (pick one with a female presenter), and provide info about upcoming games, arrange player interviews, etc.

In this day and age I don't see how any channel could refuse to allocate equal minutes of air time for this.

Definitely agree it's a promotion thing. IMO the Boomers are at the top of the class in terms of their crowds and promotion - while I do think sometimes they're trying to make the league all about them, I do give them credit - their crowds are the best in the league especially for a sport saturated city like Melbourne.

One thing the Boomers do really well is going to grassroots level and getting the associations involved. I think they had a competition to see which association could sell the most memberships and the winner received a visit from Cambage or O'Hea. They also partnered with a junior 3x3 competition between local associations and had those games at half time. IMO targeting the juniors is a good idea, it gets the whole family in the door and chances are they'll like what they see and return.

re anon ...163
Neither does Nick Kyrgios, Tiger Woods or the Australian cricket team, but we hear about them all the time

I think the click test would prove you wrong on that one.

Yeah, I know bad news sells...

I'm just a glass half full type, and believe in the "Build it and they will come" approach.
Which Melb Fan says is working in Melb.

It would be nice if they at least tried and persevered.

Lets be honest the club Pr has done nothing to get people interested or to get know the team. It was great to see the girls out at the Basketball Sa district finals, but I didn't know their names. Unless it is Abby Bishop or Lauren Summerton it is very hard to know who the players are.

The 36ers and the lightning are both being run by the same people but they are running it like the girls don't matter. The social media is crap with photographs that are either out of focus or of players backs. Why don't they get the guy who did the Premier Leagues photos to help them out?

It was School holidays this week they should have given every junior district and domestic player and a parent a free ticket. Get people interested and engaged with the team.

The PERCEPTION is that the WNBL doesn't warrant attention. I would argue that perception is false.

However, I recognise that perception rapidly becomes reality, so the challenge is to change the perception.

Many of the negative comments above are very good examples of how to reinforce the current flawed - in my opinion - perception of women's basketball, which I understand from many of these comments is seen as having little or no value despite featuring the best players in the country including Olympians and internationals.

I agree with Pop. Paul is a clueless whinger

It's not true just because one or two ignorant males don't appreciate women's sports ya doofus lol

The Lightning used to get pretty good support back in the day, so it's not like the team is something that people are unable to be interested in.

I laugh that some people struggle to read that fewer people watch male sport that is of the same standard as female sport without reverting to name calling.

The Matildas got beaten 7-0 by a Newcastle Jets underage team recently. Not long after, around 17,000 people turned out in Newcastle to watch the Matildas.

How many go and watch the Jets underage team even though they play at a significantly higher standard? And how many would watch male teams at the same level as the Matildas?

The answer is not nearly as many. It's pretty straight forward, and is not a commentary on the merit of supporting women's sport at all.

Whatever paul. Everyone knows you hate women's sport. It is clear through your years of following it and posting about it and having articles published about it etc etc.

You're right, I just watch it to build up the hate for my next angry post.

So what I'm reading in this thread amounts to:

"Sport A is better/has wider appeal/gets more clicks than Sport B so Sport B should not expect good crowds or media coverage."

Isn't that why NBL has smaller crowds/media coverage/appeal than AFLW? So that's okay too?

Me , I will go and watch Cambage play even though those on hoolahoops reckon she caint play... notta burton fan though...

What's with dumb policy that doesn't allow fans on to the court once the game has finished at Lightning games? Shouldn't the WNBL be promoting fan & player involvement once the game has finished? I believe most other WNBL teams actively promote this fan engagement but at Lightning games you get security guards running from everywhere once this 'massive security breach' has occurred. Turn it up Lightning & try to be better than that, you can't afford to continue to alienate your very small fan base!

^ Agreed.
That's disappointing to hear about the Lightning. Player-fan interaction after the games is one of the real positive points of difference about the WNBL (or at least most of its teams).