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    In Pro Sports, as in the U.S., Political Support Is Divided

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    A pro-Harris video from LeBron James. A pro-Trump hat on Nick Bosa. With Election Day near, more have been showing their preference.Over the past eight years, the three top American sports leagues — the National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball and the National Football League — have at times dived headlong into political maelstroms.In 2016, the N.B.A. moved its All-Star Game out of North Carolina to protest a state law that eliminated anti-discrimination protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Baseball moved its All-Star Game out of Georgia in 2021 in reaction to the enactment of more restrictive voting rules. And in 2020, as President Donald J. Trump reiterated criticism of N.F.L. players who knelt during the national anthem, Commissioner Roger Goodell issued a statement supporting players’ right to peacefully protest and condemning “the systematic oppression of Black people.”During this presidential cycle, the leagues have stayed neutral, their only message being encouraging people to vote. However, many owners, players and coaches have opened up their wallets or their mouths in support of candidates. In recent days, the Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James announced his support of Vice President Kamala Harris, and the San Francisco 49ers defensive lineman Nick Bosa sported a hat with Mr. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan on national TV.It was a show of how the professional sports world, just like the country, is divided by presidential politics.Jonathan Isaac, who plays for the Orlando Magic, and Harrison Butker, the kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs, have perhaps been the most vocally conservative active athletes in the three leagues. Mr. Butker was little known outside the N.F.L. until he gave a commencement address in May at Benedictine College, a conservative Roman Catholic school in Kansas, in which he said the women in the audience were probably more excited to get married and have children than they were about their degrees. He subsequently started a political action committee to support Mr. Trump.Mr. Isaac has been well known in conservative circles since he declined to join many other N.B.A. players in kneeling during the national anthem when the league restarted in a Covid “bubble” setting four years ago in Orlando, Fla. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Rebecca Lobo Helped Build the WNBA. Now She’s Seeing It Flourish.

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      Lobo, one of the W.N.B.A.’s first stars, will now be broadcasting perhaps the most anticipated postseason in league history.Rebecca Lobo’s shoelace was untied.If it were anyone else dressed in morning sweats, standing in line for mediocre coffee in a hotel lobby this month, the stray lace might have gone unnoticed. But in New York City, hours before her former team, the New York Liberty, was set to play just a few subway stops away at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, her fans couldn’t let it go.As Lobo waited for her caffeine fix, two different people cautiously reached up to tap the 6-foot-4 Lobo on the shoulder and let her know about the shoelace. Each time, she was grateful and gracious.“I’m like my own children — ignoring the good advice I’m getting,” she said with a smile.Lobo’s approachability belies the fact that, in the history of women’s basketball, she is royalty. At the University of Connecticut, she was the star of the 1995 team that won the first of the program’s 11 national championships. She was part of the United States’ gold-medal-winning team at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. And Lobo, Lisa Leslie and Sheryl Swoopes were the first three players to sign with the Women’s National Basketball Association when it was founded in 1997.Now, more than 20 years since her playing days ended, Lobo, 50, again finds herself in the middle of a pivotal moment in the sport’s history. As the top analyst for ESPN’s W.N.B.A. coverage, she will be calling perhaps the most anticipated postseason the league has ever seen.“We’re on the ascent,” Lobo said of the sport in an interview.The W.N.B.A., whose playoffs began over the weekend, has been one of the hottest topics in sports for months. A star-studded rookie class, led by Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese, has generated unprecedented interest, shattering television ratings and game attendance records. That has also invited a wide range of commentary, from the informed to those approaching the game as though it had come out of nowhere.What sets Lobo apart from the hot takes of social media is her depth of knowledge. It’s difficult to get more institutionally aware than someone who has been with the W.N.B.A. since its founding.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      W.N.B.A.’s Nneka Ogwumike Takes Over More Than a Vote From LeBron James

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      Nneka Ogwumike, a nine-time All-Star, will lead More Than a Vote, which will focus on women’s reproductive rights this election cycle.More Than a Vote, a nonprofit organization founded by LeBron James in 2020, is rebooting this fall with a new focus on women’s issues and reproductive rights.Nneka Ogwumike, a nine-time W.N.B.A. All-Star with the Seattle Storm and president of the players union, will take over James’s role in leading the organization, and has recruited a group of female athletes to her cause.“It’s more than just abortion,” Ogwumike said in an interview. “It’s all about educating people about all the different roles that exist in society that support and protect the freedoms of women when it comes to family planning, I.V.F., birth control, everything. There’s just a lot that’s at stake.”More Than a Vote was founded when, motivated by nationwide protest movements after the killing by police of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, athletes like James said they were starting to think more deeply about how they could use their platforms.The organization was focused on protecting voting access for Black voters, including collaborating with NAACP Legal Defense Fund on a multimillion-dollar initiative to recruit poll workers. It partnered with teams to open sports arenas and stadiums as polling locations and created television ads and digital content designed to encourage voting. The organization raised about $4.2 million in 2020, twice the amount it expected. However, it has been essentially dormant for the past few years.Ogwumike, who volunteered as a poll worker in 2020, began speaking with James this year. At that point, James and his associates had been discussing the prominence of discussions about reproductive rights, as well as the increased attention around women’s sports. (Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to make abortion rights a focus of her campaign against former President Donald J. Trump.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      WNBA’s Popularity Booms but Money for Players Hasn’t Kept Pace

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      Fans and brands have embraced the league, but rules have kept its growing financial success from fully trickling down to the players.Allisha Gray is a 29-year-old guard for the Atlanta Dream. She is six feet tall, speaks with a central Georgia drawl and smiles as if she’s keeping the best secret.During the W.N.B.A.’s All-Star weekend, she jumped into a whole new tax bracket. Her salary this year is $185,000, but she earned an additional $115,150 on Friday by winning the league’s 3-point contest and skills competition.The W.N.B.A. awards $2,575 to each winner in its skills competition and its 3-point contest, but most of Gray’s windfall came courtesy of a deal announced the day before between the players’ union and the insurance company Aflac, which agreed to pay $55,000 per winner.Her situation illustrated a theme of the league’s All-Star festivities. There is more money than ever coming into the W.N.B.A. from sponsors, ticket sales and new media rights deals, like the ones announced on Wednesday, which are expected to be worth six times what its current deals are. The presence of the rookies Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese has exponentially increased interest in the league this season, and many fans of those two players have stayed to watch the rest of what the league has to offer.But the W.N.B.A. has never been profitable. The league’s financial health has been shaky for most of its 28 seasons. Because of that, player salaries and benefits, which are outlined in the collective bargaining agreement, are a fraction of what their male counterparts in the N.B.A. receive.As its popularity booms, the W.N.B.A. has made some concessions to players beyond the collective bargaining agreement, but it isn’t quite ready to fully loosen its purse strings. Some owners would also like to make serious investments in players, but league rules protecting competitive balance often don’t allow for that.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      WNBA Players Seek Expert Advice as They Assess Next Union Contract

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      With the league’s popularity rising, players have never had more leverage when it comes to issues like salaries, travel accommodations and revenue sharing.W.N.B.A players have never had more leverage than they have right now.A sparkling rookie class, headlined by Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese, has catapulted a league that was already growing into a new stratosphere in terms of popularity and visibility. Attendance and viewership records are being shattered, and everyone wants to know why the players’ salaries aren’t higher. The league is about to receive a windfall from a newly negotiated media rights deal which is expected to earn it at least six times what it does in the current deal, according to a person familiar with the numbers who spoke on condition of anonymity because the deal has not been finalized.It would seem an ideal time to take advantage of the opportunity they have this fall to opt out of their collective bargaining agreement, two years before it is set to expire.But the players’ union doesn’t want to be too hasty. So last month, it created a five-person advisory committee consisting of lawyers, academics and financial and media professionals to help its members parse the decision.“What we need to do as players and as part of the P.A. is we make a united decision, but also listen to the pros and the cons both ways,” said Breanna Stewart, forward for the New York Liberty and the league’s most valuable player last season. “Staying in, opting out — what are our goals going forward, especially after the things that have changed this year?” said Stewart, a vice president for the union.The advisers are Claudia Goldin, a Harvard professor who won the Nobel Prize in economics last year for her work on women in the labor market; W. Charles Bennett, a former F.B.I. agent, as well as an accountant and fraud investigator; Deborah Willig, managing partner at the Philadelphia law firm Willig, Williams and Davidson, who has negotiated on behalf of other players’ unions; Tag Garson, a longtime executive in sports and entertainment; and David Cooper, a communications specialist and professor at New York University.The professional credentials of the advisory group are a sign of the importance the union is placing on the next contract. Travel arrangements — players hope to codify charter flights into the next C.B.A. — salaries and the structure of revenue sharing are expected to be significant issues.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What Caitlin Clark’s Arrival Could Mean for WNBA’s Business

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      Clark’s arrival has many betting on the W.N.B.A.’s success. But certain structural disadvantages persist, including how much the players earn.The business of women’s basketball is booming. And the start of the 2024 W.N.B.A. season has many wondering if the sport is entering a new economic era.The arrival of stars like Caitlin Clark, the former University of Iowa phenom who is now a rookie with the Indiana Fever, has boosted interest and ticket sales. All the league’s teams will fly charter for the first time this season, team sponsorships are growing, and marquee players are racking up endorsement deals. A new TV deal could fill its coffers and further elevate the league’s profile.But there are still obstacles the league needs to overcome before attaining the kind of stature that other professional sports leagues have. The average W.N.B.A. salary is around $120,000, much lower than the N.B.A.’s, and the relatively low pay has traditionally prompted even the highest-earning players to play overseas during the league’s off-season in order to make extra money. The league has long had stars, but it has struggled to market their skills and personalities to a mass audience.How the W.N.B.A. capitalizes on the current moment — and approaches its more prominent place in the media landscape — could have a significant effect on the league’s future.A chance to capitalize.More than 18 million people, a record, watched the University of South Carolina beat Clark and Iowa in the women’s N.C.A.A. tournament final this year, up from the roughly 10 million who watched the title game in 2023, which was also a record. This year, for the first time, more people watched the women’s final than the men’s.Clark has had a unique effect. In her four years at Iowa, she broke the Division I scoring record for men and women and led the Hawkeyes to consecutive national title games. She also helped sell out arenas and boost TV ratings, and has become one of the most visible stars in all of college sports. According to a March poll conducted by Seton Hall University’s School of Business, Clark was the most well-known college basketball player in the country, with 44 percent of Americans saying they had heard of her.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Caitlin Clark Hype Will Test the W.N.B.A.’s Television Limits

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      The docuseries “Full Court Press” closely tracked college stars like Clark and Kamilla Cardoso. Fans who want to follow elite W.N.B.A. rookies could have a tougher time.The decision makers for the docuseries “Full Court Press” chose wisely when selecting which women’s college basketball players they would follow for an entire season.They recruited Caitlin Clark, whose long-distance shots at the University of Iowa made her a lucrative draw. Kamilla Cardoso, a Brazilian attending the University of South Carolina, could provide an international perspective. Kiki Rice, from the University of California, Los Angeles, would be the talented but reserved young prospect.Those selections proved fortuitous when each player advanced deep into the N.C.A.A. tournament. Clark and Cardoso competed in the most-watched women’s championship game in history before becoming two of the top three picks in the W.N.B.A. draft.“The way that it turned out, it’s like, ‘This is not real life,’” said Kristen Lappas, the director of the four-part ESPN series that will air on ABC on Saturday and Sunday. “That just doesn’t happen in documentary filmmaking.”Interest in women’s basketball is surging because of young talent. Clark, Cardoso and other top rookies like Angel Reese and Cameron Brink are providing the W.N.B.A. a vital infusion of star power, quickly obliterating one record when 2.4 million viewers watched April’s draft.Now the league, whose media rights package expires in 2025, must capitalize by making sure fans can easily follow the players they grew to love during their collegiate careers.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      For Women’s Basketball, Caitlin Clark’s Lasting Impact May Be Economic

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      People have flocked to watch the Iowa star on TV and in person at a time when her sport is more valuable than it ever was before.Caitlin Clark, the University of Iowa basketball player who has dazzled crowds with her deep shooting range and preternatural scoring ability, is one of the biggest draws in sports.Tickets to her games this season were nearly 200 percent more expensive than they were last year, according to Vivid Seats, a ticket exchange and resale company. Fans routinely traveled hundreds of miles to catch a glimpse of her, lining up for hours before tipoff and boosting local economies.Nearly 10 million people, a record, watched her play in last year’s championship game, a loss to Louisiana State. More than three million tuned in this year when she set the career record for points scored by a Division I college basketball player. Ms. Clark and top-seeded Iowa begin N.C.A.A. tournament play on Saturday.Adam Bettcher/Getty ImagesNow, as Ms. Clark prepares for her final N.C.A.A. tournament — No. 1-seeded Iowa plays its first game on Saturday — excitement has reached a fever pitch. It has some wondering if Ms. Clark’s effect on the popularity of women’s sports, and their economics, will linger after her career at Iowa ends.Viewership, juiced by media rights deals, and corporate sponsorships are the key drivers of revenue for college and professional sports. In women’s sports, those have long lagged behind what men’s sports receive. In 2019, for instance, women’s sports programming accounted for less than 6 percent of coverage on ESPN’s “SportsCenter,” according to a study.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Dawn Staley Is More Than a Basketball Coach for Her Players

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      For the veteran women’s coach at the college and Olympic levels, honesty and discipline are central to leadership.This article is part of our Women and Leadership special report that coincides with global events in March celebrating the accomplishments of women. This conversation has been edited and condensed.As coach of the University of South Carolina women’s top-ranked basketball team, Dawn Staley is a dynamic leader at a time of surging global popularity in women’s sports. At 53, she is a Hall of Fame point guard who guided the United States to three Olympic gold medals as a player and one as a coach. And in her 16th year at South Carolina, Coach Staley just led the team to its second straight undefeated regular season. Now she seeks her third national collegiate title. A proud Philadelphia native, Coach Staley is an outspoken advocate for gender and racial equity in sports and beyond.Her secret to guiding young people today? Honesty and discipline, lessons she learned from her mother.You make statements with your coaching wardrobe, and a hoodie you recently wore declared, “Everyone watches women’s sports.” What’s different now?I just feel like there’s more access to our game. There’s more demand. I think it’s OK to tell the stories of our game and people in our game. I hope it’s not a fad. I don’t think it is. Because the fabric of our game is strong. It’s bursting at the seams right now on all levels, not just collegiately, but the W.N.B.A., even high school. Younger girls have grown up on the W.N.B.A., and during my time in college, we didn’t have that. We’ll get a big bump when the Olympics roll around.For the first time, there’s going to be the same number of female athletes as male athletes at the Olympics. Are you amazed it took that long?No. I’m not. I think we have been held back, intentionally, and the numbers and the demand today prove that.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More