With a little luck on Saturday, the Northwest could become the temporary center of the sporting world.
Last week, the Seattle Storm captured the championship in the Women’s National Basketball Association, reaching the pinnacle of their sport. On Saturday, the Portland Thorns play in the championship game of the National Women’s Soccer League, a professional league that features many of the world’s best players. A rally and parade on Sunday allowed the Storm players to revel with thousands of fans, and we hope a similar celebration is warranted for the Thorns next week.
Although comparisons to big-time men’s professional sports are inevitable, such contrasts miss the point of athletics and ignore the excitement that is generated by any local team competing for a championship. Three decades ago it was inconceivable for women’s team sports to generate a following in this country; now, there are stable leagues that provide opportunities for some of the world’s best basketball and soccer players and, in turn, provide inspirational role models for coming generations.
The Portland area has been instrumental in that development. The Thorns have led the women’s soccer league in attendance for each of the organization’s six years, and this season an average of 16,959 fans watched home games at Providence Park near downtown. Portland’s importance to the National Women’s Soccer League is evident in the fact that Saturday’s championship match was awarded to the city long before the Thorns qualified for the contest. That serves to reinforce Portland’s self-proclaimed status as “Soccer City USA,” a moniker that local residents adopted some 40 years ago.
America’s professional women’s sports leagues cannot compare with the modern NBA or NFL or Major League Baseball in terms of popularity or revenue or player salaries. But there has been growth. The National Women’s Soccer League’s nine teams this season averaged more than 6,000 fans per game; by comparison, it took the men’s National Basketball Association 21 seasons before reaching that figure in 1966-67.
In sports or entertainment or just about any other industry, popularity equals revenue and revenue is tied to employee salaries. Some WNBA players have brought up the issue of pay this summer, noting that the average player salary is about $75,000 while the minimum NBA salary is more than $800,000. This is a specious discussion; the men’s league generates more than $7 billion in revenue, while the women’s league brings in less than 1 percent of that amount.
We respect the rights of employees who generate revenue to seek a fair share of that revenue; nobody, after all, pays to watch Seattle Seahawks and Portland Trail Blazers owner Paul Allen shoot a 3-pointer. But we also view the success of Northwest teams as a simple opportunity to experience the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat. Sports provide an enjoyable diversion from the pressures of daily life, and watching people who are the best in their craft compete at the highest level is endlessly entertaining.
Fans and the media often are distracted by sports’ warts, by trouble-making athletes or controversies on or off the field. But at their heart, the competitions remain childhood games.
That will be the case Saturday when the Portland Thorns meet the North Carolina Courage for the championship of their sport. The athletes will be playing as they have since they were children. The difference is that this time there will be about 17,000 people in the stands.
