Despite the rising reputation of women’s sports, media coverage of sports betting has not given them extra consideration, in accordance with analysis by Brian Petrotta, an assistant professor of sports media and communication on the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
The forthcoming research, “The gender dichotomy of wagering expertise: A content analysis of Daily Wager/ESPN BET Live shows during March Madness,” was lately honored by the Broadcast Education Association. Petrotta and co-author Travis Bell of the University of South Florida analyzed 4 years of March Madness sports betting coverage to look at how the women’s event is represented.
“It’s not going away, so it’s about being clear about what sports betting is and when or why it’s OK to do it,” Petrotta stated. “When I talk about it as a market, it’s different from a sound financial investment. As sports media professionals, we can present sports betting as what it is, and people will still enjoy it and maybe understand it better than as a get-rich-quick scheme.”
Petrotta has additionally taught a particular subjects course about reporting on sports betting.
The research examined ESPN wagering exhibits aired throughout March Madness from 2021 to 2024. The staff checked out questions like how a lot time is spent on women’s sports, how prominently feminine broadcasters are featured and who was recommending bets throughout the present.
“We’ve kind of hit an inflection point with women’s sports where it’s more popular than it’s ever been, it’s more visible than it’s ever been, and that’s kind of come up alongside this spread of sports betting,” Petrotta stated. “We wanted to see, how are we treating women’s sports from a sports betting-specific perspective.”
They discovered programming devoted roughly 10% of airtime to the women’s event with the remainder spent on the boys’s, and fewer than 9% of picks beneficial have been associated to the women’s event. Female broadcasters accounted for about 16% of on-air expertise making betting suggestions.
Petrotta stated the information on sports betting mirrored conventional patterns in sports media usually, which trended towards much less coverage of women’s sports and fewer feminine broadcasters on the air.
“There are certain areas in sports media we ‘allow’ women to be a part of, like the sideline reporter for football,” Petrotta stated. “That’s a role that’s almost exclusively women; we don’t see a lot of women in play-by-play. Maybe women’s sports is there but it isn’t the thing that leads off the sportscast. It’s still kind of confined to these pockets.
“Most of sports betting is conducted by men and predominantly on men’s sports, but the flip side is if you put women’s sports in prime time and you have high production value for women’s games, people will watch.”
Petrotta stated one shock from the information was that the rise in reputation for women’s sports in current years didn’t correlate to a rise in coverage throughout the window they studied. The ultimate 12 months, 2024, was the 12 months former Iowa women’s basketball star Caitlin Clark was on the peak of her reputation and extra eyes have been on the women’s event than ever earlier than. However, Petrotta stated, this didn’t translate to a lot change in coverage in the sports betting area.
“There were more people watching the women’s tournament than the men’s tournament,” he stated. “Here we have this generational superstar, so obviously they would talk about it more in 2024 than in 2021, and that really wasn’t the case. The discussions tended to be centered on Caitlin Clark and less about individual games, but in terms of the amount of time and betting recommendations, it didn’t really change at all.”
They additionally famous that the applications beneficial a greater variety of bets throughout the males’s event than the women’s. For instance, analysts may make picks solely concerning the winner of a women’s recreation and some extent unfold, whereas for a males’s recreation they may additionally focus on odds on what number of three-pointers a sure participant would make or different extra particular recreation stats.
Their analysis additionally noticed that consultants introduced on air to debate women’s games have been extra more likely to have a former coach or participant analyze recreation play, whereas most of the broadcasters talking concerning the males’s games didn’t have the identical background in the game, however have been introduced on as consultants particularly on betting.
“When talking about women’s sports, they would often break down the Xs and Os,” Petrotta stated. “They didn’t always recommend bets necessarily. With the people talking about men’s sports, they generally were not coaches; they were not former players, so that’s something that’s probably worth exploring more from a credibility standpoint.”
Moving ahead, Petrotta stated analysis on sports betting demonstrates how sports media professionals can — and maybe ought to — present higher training to audiences concerning the which means behind components just like the creation of betting strains. He stated broadcasters throughout the 2024 women’s event have been a great instance of this, explaining to new audiences how sportsbooks arrived on the line for Caitlin Clark’s factors per recreation.
“I think we can do a better job of explaining odds and what they mean,” Petrotta stated. “There’s a number of sports fans who have no idea what those numbers mean. So we can be transparent with what this is and provide more education about how these odds come about.”
Petrotta stated these in sports media can higher serve audiences by serving to folks grasp that understanding the sport is completely different from understanding how the betting market works.
“It helps pop that myth of ‘I think I know sports, so I’m going to be successful at sports betting,’” Petrotta stated. “Unlike a lottery ticket, which we know is luck, with sports betting, we think our knowledge is so good that we have a better chance of winning this.”