All Things Sports

Hello guys it is Vedant, welcome back to All Things Sports. Almost 3 weeks ago, it was announced that the F1’s women-only support series , the W series, would be canceling its final 3 races in the United States and Mexico due to financial issues. Now as I have stated in previous blog posts(go read them if you haven’t, they are great), racing in general needs a lot of money to sustain itself and a lack of money is a huge issue for the development of racing in a variety of ways. This burden reared its ugly head again with the cancellation of the final 3 races due to the series being over 8 million dollars in liabilities. Money rules yet again. However, it is not just the W series that is suffering from financial problems. The WNBA is notorious for having the same issue, with it never having turned a profit as a league and it constantly being millions of dollars in debt.

 This is a major obstacle in the development of women’s sports: the lack of financial viability. If leagues such as the WNBA cannot be financially successful in the open market, then women’s sports as a whole will lose its credibility, a disastrous outcome to say the least. These leagues and series need to be financially viable not only for the growth of women’s sports in general but for the people in these leagues. Jobs, opportunity, a living, all of these are provided by women’s sports and for them to be unstable is a huge detriment to women across the world. A lack of development and financial backing can rob people of opportunities that they may have otherwise learned. Take Jamie Chadwick, the star of the W series. It has long been discussed whether or not she could be in Formula 1 however, a lack of financial backing has denied her the opportunity to even get into Formula 2 or Formula 3, both series where it is believed that she could be successful if not Formula 1. This denial of opportunity again came from a lack of financial backing, something that wasn’t supposed to be an issue in the W series due to the fact that it needed less money than Formula 1. However, with the W series having financial difficulties, talents such as Jamie Chadwick may not get the opportunity they have earned. The lack of financial viability would serve to disencourage future generations as well with those in the younger generations being less inspired if the leagues that are supposed to inspire them don’t exist or aren’t successful. Clearly financial viability is a huge issue in the development of women’s sports that still needs to be solved.

I will admit that while I may be no expert, things such as tweaking with the format of games to make them more entertaining and better marketing may end up improving the quality of the product these sports leagues sell and thus help make them more financially viable. It’s something that the NBA has done to avoid tanking to great success: Adjusting the game in order to make it more competitive. So while it is a shame that the last 3 races were canceled, the best thing we can do is learn from them so that women’s sports can overcome these obstacles and be better for generations to come.