What’s changed the most about basketball since you played?
Social media and fan engagement. We were so pushing for fans to come to the games. I worked (as an analyst in the mid-1990s) for Fox Sports Net, and we were the one entity that was covering one women’s basketball game a week. To see now those television contracts, those advertisement dollars parlayed into sponsorship revenue! That’s allowed the women’s game to be more competitive as far as the resources that you’re able to provide for student-athletes. That’s where the technology, the business analytics, and intelligence come in.
When you think about social media, you have so many different channels to tell the story, to engage your fans where they know you and feel like they can follow you because now you’re giving them the content. Now these athletes are sharing themselves with us in a more intimate way. That is a vehicle that we will continue to explore — how we can connect and reach younger fans where they are at.