The darker side of the rise of women’s sports: With more visibility comes more online harassment

For Djaniele Taylor, attending WNBA games was the perfect way to rediscover a sense of community coming out of the long slog of pandemicera lockdowns.

- Noreen Nasir and Brittany Peterson

NEW YORK (AP)

The 38-year-old Evanston, Illinois, resident has regularly attended Chicago Sky games for the last three seasons after she watched the team win its first championship in 2021.

As a queer Black fan, she felt the games were a supportive and safe sporting environment.

"I was hooked, and I loved the atmosphere it was very queerfriendly, very family-oriented, very diverse," she said.

As the popularity of the WNBA skyrocketed this year, Taylor watched the price of her season tickets more than double since 2022. With the growth, she noted a "darker vibe shift," too: What always felt like a positive setting started to take a more hostile turn at times.

As women's sports set new records for attendance and viewership, Taylor and other longtime fans watched with optimism and unease. It's a cycle female athletes and fans of women's sports have come to recognize: With the increased and sought-after visibility also comes added scrutiny-as well as harassment and online abuse toward some players.

This year, fresh off the NCAA spotlight, former college basketball stars Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese made their WNBA debut for the Indiana Fever and the Chicago Sky, catapulting their personal brands as well as the popularity of the league among viewers.

Fans are tuning in for the love of the sport, as they always have, said Amira Rose Davis, assistant professor in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas-Austin. But they're also drawn by the dynamics between players like Clark and Reese, who faced each other in the 2023 NCAA championship between the University of Iowa and Louisiana State University.