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| Val Ackerman gave up trading elbows on the court for relaxing rides in the country after breaking a finger in a rec league. |
Val Ackerman, the only president the WNBA has had in its seven-year existence, has a perspective that the leaders of other pro sports leagues lack: She played the sport in college (at the University of Virginia, where she was a four-year starter) and the pros. She talked recently with SportsBusiness Journal New York bureau chief Jerry Kavanagh.
Yours is not a 9-to-5 job. But it's a Sunday, and you have the whole day off. How do you relax?
Ackerman: My time away from the office is almost 100 percent devoted to my family: two daughters, 10 and 8, and my husband, Charlie, a tax partner in a Wall Street law firm. We work very hard to spend time as a family. I don't work out like I used to, but I love to bike-ride. So when I have a chance to be away from the city, I enjoy riding my bike out in the country, and not going very fast but trying to get rid of whatever stress has built up from the week before.
Do you still play hoops?
Ackerman: The last time I played I broke my finger. It was six weeks after my first daughter was born. I was playing in a women's lawyers' league, where I was the free-agent ringer. So when I broke my finger that was the omen that my basketball career was over.
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| High on the reading list: historical fiction |
What are you reading now?
Ackerman: "Year of Wonders." I love historical fiction, and this book is about the plague in England in the late 1600s and how one young woman deals with the adversity.
What newspapers do you make it a point to read every day?
Ackerman: The New York Times, New York Post. When I'm on the road I'm always looking for USA Today, the national edition of The New York Times and the newspaper of whatever team city I'm in.
What are your must-see TV shows?
Ackerman: "The Sopranos." I'm dying because I've got to wait so long for the next season. [Editor's note: The fifth season of HBO's hit show is not scheduled until next March.]
Favorite piece of music?
Ackerman: Anything having to do with Bruce Springsteen. As a Jersey girl, I'm a fan through and through.
What is the best sports facility you've been to?
Ackerman: I couldn't rank them, but the new arenas in the NBA in which WNBA teams also play: Conseco Fieldhouse, the MCI Center, Staples Center. Many now are "walk and talk," meaning they are wonderful places to watch basketball games because of their sight lines. They have very advanced back-of-house facilities. By that I mean locker rooms and media work areas are all spacious and comfortable. Their food court facilities are all very good and they really do enhance the fan's experience. I had a chance two weeks ago to tour the Toyota Center in Houston, and that will be a spectacular building as well. The SBC Center in San Antonio is another one. They're all first-rate.
What are the stories you are following closely in sports business?
Ackerman: The Women's World Cup was an incredibly successful and important event in 1999, and we're very hopeful that it can be reprised this year for the benefit of women's sports. We had a great deal of interest in the Title IX debate over the last year, and we're active in making our views known about the importance of Title IX.
Basically, any story that has anything to do with women's sports is of great interest to me, whether it's women's golf, the Annika Sorenstam story, all of the developments in tennis and the great rivalries that have emerged there. And in the next year we'll be following with great interest the women's college basketball season, which should be very competitive.
The Women's Sports Network was recently dropped in Canada. One executive believes that women watch more mainstream sports and was quoted as saying, "I firmly believe that women who want to watch sports watch mainstream sports. They're not gender-specific, they're fans." Do you agree?
Ackerman: I believe that women sports fans are more sophisticated than people give them credit for, and have become increasingly so. When I was growing up, my impression was that not too many women followed sports as spectators, in part because they hadn't played them themselves. They didn't have the kind of interest that comes from participation.
We're living in a day and age now where women like me played sports growing up. It was a natural part of our lives. I grew up swinging a baseball bat, throwing a football and shooting baskets. That was my childhood. And as a result, I developed a very strong spectator interest in sports, and I think women of my generation and the generation behind me have the same sort of interest and sophistication. So, I do believe they're not going to watch just anything. If the sports is up to snuff, if it's a quality game ... then, yes, there is a gender neutrality about their interest or potential interest in supporting that. At the same time, I know from our experience with the WNBA that there is a special emotion that our female fans have about the league.
Are there aspects of the media's coverage of the WNBA that are frustrating?
Ackerman: We'd like to see more of it. I can't deny that it's very challenging for us and, I think, for women's sports in general to get the kind of coverage that we think we deserve from most outlets. It's something that I and the league spend a great deal of time on with our broadcast partners, with print writers and editors. It's just no secret that men's sports enjoy a higher level of coverage, and so it's very frustrating at times to not see the placement or the quantity of coverage for the WNBA that you would see for some other sports. I am hopeful that it will change in time, that it will evolve as the respect for the league grows, as the interest of viewers and readers becomes increasingly known to the people who make these decisions. We pitch stories all the time, not only to sportswriters but also to women's magazines, teen girl magazines, places where we think it is important for the WNBA to be represented for our story — particularly the human-interest element of our story — to be told.
What's the biggest misperception the public and the media have about the WNBA, or about women's sports?
Ackerman: I think most people who have never seen a WNBA game probably don't realize how skilled the players are and how exciting the games are to watch, particularly in-arena. Because I think there is a perception that if the game is below the rim it might be a lesser game. ... And many people who I believe go in with that view quickly change it when they've had a chance to see that even though it is below the rim, it doesn't in any way diminish what the game represents as a matter of exciting, unscripted drama. So we found that the hardest part sometimes is simply getting people to try it, getting people to come to a game, getting them to watch it on television, because oftentimes when that happens, they're surprised in a positive way about that and also want to come back. And see more.
Look for more of this conversation in our sister publication, The Sports Business Daily, at www.sportsbusinessdaily.com.
