The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - A New Era for Women's Sports?

Episode Date: June 5, 2024

This year, the Professional Women's Hockey League had its inaugural season, and the WBNA announced it is expanding to add a team in Toronto. Plus, April 2025 will be the start of the Northern Super League, Canada's first professional women's soccer league. Amidst this growth, are women's sports finally getting the recognition they deserve? We ask: Ella Shelton Defence, PWHL New York; Theresa Burns, head coach of women's basketball at McMaster University; Shireen Ahmed senior contributor at CBC Sports and instructor of sports journalism and sport media at Toronto Metropolitan University;Helena Ruken, co-founder and CEO of AFC Toronto, a member of the new Northern Super League.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

From epic camping trips to scenic local hikes, spending time outdoors is a great way to create lasting memories to share with friends and family. This summer, TVO is celebrating the natural wonders that inspire unforgettable adventures with great documentaries, articles, and learning resources about beloved parks in Ontario and beyond. Visit tvo.me slash Ontario summer stories for all this and more. And be sure to tell us your stories for a chance to win great prizes. Help TVO create a better world through the power of learning. Visit TVO.org and make a tax-deductible donation today. 2024 was the inaugural season of the Professional Women's Hockey League.

The WNBA, Professional Women's Basketball, announced it is expanding to add a team in Toronto. And in less than a year, Canada will see its first Professional Women's Soccer League, the Northern Super League. Amidst this growth are women's sports finally getting the recognition they deserve? Let's find out. On the line from Cleveland, Ohio via Skype, there's Ella Shelton, who plays defense for the professional women's hockey team in New York. And with us here in studio, Teresa Burns, head coach of women's basketball at McMaster University. Helena Rukin, co-founder and CEO of AFC Toronto and a member of the new Northern Super League. of AFC Toronto and a member of the new Northern Super League.

And Shireen Ahmed, senior contributor at CBC Sports and instructor of sports journalism and sports media at TMU, Toronto Metropolitan University. And it's great to have you three superstars here in our studio and a really fabulous superstar on the line from Cleveland. Hi, Ella Shelton. Great to have you here as well. I want, Shireen, I'm going to start with you. This seems to be, this moment in history seems to be an unprecedented moment in women's professional sports. Why is it happening now? I think there's a lot of reasons for that. Some of those reasons

are sitting amongst us. It's the work and the foundation that women have put in over the years. It's not to say that women's sports are new in Canada, but the professional level at which they're coming has been off the backs of so much toil and starts and stops again. But I think there's a variety of things. The level of competition is elite. The globalization of women's sports, definitely the investment and the attention.

And some people with deep pockets are finally paying attention. And that actually is a factor and it matters. I'm not the business expert, but what I do know is the way that media has also been paying attention. So there's so many pieces that kind feel like the engine is finally moving. All the cogs are moving together. Helen, let me get you to build on that in as much as Shireen is right. We've always had superstar female athletes around. You know, Nancy Green is a skier in Canada. Billie Jean King was a huge superstar. Liz Manley captured the hearts of the country when she was figure skating. Penny Oleksiak, Perdita Felicien, that's always been there. What's different now?

What's different now? I think we also have the women in leadership now who go like us, like our group, put in the investment of time and money. And the whole community is ready for it. The amount of support that we get building the professional women's hockey league and our club in Toronto is incredible. People just can't wait for us to get started. And just the level of support and

excitement we get by women, but by everybody. The whole country is ready for this. I think that's the point. It's not just women. Men support women's sports as well now. That's different. Yeah. Okay, coach, I got to ask you, how much of the rise in excitement around the WNBA coming to Toronto is because of a young woman named Caitlin Clark? Well, it's a lot. For sure, it's a lot. I mean, Caitlin's very, very impressive, as we all know. But as Shereen mentioned, there are a lot of impressive women that have been playing for a long time now. And, you know, it's kind of, I was saying to Shereen earlier,

it's like this bucket of water has been filled. It's the WNBA and there's all these players that have played and that final drop of Caitlin Clark has kind of tipped the bucket and pushed it over the edge. And now people are jumping on board. So it's wonderful to see. It's long overdue. And I think most people's opinion and hopefully it just continues to grow.

She's had a tough start in her professional basketball career. Now you're a coach. Do you want to give her any advice on how she can do better? I think Caitlin's doing just fine, to be honest. I mean, it's an eye opener when you get to that level. You're not the best. You're playing with the best now. So it's going to be a learning curve for her.

But she's a smart player. And I'm sure she has lots of people around her that'll help her with that learning curve. Ella, can I start with a trivia question for you? Absolutely. Okay, here we go. Professional Women's Hockey League, who scored the first ever goal in PWHL history? I'm going to have to go with Ella Shelton. I think that's right. I think that was you. How much does that mean to you? Yeah, it's absolutely incredible to think back to that moment and the memory I get to share with not only my teammates and my coaches, but teammates that I play against all the time now

that we're not on the national team together, and my family and my support people behind me. Going back to that day, I just think Toronto is such a place where it's close to home, and so many people came to behind me. Going back to that day, I just think like Toronto is such a place where it's close to home and so many people came to support me. And I'm sure Toronto would have loved to have scored that first goal. But I know that the whole crowd and the entire fan base of the PWHL was supporting me and super happy to see me come up on top with that goal. And it's something that I'll remember forever.

And it was quite emotional going back and seeing it in the hall of fame and being able to be a part of history and know that I'm making an impact today and hopefully it's enough and I do enough for the future generations how old were you when you first picked up a hockey stick oh I grew up with three brothers so I think I picked it up around like four or five. And of course, you could watch them play organized hockey as they wanted to for as long as they wanted to. Did you ever assume that would be an option for you? Great question. I don't think so. I think I just played it because I love the sport. I played a lot of sports growing up and it was just fun to go out and do something different in each season. But hockey soon became a family favorite

for all of us and I had a lot of coaches in my youth that really believed in me and really gave me new tools and new avenues to pursue to help create my career and grow my career and I think it was the belief in my coaches and the belief from my family that really pushed me forward and then it wasn't until I got my first university experience that people were like, you could really go do some really big things. And from there, I've always thought of that little girl behind me and the little girl that I was like 20 plus years ago going, I would love to play at the Olympics one day and play professional one day.

And it's exciting to see where it is now. And I'm so excited to see where it will go. And here you are. Fantastic. Shireen, OK, here's my trivia question for you. Who broke the story? What journalist broke the story that the NBA, the WNBA was coming to Toronto? That would be me. That would be you. That's right. And since then, what's the reaction been like that you've picked up in Toronto and points beyond since that news? Well, like Helena said, I've covered a lot of things in sports and never has the reaction been unanimously positive.

And because I'm at different intersections, whether it's race or gender in sports, the comments are always favorable. Across the board, text, people were calling me in tears of happiness. So excited. There was athletes across the board from different sports that I've interviewed that messaged me whichever way could, just to say we're so excited. And it's also, you see a continuation. You'll see the PWHL players go support, you know, the, go support basketball or go support the Canadian women's national team that have just played to send off Masters. So the crossovers are incredible. The support, not only from my colleagues in media,

was also incredible. So it was a big story to get. I'm not complaining about it. It was a little bit of work. But also to be somebody who's been in the women's sports space for such a long time, and the culmination, and it's not a moment, it's a movement. When this story broke, I presume you had a chance to talk about it with your team. Yes. What was the reaction? Oh, just pure excitement, pure joy. They're young, you know, they're young, but they've still been waiting for it for a long time, too.

And anybody who's sort of my vintage, we've been waiting a long time for this. So nothing but pure joy and excitement. There is, look, I was never going to play in the National Hockey League, right? Like that just was never on. But the notion that you could dream about being in the NHL as a little kid was meaningful to me. And I presume now that's there for your players too. Absolutely. And I mean, to aspire to that greatness, it gives them hope.

It gives them confidence. It gives them joy. There's nothing but good about it. It gives them confidence. It gives them joy. There's nothing but good about it. Helena, on Monday, you released the logo and the name of Toronto's first professional women's soccer team. I cannot imagine how much goes into, I mean, the logistics, the organization, the everything, into creating something new from scratch.

So tell us, what does it require? Well, we did a lot of background work on that. We worked with an agency to dig really deep about why we are doing this. So our founders came together for a full-day workshop. workshop and and you know of course so we what we want to do is create opportunities for for women and and girl girls and role models for girls so and and with that together um we we then then we brought in people from the community we had another workshop with 35 individuals from the GTA, different backgrounds. And together with them, we again went to, why are we doing this into a big workshop? And our agency put all that together,

presented us with a couple of options, but we all honed in on that one. Now, there's lots of different models here. Individual owners owning individual teams or one owner owning all the teams. What's the soccer league going to do? Well, Diana Madison is behind that. We all, all the club owners bought into her vision.

And, you know, she has so much passion for this as a former soccer player, a superstar. passion for this as a former soccer player, a superstar. And so she brought all of us together and we formed this league together. And there's an incredible collaboration among the different club owners, the different clubs for Halifax to Vancouver. How many clubs all together? Six clubs. So we have Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver. How do you ensure it's a brand new league? So how do you ensure that your players are adequately paid and can make a go of it? Well, we that we waited until we could could ensure that we were able to provide that before before we launch. And yeah, of course, we've been working in the background, setting up all the rules.

You probably heard that our salary cap will be $1.5 million and the minimum salary will be $50,000, which is still competitive in global women's sports. And then we have additional rules. We can have a marquee player outside of the cap. We have an allowance for housing and transportation. So we want to make sure that these women and people who play for our clubs

can be the superstars that Canadians want to see. Gotcha. Sheldon, can you bring up this graphic at the bottom of page two here? This is the women's sports fandom in Canada. They did a survey, Canadians aged 13 to 65. And here's who loves this. 67% of Canadians are fans of women's sports, or so they say. Two in five Canadians consider themselves avid fans. 53% of women's sports fans are men. 60% of fans think brands should support women's sports even more.

Okay, Shereen, what do these numbers say to you? I think they speak to the potential. And I think Canadian women in sport have been collecting data for a really long time, and that's something else that we need to keep in mind. There are people who've been collecting the data, which is important because it helps make those decisions and those informed decisions. So with the fact that there's opportunity for investment, people want women's sports, we already know what the product is. We know it's excellent. You've got record-breaking attendance records, viewership. We had over 100,000 Canadians watch the WNBA draft just to see one Canadian in the top 10 class,

Elliot Edwards from Kingston, Ontario. There is so much momentum on YouTube. The PWHL playoffs, I heard two numbers on the YouTube alone. Either it was 40,000 and someone said, no, it was closer to 100,000. And that's without a Toronto team in the playoffs. So, I mean, there's so much possibility. And if you go to these games and you see who's there, yes, there's young boys there. It's not just for the little girls. Yes, the players and the coaches and the officials are role models. The owners are role models, but they're for everybody. And those little boys will grow up as well and buy merch. They'll buy season tickets.

I mean, merch is what the cool kids call merchandise. Just OK. Good. Well, let me get Ella to follow up on that, because I don't think it's an exaggeration to say 25 or 35 years ago, if you were a male, you might be a little embarrassed to acknowledge that you actually watched women's sports. It was considered not necessarily a cool thing to do. These numbers suggest that it may be the majority of people who watch women's sports and like women's sports are men. What do you infer from that? Yeah, I think like Shereen mentioned, like when you look out in the stands during a game, you see a collective mix of both young

girls and young boys. And I think for those young boys being there, it's the potential to see that their moms or their sisters can grow up and do these amazing things that they could do themselves or their dads have done or boys have done in the NHL or the MLB and all that the other sports that are played but I think being able to go out there it's just knowing that your brothers support you and they're maybe not going to the NHL but you are their NHL you are the person that they are living vicariously through in these games and just being able to go out there and see them it just shows you how much support you do get from both sides. Well, tell us about how it compares being a professional women's hockey

player to being an Olympic hockey player, because you've had the Olympic experience. And I just wonder, which is more intense? I feel like they're both very intense, respectively. I think on the national side of things, prior to this league, all we ever knew was playing against Team USA. So all the girls on Team USA, like Kendall Coyne, Hillary Knight, Megan Keller, you kind of grew this, man, I hate playing against them because they're just so good. And in these past two years, I've had the opportunity to play

alongside these athletes like Abby Rock, Alex Carpenter, Megan Keller. And getting to know them outside of the hockey world, you get to know them on a totally different level. And you have so much more respect for them as a female athlete as well. And they get to know you on a different level because at the end of the day, our sport is not what defines us. It is who you are as a person and what you bring to the table for this sport. what defines us. It is who you are as a person and what you bring to the table for this sport. And now that we have this competitive league, it's so much fun to go out there and play against them and experience those same feelings together. And then when you go to the national side, it's still professional, right? We get to go out there and we still get to compete hard and play

hard against each other. But at the end of the day, we get to go have dinner together or get together and still be the good friends that we have created over the past couple of years. Well, let me do one more quick follow up with you on that, Ella, because, you know, again, in years past, it was always a truism that women's hockey didn't allow hitting. I'm going to let you in on a little secret here, Ella. I watch women's hockey. You guys hit plenty. What's the story story there i thought that wasn't allowed yeah in previous years they didn't allow the hitting but this year in the pwhl they allowed for hitting now that doesn't mean that there's going to be open ice hits or big um hits along but it just allows us to play that more physical game that we're starting to see in the women's game and let me tell you

it's been fun i think for myself and a lot girls, the style of play in our game is that fast and physical. And to be able to go out, not necessarily having to worry about having a penalty always called against you is kind of settling for you to just go out and play your game. And then you figure out I think their league is still figuring out the line between what's too far and what's okay and obviously it's going to be a work in progress in your first year and the patience factor has to be at the forefront of everybody's brain thinking about everything in our league but um i can i think say on behalf of the entire league that we were okay with the hitting what okay well okay every time you say something you prompt another question in my head and that is i know i know fighting's not allowed but but were there any fights this past season um not this past season there wasn't necessarily any like fistfights that you see in the nhl were there tussles in front of the net absolutely oh yeah along the boards for sure yeah but um i wouldn't say an open fighting scene no okay uh coach i want to ask you again i

want to get back to this gender thing because, you know, the notion that men would enjoy watching women's sports is relatively new. Do you see it in your life? Yeah, we, we, it's, it's been great. And I mean, it's just men kind of educating themselves. It is the visibility of sport. It is the fact that we have put women's sport out there and allowed the opportunity for people to see it and for men to see it and we I mean even at our level in university sport we have men walk up after games and say I used to come to the men's game but now I'm coming to the women's game too or just to the women's game because I like it more you have to see it you have to educate yourself and and we're at that point now so it's been fun to watch and it's great to have a lot of the guys on board we

need them on board we need everybody on board and and it's great to have a lot of the guys on board. We need them on board. We need everybody on board. And to the discussion earlier, I have a son. I want my son to grow up and see strong women. I want him to see that. I want him to respect that. And so I just think it's wonderful to see the diversity in the crowds at all these different sporting events. I think people have finally figured out that talent is talent. Absolutely. But to that point, I mean, we've talked twice about how men are paying attention. I think we need to recenter the women, that women have always paid attention. And there are people who have supported women from get-go. So the fact that the foundations were laid by women and people who supported them. And that's really important to remember. I also have three sons. And at one point, they can name every player on the women's senior soccer team.

And I don't know if they could do that for the men's. And the same for the Canadian women's basketball team, because those women went to the Olympics consistently, but this year, the men are finally going after. And with the World Cup, after a long drought, the men made it. But in the interim, that's what we had to look to. Yes, you carried the torch for a long time. Well, so, I mean, and I mean, even if you look at the results of the upcoming Olympics, the last Olympics, the majority of the medal winners for this country were women.

Correct again. Vast majority, so. Well, tell me, this hasn't been a completely, the road hasn't been completely unbumpy along the way. And I'm going to ask you to speak to an incident that happened when Caitlin Clark had her initial press conference for, I guess, the Indiana Fever is the name of her team. And there was a bit of an odd exchange with a reporter, with a male reporter. Can you tell us what happened there? Yeah, absolutely. There was a reporter from the Indy Star who asked a question at her first presser, I believe. And one of the things is people who are in tune with women's sports, they're really committed. I mean, this might be a shock to people, but sports journalists don't get into women's sports for the fame and the money.

They get in because they really believe in what's happening and they want to contribute in their own right. And the question was inappropriate. What was the question? The question, well, the comment rather, because Caitlin Clark, from what I know, makes a very specific hand gesture to her family that she loves them. And there's many players. It's a hard thing. So he made something like very casually of, well, as long as you do that with me, we're fine. So again, centering oneself, A, it's terrible journalistic ethos to center yourself in any question, but also to infer that you're casual enough and they cross so many boundaries. And believe me, Steve, that wouldn't have happened with their traditional WNBA reporters who are storied, who are experienced, who've been

on the beat. The league has been around, and Teresa and I were talking about this before, for almost three decades. So just because you're new to it doesn't mean it's new. Ella, let me get you to comment on this as well. In as much as I've never seen a female reporter do that kind of thing to a male athlete, so it is a bit odd for a male reporter to do that to a female athlete, unless I'm wrong. Have you ever seen that kind of thing before? Yeah, I would say that we always get some weird questions here and there, and I think for us, we've done such a great job

of being able to take in what they're saying and totally redirect what they're asking. i think often we get asked these questions about hockey canada scandals or like why we aren't getting paid as much as the men or all this stuff and it's like why do we have to compare it to that why don't we just focus on what we've done so far and what what we still need to help us grow and i don't know why we keep focusing on those little things. But to be able to go back and redirect it, I think we're taught in a way to kind of help us find new different directions to go. And I think that's why people enjoy talking to us, because we don't have to talk about the negatives all the time. We enjoy talking about the positives.

No, fair enough. But Helena, how much sexism do you still see in your daily life in sports? Helena, how much sexism do you still see in your daily life in sports? Well, it's there, but like Ella and like Shireen, we like to redirect it. You know, sometimes, you know, to be honest, it eats at us in the, you know, if you add it all up. But, you know, we have enough women and men and other folks who understand and that, you know, yeah, and help us over that. Yes, but these microaggressions, as I think, you know, that is like, you know, calling out Caitlin Clark and crossing personal boundaries and things like that. boundaries and things like that. And yeah, to your points, that wouldn't have happened with a woman reporter. I haven't seen that being done to a man. No, no, for sure. Sheldon, can you put this up here? This was on Instagram not too long ago.

It was a quote from Billie Jean King, the tennis legend, who said, I've waited my entire life for moments like this. Women's sports are now seen as an investment, not a charity. Yeah, what an incredible statement to hear. I think when you think of Billie Jean King and all the work that she's done behind multiple leagues, so true what she's saying to us. I think now people are starting to see that the investment in women's sports is there. And I think that the movement that we've created, it's just incredible. starting to see that the investment in women's sports is there and I think that the movement that we've created is it's just incredible and to see so many women supporting women in leagues supporting leagues it's hard not to think that this is a good investment and I hope that

people continue to invest in us I think that we bring so much more energy to the game and one thing I know fans really appreciate appreciate about us as women's athlete is the connection that they get to create between athletes and not just the sport itself when we go to these signing autographs or we go to events with fans they just get to know us on a different level and the connection that we form from them is something that they carry on into every other women's sport and And I think that they're able to go, I really support her because she supports A, B, and C. And I think that's something that they love that they know that who we are as people more than just the athlete. And I think

that's something that they love. It's something that they can continue to connect with and a piece that they will always have. Coach, is there still a perception that women's sports are somehow not economically viable still? I think that still is out there, but hopefully we're changing it. And as you see these leagues grow, whether it's soccer, basketball, hockey, it's, you know, it is a true investment now. It is a financially sound, financially smart decision to get involved. And I think those three sports in particular and the realm of women's sport, but those three sports in particular rising at similar times, and there's this convergence of all of them arriving at this point, I think it's creating that critical mass where investors are

now going, whoa, there's something to this. And to Billie Jean King's point, like, yeah, it's not just being nice to the girls and let's let the girls have the court for half an hour and then we'll get back to real sport. This is this is the real deal now. And people with money are figuring that out, which is fantastic. Ella, there was some absolutely amazing attendance records done by PWHL hockey games this past year. I don't know what the record was, but I think some get one game had 20,000 fans or something like that at a game. So what do you think the past season of PWHL hockey has done to the notion that women's sports are really not economically viable? Yeah, I mean, look, watching that game at the Bell Centre was absolutely incredible to see them absolutely packed out. It was such a memory for all those players too to think like wow look at the stage

that we can play on like it just goes to show that we can go play on the stage fill out these stands and we have the support of fans behind us so to go on to the following years I think we've set ourselves a standard and a bar for what we can reach next year and hopefully we surpass that bar and we continue to learn from what we what we got from this past year and then going into the second and third and years to come. You just know that this is what happened in this year and we have those tools in our toolbox to be successful. Shireen, I don't know Larry Tannenbaum as well as you do, but and this is the guy who owns part of the Leafs, the Raptors, the Argos, the new WNBA franchise, TFC, right? Men's soccer.

He doesn't seem to me to be the kind of guy who's going to put millions of dollars into a charity that he doesn't think is going to pay back at the end of the day. Fair to say? Absolutely. And I think that's a really important point that I was trying to make, was that he's a very sound businessman. He wouldn't do this. And I don't know him personally. Let me just clarify that. Reporting on someone is a little bit different than like going to their house for coffee. You've probably met him more times than I have, though. The reality is that it is a business. But the point is it did take leadership. And Helena spoke about that. It takes one person to say, I'm going to do this because for some reason,

Canadian investors are a little more conservative and a little more timid to jump fully. He completely took a dive off the cliff and said, I'm doing this, but not without having research, knowing Teresa Rush, president of the league, of the, sorry, WNBA Toronto team, was sound. It would be really interesting to see what kind of team they put together, but this is somebody with this success. and also looking around and seeing what's happening and seeing the like sort of the cohesion of the different leagues communicating with each other and supporting each other which they do do i know for a fact ella i gotta ask you when are we going to see some nicknames for the pwhl teams um great question i have been asked this so many times because people just want to have a

name to associate our teams with, but we kind of like, I'm not, I have no idea what the league's planning on doing with names. Maybe there's some rumblings that they'll have something for us in the following years, but, um, sticking with just PWHL New York just sounds very suiting for us right now. And, uh, hopefully they come up with a really cool name to fit at the end. I have a cool name, but I want to hear your suggestion first. What do you want? What do you want your team to be called? Well, we can't do the New York Liberty. I mean, that'd be pretty cool too, but the WNBA has that one. My next thought was definitely the New York Empire. I feel like it's another building there that would be a monumental

piece to add to our name um for fun i think one thing that our fans have really brought to us and we just kind of really embraced is the pizza rats um two staple things in new york so it'd be kind of it's been fun to see the jerseys and the t-shirts that fans will hand us and it's just got like this pizza pizza and uh a rat on it and it's just a really cute photo for us, but I don't think that would ever accumulate to our team name. You know, okay, I may be crazy here,

but it seems to me that, you know, women's sports often have cooler and more interesting names than men's sports. And I thought, wait for it here, folks. I thought New York State of Mind would be a neat name for a team. And can you imagine blasting that song every time you took the ice? Is it Alicia Keys who sings that song?

I think that would be amazing. Anyway, there it is, free of charge for what you want. What are they going to call the WNBA team here in Toronto? I'm hearing everything from towers to this. I don't know, but I do know that Teresa Rush spoke out, the team president, the franchise president, that they would be actually serving community and fans, which is fantastic. Toronto is so invested. All of Canada is so invested. So they'll be looking for ideas, suggestions.

And so I'll also be keeping my eye out on some of the ideas that come out. You got an idea for the WNBA team here? I'm not throwing one out right now. No? Yeah. But I can't wait but I can't wait. I can't wait. Yeah, it's going to be cool.

Hey, thanks, everybody, for joining us here on TVO tonight. That was lots of, you know, this is a wonderful departure from the normal death and destruction we cover on this program a lot. So, Ella Shelton, good luck, but not too much luck to your team in New York next year. Too bad for Toronto this year. Teresa Burns, Shereen Ahmed, Helena Rukin, great to have you alongside as well. Thank you. Thank you.