Authors note: This article is satire. Any resemblance to actual sporting bodies actions is entirely coincidental and not at all reflective of the confirmed or rumoured actions of sporting organisations in regards to the running of their women’s leagues. You definitely cannot find any of this in actual news reports on the first page of Google.

1.A League of Our Own (to tank)

In order to tank a league, you must first establish the league. Of course, you never wanted to make the league in the first place. Why bother with creating a women’s league when the men’s is doing just fine with all that money you’ve been putting into it for a hundred years? But with those pesky women knocking at your door (and maybe your number one competitor creating a women’s league without much complaining) your hand has been forced.

First, you’ve got to make sure everyone thinks that you’re super excited about this league and that you’re definitely going to be making an effort with it and not treating it like an annoying middle child.

You’ll need an official announcement, with invites extended to the woke media and the not-so-woke media (you need them on your side to attack the league from the very beginning). Your CEO will be there to announce the good news to the people, as well as the two women that are employed in the executive suite. They will both be white, one definitely blonde. Let’s not get too diverse here guys it was pushing it to employ them in the first place.

This new league will be smaller with only a handful of teams, as the talent pool is a lot more shallow due to the fact that there has never been a professional pathway to professional women’s league in this sport. Much of this pool will be made up of athletes that have come from other sports, or are at the tail end of their careers. Some may have played the sport their entire lives but definitely as afterthoughts at their clubs.

Side note: the creation of this league will have a ripple effect. That means a lot of local clubs are going to have to make room for women in their hallowed grounds. This will be annoying, and governments will have to pay for grants to make sure the women and girls aren’t getting changed in the carpark before games. But don’t worry, plenty of these clubs will use the grant to upgrade the facilities and then immediately get rid of their women’s teams.

Despite the fact your organisation is a not-for-profit and exists to expand the game, make sure to mention how much money you’re losing by making this league. It’s not an investment, it’s a loss. This will set the stage for the financial critique of the league by those who reckon women’s sport is not worth investing in for eternity – yourself included.

2. Restrict the Income of the Players

Listen, the people got what they wanted by making a league for women, but let’s not take it too far by making it professional. Ugh, yuck. You don’t want any of these women being able to put all of their focus on improving their skills. That would improve the league and make it harder for you to tank.

Now is the time to tier your players, making sure clubs can only sign a handful of really good players who will inevitably retire within the next five years and the rest essentially get pocket money. None of these players are to be on anything that resembles a living wage by the way. Everyone must work a second or third job in order to have the honour of playing.

Later on, you’ll realise that some of these players are able to make a living off personal sponsorships and social media. That will not do, so make sure you implement a policy that restricts the outside earning of the female players. No such policy will be applied to the mens game.

3. Make it Cheap (or free)

This has the double effect of the perception that you’re keen to get bums on seats but also gives ammo to those who say stadiums are only filled because the tickets are practically being given away. As well as this, when you do make people pay for tickets in the second season and the attendance drops, you can say that people just aren’t as supportive now that the novelty has worn off. Female fans will take most of the blame for this.

Side note: advertising the league as a family friendly alternative when the men’s league is done and then scheduling games on weeknights will help lower these attendance numbers too.

4. When Will They Play? Who Knows? Who Cares?

Now that you have the league ready to rock, make sure the season start date is different every year. This creates instability within the league and teams are unable to plan for it. Changing it up every year makes it fun and exciting for the disposable lower workers who will be charged with the organising of these leagues.

Make sure to state that the women don’t play as many games as the men because women are more prone to serious injuries like an ACL tear (which is obviously due to biology and the inferior nature of the female body and not the lack of studies on female anatomy and prevention of injuries), and then throw in a condensed fixture here and there. If your sport requires a weeks rest in order to perform at optimum level, make ’em play every three days. The injuries that will inevitably follow will easily be blamed on the aforementioned inferior nature of women.

Bonus points if you put a sport traditionally played in winter in the hottest months of the year where no one wants to leave the comfort of their air conditioned homes for something that they can (maybe) watch on tv. Which brings you to the next step…

5. Half-ass the Broadcast

This is a tried and true behaviour for women’s sports broadcasts. You’re going to need only a fraction of the cameras used to broadcast the men’s game, preferably lower quality. This will ensure that the games look much slower on TV than they actually are due to the cuts being less frequent.

There is also no need to put any money or effort into the sport related talk and panel shows that you have for the men. These shows connect audiences to players and teams in a more personal way, which leads to more passionate and involved fans. That is something that you do not want. Maybe later on you’ll be forced to throw together a low budget show to fulfil this requirement, but don’t even bother advertising it. If the fans really want to watch it then they can do the work of finding it.

While we’re at it, does every game really need to be broadcast? Regular season, finals or playoffs it doesn’t matter. A few games can be exclusive to their local area or just not broadcast in traditional channels at all. Why would you want to play game 7 of a playoff series when you could broadcast pre-season Div 2 college Lacrosse?

5. Expand the League ASAP

Looks like the talent is starting to improve across the league and the overall skill is rising (at a rapid pace as well seeing as women have only had this opportunity for a season or two). Time to expand! Thin out that talent pool again so the overall skill drops and confirms the bias of those who only see the worst play of the week broadcast on social media. It’ll be years before there will be players who have played the sport since they were little kids, so you have plenty of chances to do this before these pesky career athletes show up.

6. Bring a Woman to the Glass Cliff

The glass cliff is where women who break the glass ceiling, only do so when failure is at the most risk. Appointing a woman to a top spot within the sport is a key factor in maintaining the appearance that you give a damn about women. But you can’t appoint any old hag who may have read some feminist theory once in her life, you have to appoint a truly corporate women. Someone with lean-in, girlboss mentality. If you can get someone who couldn’t run a bath, even better.

If your women’s league is under the umbrella of the larger organisation that runs the mens, it’s important that you not only appoint her to lead the charge of the women’s league, but also any other department of the organisation that is under constant scrutiny. This will make sure that everyone knows that women are just not built for this kind of environment.

Never attribute to malice that which you can attribute to incompetence.

7. When in Doubt, Make it About Money

Everyone knows that things are only worth doing if they make money.

If you’re a governing body haemorrhaging money from undisclosed expenses, cut the funding to the women’s programs. Make sure you frame this as a step towards equality and a ‘pull yourself up by the bootstraps’ mentality.

If your country is hosting the world cup, cut the funding.

If you’re a non-profit who exists to invest money in the game, remember to call it a loss, not an investment. This will be the leading headline all your favourite newspapers will go with in order to confirm what the male fans of your sport already knew: women’s sport is waste of money.

You can also try…

• Blaming women for not supporting women’s sport despite the fact that women make up a lower percentage of sports fans overall
• Imply that a league only got popular because a talented white person joined and not on the backs of the decades of energy and effort from people of colour within the league
• Make sure the players never show any kind of personality because that might risk them gaining loyal and dedicated fans
• Never hold any male players accountable for their sexist or homophobia behaviour even though LGBTQIA+ people make up the majority of your women’s league players and staff
• Allow unqualified people such as content creators to be given ceremonial coaching positions as some kind of joke/half-assed attempt at getting fans. This will show everyone that you don’t actually take the league seriously, so they shouldn’t either.
• Definitely DON’T find a billionaire investor who has more money than they know what to do with and doesn’t care about making a profit to back your league long enough for it to be established.

And if all else fails, just treat the league like a massive chore. Eventually these silly women will get bored and move onto a sport that actually gives a shit about them. If they can find one.