Skin in the Game: Affect, Materiality, and the WNBA Arena

Abstract

Since its inception in 1997, the Women's Professional Basketball Association (WNBA) has attempted to present itself as a highly professional sport. With the advantage of its relationship with the successful and established men's National Basketball Association (NBA), the WNBA was able to play in the same arenas immediately, and this included all the trappings of American professional sport, including music, lights, a ‘Jumbotron’, and half-time entertainment. However, there are important distinctions between the material environments of men's and women's sport, and this has contributed to WNBA games being perceived as unpopular and uneventful. Much of the research on the WNBA has largely focused on the discourses of heteronormativity and gender that structure the league, however by drawing on a new materialist lens and examining the affective forces that circulate the arena, we are better able to understand the WNBA game as an assemblage that develops through the relationship of various material and discursive elements. This article explores the rhizomatic flows of affect that circulate the arena, creating the professional sport spectacle and the stadium assemblage, while highlighting the affective forces of non-human materials, space, and the built environment. It draws upon my ethnographic research with a WNBA team – pseudonymously called the Ravens – and their experience with various arenas, each of which have different histories, stadiums, facilities, entertainment, and relationships to NBA teams. It examines the way in which an affective response is deliberately designed and generated, as the built environment, production values, the crowd, and players’ bodies work together to create an arena experience that can either be professional and exciting, or lacklustre and limiting, which in turn can either help or hinder the physical capabilities of WNBA players, and which can direct the ‘feel of the game’ itself.