The Sale to ESPN

By Glenn Nelson
HoopGurlz Publisher
Posted Fri, 03/28/2008 - 05:09 The founder of HoopGurlz.com discusses the reasons behind the sale to ESPN, as well as the positive consequences to come.

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The very first girl's basketball player I ever covered was my daughter, Sassia, a point guard as fearless as you'd ever see. She also often is inspired; she is the one who named this site, complete with the modern spelling. It is no coincidence that I have approached my website and its subject matter - girl's basketball - like another of my babies, with love and respect, and a desire to nurture and protect.

As I write this, I am in Milwaukee for the McDonald's All-American Game. I have just read the advance stories in the local newspaper. The lead story about "players" mentions no girls. The accompanying story about the Wooten Award winner(s) mentions only the boy's recipient, Greg Monroe. The girl's honoree, Elena Delle Donne, receives a three-paragraph mention appended to the very end of the story about Monroe.

Yes, there is a glass ceiling in sports, as real as any in business or nearly every other aspect of American society. And I have taken it personally, as if the ceiling applied specifically to Sassia and my other daughter, Mika, as well as my wife, my mother, my friends, and every girl we've written about or photographed the past few years, all of whom we consider to be HoopGurlz for life.

The vision, and endgame, for this website always has been to raise and eliminate the ceiling for girls, to expand possibilties for them by increasing exposure, and to acknowledge hard work, dedication and accomplishment. The boys have dozens, arguably hundreds, of places where this occurs. The girls have HoopGurlz. I believe in this so utterly that I quit my job a year ago and, without a safety net, but with help from friends - most notably, Chris Hansen, a half dozen or so credit cards, and a lot of sweat, endeavored to bring my vision to life.

We'd probably gone about as far as we could go with HoopGurlz when, not to be too melodramatic about it, ESPN descended upon us like an angel. Yet, as those at the "worldwide leader in sports" with whom I had long, long discussions will attest, I always was ready to walk and plot an alternate course if the deal wasn't right - not for me, but quite literally for the sport and for what the website had come to symbollize. After all, I have watched closely for about a decade as men have tried to make a business out of women's sports and failed because they tried knocking off the men's business models. Best as I could, being male, I've tried to operate as females might - building a product first, building it visually, building it with integrity, and making it connect with its subject matter and audience.

So, yes, the deal is right because it will help HoopGurlz continue to walk the same path. You've already seen some of the results - the ramped-up coverage of events and the high-school scene, and the hiring of Chris on a fulltime basis (we both now are employees of ESPN). In the coming weeks, you will see more:

• Last year, we were able to cover two spring-evaluation events; this year, we double that to four, with me providing double coverage and photography from three of those.
• Among those providing coverage will be Clay Kallam, whose seasoned, rational voice we add as a regular contributor and weekly columnist. Clay and I are longtime friends and allies in a mission to broaden exposure of girl's and women's basketball, and his addition is an exciting development for girl's basketball and ESPN.
• We realize our dream of offering 100 percent of our content for free. We will have a special offer posted on the message boards for our Platinum Members, to whom a wholehearted thanks is due from all of us. We know many of you bought subscriptions to help support the broader effort - and you helped more than you know. Out of respect for the Platinum members, premium content will remain behind the wall until the transition is completed.
• ESPN has agreed to allow us to keep the HoopGurlz message-board community and software intact. We understand the upheavel that resulted from our last move and now get to avoid that. We also value the participation and help we have received in news gathering. As we always have maintained, this is your site, too.
• Our ability to create player pages goes up so high, it's not even funny. If your daughter or player participates in an event we cover, they'll have a page. We know this is huge for a lot of families, as the player pages have been an important means of exposure. If you operate an event and want all the underclassmen who play in it to have a player profile, please feel free to send us a packet. Email us via the Contact Form on this site, and we'll make arrangements for delivery.

This is just the beginning. There are a lot of other exciting changes in the works. Plus we will have resources.

The other main reason this deal makes sense is that it connects our coverage of high-school basketball to the next levels. As many of you know, ESPN broadcasts women's college basketball and the WNBA. It also offers the only dedicated coverage of both online.

We keep telling you (and some of you keep reminding us) that we are not perfect. But it is not through any lack of trying. It has pained us every time we were unable to see a girl who deserved to be seen, when we lacked the time or resources to write about, photograph, video or otherwise record a player who deserved recognition for a feat, no matter how small. This deal does not fix everything immediately, but it will be a gigantic impetus for further growth.

Bottom line: I can look my daughters, my wife, my mother, my friends, all the HoopGurlz and all of you in the face and say this was the right thing to do.

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Glenn Nelson is the founder and publisher of HoopGurlz.com. He is a member of the McDonald's All-American Selection Committee and SportsShooter.com (Click for Porfolio), Asian American Journalists Association, National Association of Photoshop Professionals, National Press Photographers Association, Online News Association, Society of Professional Journalists and U.S. Basketball Writers Association. Glenn also founded and coached the Dragons and Northwest HoopGurlz select girl's basketball teams and previously was the editor-in-chief at Scout.com and a longtime, national-award-winning basketball columnist and writer for The Seattle Times. His work has appeared in several books and national magazines. He is co-author of "Rising Stars: The Ten Best Players in the NBA" (Rosen Publishing, 2002). For more on Glenn's World, click here. Glenn can be reached at glenn@hoopgurlz.com.

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