Boom at the Women's Basketball World Cup: Promising foretaste

Even Friedrich Merz was in the hall and watched Leonie Fiebich, Nyara Sabally and Frieda Bühner throw their baskets and be celebrated by thousands of fans. Over 220,000 tickets were sold and the arena at Ostbahnhof was already fully booked for the semi-finals and finals, which had already broken all records. You run into people in Caitlin Clark jerseys in Berlin. The city has been in a basketball frenzy for almost two weeks because it's the World Cup - for women, mind you.

With this World Cup at the latest, the hype spread to Germany. The first World Cup semi-final against European champions Belgium on Thursday evening took the euphoria to another level.

Nobody would have dreamed of such enthusiasm at the last World Cup in Germany 28 years ago. While at that time there were a maximum of 1,800 spectators in the audience, these days at some games there are over 12,000. Basketball is booming worldwide like no other women's sport and has now even replaced women's football, the highest-grossing sport to date. The main reason for this is the boom in the WNBA.

It's not just the kiss cam during breaks that creates a certain WNBA vibe. Sponsors such as a well-known corn flakes brand, a sporting goods provider or a pizza chain are competing. They all want to benefit from the emerging sport. Yes, the capitalist approach to sport can certainly be criticized, but it also shows how much of an upswing it is currently experiencing. And that's certainly not just because of the money itself, but also because of the quality that the players now deliver.

The media attention is also huge, with all major media outlets reporting on the tournament almost every day. Stars like Schröder and Nowitzki can be seen on site. Of course, some tabloid media can't resist paying almost more attention to their presence than to the women. And yet they are not there to steal the show, but to be appreciative and supportive. When do you ever see Deniz Undav on the sidelines of a women's football match? Things are going better in basketball than in football anyway. Men and women receive the same bonuses from the German Basketball Association (DBB) if they perform successfully in a tournament.

And yet: The image that the World Cup creates remains only a foretaste of what women's basketball could be like in this country. Because at the national level, arenas are far from being filled. On the contrary, even Bundesliga games are still sometimes played in musty school gymnasiums. A lot of things in the youth sector are done on a voluntary basis and through a lot of personal initiative. Even at the highest league level, the pay is a joke: national player Alexandra Wilke, named the most valuable player in the Bundesliga last season, plays for Bundesliga club Keltern and also works as a teacher. No wonder that the most talented players prefer to play at US colleges and later in the WNBA. Which makes the Bundesliga less attractive again.

It's a vicious circle that needs to be broken. This will still cost a lot of money and work. One thing is certain: the will is there and the moment is now. Because Merz and everyone else certainly didn't watch the German team play for feminist reasons or in the hope that his presence could lead to more investment and thus higher quality basketball. The hype is now simply too big for the Chancellor to forego such image cultivation.