You're going to be. Hello and welcome to Outward, Slate's LGBTQ podcast that tries to keep you up as best we can with all things we are.

I'm Daisy Rosario.

I'm a senior supervising producer of audio here at Slate

and I'm guest hosting this episode today

in part because we are talking about the Wnba and I am a massive and long time Wnba fan.

Now you may have heard and probably noticed that the Wnba had a year, highest viewership ever, huge players like Caitlin Clark and

Angel Reese driving massive ticket sales, more ratings on television, higher

sales of merch.

I mean, it's just been huge.

I've been a fan since the league started,

and I gotta say it hasn't always been easy to be a fan.

I mean, they kind of made it hard.

It would be very hard to find games on

television or if you were for example the New York Liberty you've played in New Jersey

you've played in upstate New York. It's really only right now these last two seasons as well as the first

couple of years of their existence that they have ever played in the actual five

boroughs of New York City. So there is a lot of really, really good stuff coming out of this big influx of interest to the WNBA. A lot of the

fandom is very, very queer.

I'm a season ticket holder and one of the things I absolutely love about attending these

games and have loved for years before this season is how much I feel like I am in a space full

of other queer women and queer people in general and across age ranges.

I mean it really has been a beautiful part of my life and so I'm happy for the league but other fans like me are also feeling the growing pains of what's going on.

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