THE QUANTITY AND QUALITY OF THE MEDIA COVERAGE OF WOMEN'S AND MEN'S BASKETBALL IN SLOVENIA

The study aimed to analyse the media coverage of women's and men's basketball in Slovenia and establish the quantity and quality of the media coverage of women's basketball compared to men's. The study was made on a sample of 81 basketball experts. The study also analysed the quantity and quality of the media coverage of performances of two basketball clubs (women's ZKK Merkur and men's KK Pivovarna Lasko) in the Vecer daily newspaper. Most of the respondents participating in this study (39.5%) follow women's basketball in the newspaper, on television (28.4%) and on the Internet (28.4%). Three-quarters of the respondents assess the media coverage of women's basketball in Slovenia as 'poor' or even 'very poor' and no less than 91.4% believe that the media should report about women's basketball more frequently. According to the majority of respondents (43.2%), the main reason for the insufficient coverage of women's basketball by different media establishments is the unattractiveness of the women's game, while slightly fewer of them (39.5%) believe that the reason lies in poor results. These findings were corroborated by the analysis of the coverage given by the Vecer daily newspaper. The quality and quantity of media coverage, i.e. published articles, of the men's KK Pivovarna Lasko team strongly exceeded that of their female counterparts.