Anyone who thinks sexism is dead should take a look at professional sports in Seattle. Here we have a men's pro basketball lockout with no Sonics games so far this season and a Seattle Seahawks football team that, in spite of Paul Allen's enormous cash infusion and new high-paid players, still sucks big time (and we're paying to build them a new football stadium?).

Yet it was only last Friday that anyone offered the women's pro basketball team, the Seattle Reign, a chance to play in the vacant Key Arena, the Sonics' turf. The Reign usually play in the tiny Mercer Arena in front of about 3,000 to 4,000 diehard fans, most of them women. Going into Friday's game, the Reign were on a 5-0 winning streak that made the Seahawks' millionaire starting line-up look pathetic.

Friday's game continued that tradition. The Reign battled the San Jose Lasers into a tie at the buzzer, then won in double overtime in front of 7,358 fans--double the usual crowd. Expectations were that 5,000 to 6,000 people would show; the only advance publicity was a mailing sent out to Sonics season ticket holders only a couple of days before Friday's game. In spite of the higher than expected turnout, the Key Arena was still only about half-full.

With men's basketball on hiatus, this is an unparalleled opportunity for sports addicts to enjoy women's basketball--to get their "fix" in spite of the lockout. But most Sonics fans are staying home, while sports promoters give the Reign the cold shoulder--they're just "girls," anyway--and the Seattle sports press is reluctant to move them to the front page lead story of the sports section. The morning after their spectacular win against San Jose, the Reign were given the second story on the front page of the P-I's sports section, with the big photo usually reserved for the Seahawks or Sonics. But the headline read: "Reign crowd exits happy"--to emphasize that women's basketball is only for a special interest crowd. The lead story above it featured Ricky Williams, a male college football player for Texas, who broke the Division I-A rushing record. Nice, but he's a college player, and not even for a local team. Right next to the Reign article was a "human interest" piece on Jon Kitna of the Seahawks, detailing his switch from a skirt-chasing lush in college to an upstanding, Christian father today. Zzzzzz. In the Times, the Reign fared even worse--a small story beginning on the bottom of page one, below Willians and high school football (!). It was paired with a preview story on the UW women's basketball team, though the Reign's game was perhaps the biggest in franchise history. At least there were two stories on women's sports on the front page--progress!

Male pro sports machinery is big business in this town. Much of the impetus for new arenas and stadiums is the inclusion of luxury suites where the city's corporate elite can entertain clients; even regular tickets at all men's pro sports events have become frighteningly unaffordable to the average fan. A family of four attending a Sonics game can park, get mediocre seats, and eat bad food for about $300 for a two-hour game against Sacramento or New Jersey. Increasingly, live men's pro sports is a game only for the wealthy. The Reign, by contrast, are much more reasonably priced, but the corporate crowd is mostly male and mostly uninterested.

Sports is also big biz because it's yet another way for developers to pilfer money from the public's pockets. Sure, taxpayers are funding a new football palace for one of the world's richest men, and the new Safeco Field for a consortium of rich men. But the city, county, and state are also funding $160 million of new freeway off-ramps and overpasses in the area south of the Kingdome, in part to feed traffic directly into stadium parking lots. In addition, King County will pay for pedestrian overpasses related to the project. And we're paying for a skybridge to connect the football stadium to Seahawk owner Paul Allen's office development at Union Station, too.

Mayor Paul Schell sold the overpasses to the state legislature by calling this little venture the western terminus of the city's faux-environmental Mountains to Sound Greenway project along I-90--even though no one in their right mind can view freeway off ramps, paved parking lots, and sports stadiums as "environmental" restoration projects. The Greenway Trust, the nonprofit pushing the ludicrous I-90 project, was also a prime mover in the recent Plum Creek I-90 land exchange that was rammed through Congress as a gift to big timber. The Trust is exceedingly well connected, headed by president Jim Ellis--who is the brother of the Mariners' managing owner, John Ellis, who will directly benefit from the overpass. Other groups that will benefit from overpass construction include: American Presidential Lines, a freight company that operates out of a terminal near the new stadium, and construction companies who will quickly slurp up the budgeted funds for this project and come back for more. The latter explains why local organized labor, headed by the King County Labor Council's Ron Judd (a trade union rep), has been actively supportive of all sports/corporate welfare schemes, as well as backing projects like HUD funding for a new four-star hotel at the airport (see ETS! #3-11, Nov. 18 1998). Local labor has a price at which its political support can be bought, and it's well established.

Men's sports in Seattle means serious money, and not just the millions in scraps given the few visible genetic freaks who actually play the game. The value of the Seattle Seahawks, were Paul Allen to sell them today, has probably doubled since he bought them less than two years ago. Another NFL team with a new taxpayer-funded stadium, the Washington Redskins, is for sale--racist name and all--for $600 million. So far ten people have submitted bids in that price range, indicating that they think it's a bargain.

Meanwhile, back at Key Arena--where the Reign will be graciously allowed to play another game in January--the Sonics are refusing to pay the city of Seattle rent on the city-owned facility, citing the owner-initiated lockout and their subsequent loss of income. Imagine, for a moment, telling your landlord: "I decided not to work for a while, so I don't have much money coming in. Mind if I don't pay rent?" Try it. It works, if you're a pro sports team in the city of Seattle.

So the taxpayer stadium is only part of the corporate handouts associated with pro sports in this town. At a time when disgusted football fans are wondering why the Seahawks can't get it together and at least play as competently as women who make far less money, the government/big business machinery churns on, stealing money out of our pockets.

Our recommendation: burn your Sonics and Seahawks tickets. We're all disgusted by the commercialization of male pro sports, anyway (including college games). Take your kids to see the Reign, instead, or stay home and shoot a few baskets with them. You'll have more fun.

Maria Tomchick & Geov Parrish