espnW Goes Live: ESPN Lite for the Ladies?

Disney's powershouse sports media brand goes pink today — and not in a post-breast cancer awareness month move.

ESPN's first venture aimed at women, espnW.com, goes live today.

Its mission is simple: to provide a dedicated online sports space for women. Launching today as a blog with a stream of stories covering male and female sports, as well as tips and columns on running and training, it’s already controversial.

"There isn't a place devoted to perspective of females. In women we talked to, they feel like on other sites you always have to prove you're a fan if you're a woman." So says Laura Gentile, VP of espnW, which Disney is promoting as "a new digital brand for women."

Gentile commented at a pre-launch event for women athletes in October (above) that the brand will morph from a blog into a full-fledged website and digital offering next year.

Detractors, however, are concerned it will serve up “girlier versions” of sports, creating a "pink ghetto" for women athletes and sports of interest to female fans — which, of course, would be all sports.

"I'm kind of in the 'I don't see the harm' camp," Deadspin contributor Katie Baker comments. "ESPN has so many tentacles that it doesn't seem like a big deal that they'd have a dedicated women's site. It's just a website at this point. And I actually do think that they could leverage social networking in ways that don't exist on ESPN proper if they thought about it the right way."

Disney has already succeeded with hyperlocal sites like ESPN New York, but parsing by gender is a loaded proposition, one that requires finessing by its marketers. And as ESPN's viewership is 76% male, the opportunity to engage a female demographic is low-hanging fruit.

Gentile told USA Today that ESPN's own research finds "women see us as an admirable brand that has authority. But they see us as their father's brand, or husband's brand, or boyfriend's brand. They recognize it's not theirs."

Plans in the offing include the possibility of spinning the espnW sub-brand into its own TV channel. Female athletes including Shannon Miller, Jennie Finch, Laila Ali, Julie Foudy and Marion Jones, hosted by Gentile, were invited to brainstorm at a retreat about the brand, along with sports marketers from Nike, Gatorade and other brands. (Nike and Gatorade are launch sponsors for the site.)

“The retreat, where we talk about women finding self-esteem in sports and about getting a pedicure, is a reflection of what we want to do with the espnW brand — find a more holistic way of looking at sports," says Gentile.

Take a look at espnW.com when you get a chance and let us know what you think.