Even though it has rights to virtually every US major league, the first live sports broadcast that ESPN chose to air on its Disney+ streaming service was the opening night of the 2024 Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) season.

It was an endorsement of the growing fanfare that was building around the league ahead of the imminent arrival of Caitlin Clark, whose participation in Women’s March Madness just months earlier had contributed to record viewership of the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) flagship basketball tournament.

The decision ultimately paid off for ESPN as the game between Clark’s Indiana Fever and Connecticut Sun became what, at the time, was the most-watched WNBA game ever across its platforms. It set a precedent for the 2024 season, which delivered a 170 per cent increase in viewership for the Disney-owned network compared to the previous campaign.

Based on ESPN’s opening broadcast of the 2025 season, which saw Clark’s Fever and Angel Reese’s Chicago Sky play out the most-watched WNBA game in 25 years, those numbers show no sign of slowing.

“The viewership is one aspect of a number of metrics that have seen exponential growth to reflect that something truly special is happening right now,” says Matt Kenny, ESPN’s vice president of programming and acquisitions for basketball, combat sports and lacrosse.

“One of our company priorities is audience expansion and the 2024 WNBA season was an incredible year for us. The type of audience growth that we see doesn’t happen by pulling in one particular segment. In order to achieve the results that we saw, it’s almost like dropping the pebble in the pond where you see the circles go out in every direction, and that’s what we saw.”

ESPN is the only network that has aired the WNBA every year since its inaugural season, but it wasn’t the only one of the league’s expanding group of broadcast partners that benefitted from improved television ratings in 2024. CBS averaged 1.10 million viewers, making it the network’s most-watched regular season ever, while viewership of Friday night games on Scripps-owned Ion increased 133 per cent to 670,000.

As a result, the WNBA’s broadcast partners have been able to more effectively monetise their rights. According to Forbes, Disney’s WNBA ad revenue has increased by 641 per cent since 2022, while Ion boasted of more than 20 new advertising partners for its 2024 coverage when detailing its viewership figures.

All of that would have significantly strengthened the hand of the WNBA and National Basketball Association (NBA) as they entered negotiations over the women’s league’s next broadcast deal, which resulted in an 11-year agreement worth US$200 million per year, an increase of 250 per cent on the US$57 million it currently receives.

It’s also worth highlighting that this deal comes less than two decades after the WNBA first received a fee for its media rights in 2007. Even then, there are some who believe that it could have been more.

“I think that deal might have been done maybe a little too soon, because they didn’t have much to project on in terms of the growth of the sport,” Terri Carmichael Jackson, the executive director of the Women’s National Basketball Players Association (WNBPA), tells SportsPro.

“We hadn’t really seen it yet. There was an explosion that was sure to happen. I think those of us who were just so passionate about this business and passionate about advocating for the players, we were just like, ‘oh, this is great, but did we do it too soon?’”

ESPN has broadcast the WNBA since its inaugural season in 2007

“People are just leaned in harder”

Either way, broadcasters and sponsors are upping their investment into women’s basketball. The audience growth and broader media coverage of both the WNBA and the college game is one of the reasons that the sport is becoming more attractive to sponsors, who are increasingly seeing women’s basketball as an opportunity to reach their target market.

Though the WNBA shares several partners with its male counterpart, the league overhauled its sponsorship strategy in 2020 by introducing the ‘Changemakers’ platform, which allows partners to play a strategic role in the development of the competition in addition to their financial investment, creating another layer of storytelling.

Deloitte, for example, has helped the WNBA transform its digital footprint. Google’s investment, meanwhile, ensured that more games received national broadcast coverage on ESPN, while it also drives awareness for the league through its search engines and platforms.

Speaking at SportsPro New York in March, Colie Edison, the WNBA’s chief growth officer, said the Changemakers are the organisation’s “largest investors” both from “a marketing sponsorship standpoint” and in terms of “the transformation of our league”.

“When it comes to WNBA partnerships, they need to be authentic and intentional,” she continued. “We will never do a logo slap, and we’ll never partner with a brand that doesn’t share our core values.

“These investments need to be intentional. They need to be purposeful. But ultimately, there’s a huge return on investment when it comes to partnering with women’s sports. We saw the average viewership numbers increase alongside the average spend of a brand partner.”

While its growing reach has undoubtedly strengthened the WNBA’s appeal among brands, several individuals interviewed for this series referenced the diversity and passion of its audience as one factor driving the sport’s commercial growth.

According to Edison, 55 per cent of the league’s fanbase is male, while data shared with SportsPro shows that 40 per cent of ESPN’s WNBA viewers are women. That is slightly different to Ion, where 45 per cent of the audience is female, though ESPN saw its viewership among girls aged two to 17 and women between 18 and 34 increase 164 per cent and 225 per cent in 2024, respectively.

Edison also pointed out that the WNBA was named by Morning Consult as the fastest-growing brand in 2024, which was determined based on the share of US consumers who say they would consider purchasing from the league over the course of the year. She also claimed that fans of the WNBA are 185 per cent more likely to buy from a brand that supports the competition.

“They’re unbelievably loyal,” Patty Morris, head of brand at State Farm, says of the women’s basketball fanbase. “They’re rabid fans around this. And I think anytime you get people who are connected to a passion, and then there’s this sort of underdog mentality, people are just leaned in harder.”

‘I can’t remember something that’s had that sort of growth trajectory’

While not a WNBA Changemaker, State Farm first partnered with the league in 2013, making it one of the organisation’s longest-standing sponsors. The insurance company also became an official partner of Unrivaled ahead of the three-on-three tournament’s inaugural season and counts Caitlin Clark and highly touted prospect Juju Watkins as ambassadors, giving it a ubiquitous presence in women’s basketball.

State Farm has an extensive collection of sponsorships in sport, including arena naming rights deals with the Arizona Cardinals and Atlanta Hawks. But Morris describes women’s sports – and women’s basketball in particular – as “the fastest-growing piece of that portfolio”.

“I can’t remember a time like that in my 25-year history of working in marketing where something’s had that sort of growth trajectory,” she continues. “So obviously we’re going to be there because that’s where the people are.”

Other marketers are increasingly of the same opinion. SponsorUnited estimates that the WNBA secured a 19 per cent increase in sponsorship deals between the 2023 and 2024 seasons, while the data and intelligence company ranks six of the league’s players among the top ten most-endorsed professional athletes in women’s sports.

Women’s basketball has long been considered one of the most socially progressive sports, but the way players are leveraging social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram to showcase their interests and routines is opening the sport up to more female-focused brands.

Indeed, State Farm is now being flanked by companies in less traditional sponsorship categories who are entering the WNBA through a mix of league and team deals, whether it be celebrity-owned brands like Kim Kardashian’s Skims and Rhianna’s Fenty or dating app Bumble and hair care specialist Mielle.

That growing demand has also benefitted new properties like Unrivaled, which had signed up the likes of Ally Financial, Sephora and Icy Hot as sponsors before playing a game. According to league president Alex Bazzell, the tournament was expecting less than half of the revenue that it ended up generating during its inaugural 2024 season.

“I think the thing that put us at an ultimate advantage is women’s basketball, women’s sports, is skyrocketing across the board,” says Bazzell. “Brands are looking to deploy and diversify their investments of marketing dollars.

“For us, you look at the main pillars of women’s sports, you have WNBA, you have NWSL, you have WTA in women’s tennis, and then you have a lot of new challenger, emerging products that are still trying to find their footprint, whether it’s women’s hockey, volleyball, European soccer leagues, or college basketball.

“So for us, that’s where we fit into the perfect timing, where we are off-season of all the three main characters that I’ve already mentioned. So now we’re sitting in a silo of a time period where brands are looking to have that 360 touchpoint [with] women’s sports, but limited opportunity. So that was number one that played to our advantage on the sponsorship side.”

The commercial success of Unrivaled in its inaugural season was another sign of the growing appeal of women’s basketball among sponsors

“We get to be very selective about who we do business with”

Just as sponsors are buying up inventory, the women’s basketball fanbase is showing a growing appetite for products around their favourite players.

Unrivaled recently struck a deal with the WNBPA and OneTeam Partners, the company that helps players’ unions commercialise their group licensing rights, to sell merchandise and other products, which is another area of women’s basketball where business is booming.

Speaking to SportsPro, Ricky Medina, OneTeam’s head of consumer products licensing, claims what’s happening on the product side of women’s basketball is “going to be the catalyst for the next generation of fans”.

Medina says the WNBPA now has around 40 licensees spanning traditional product categories like trading cards, jerseys and video games, but notes that there has been considerable growth in areas like premium apparel, toys and collectibles through collaborations with companies such as Funko and Party Animal.

As a result, the WNBPA’s commercial revenue grew 450 per cent in 2024 compared to the previous year, according to Medina, who notes that more than ten of the union’s licensees were generating between US$500,000 to US$1 million from sales of their products last year compared to two in 2023. More specifically, Panini has now eclipsed US$20 million in annual WNBA trading card sales.

“Projections are even higher than that going into 2025,” Medina says. “That’s the story. That’s what we’re seeing across every single licensee, maybe not necessarily at that exact quantum of growth, but we’re seeing growth for everybody.

“So we’re entering the stage where we get to be very selective about who we do business with, which is a shift from three, four or five years ago.”

Women’s basketball fans are showing a growing appetite for WNBA products and merchandise

Indeed, all of this paints a picture of a maturing commercial ecosystem around women’s basketball that didn’t exist even ten years ago.

The term virtuous cycle is used often in relation to women’s sport, where the theory is that increased investment, media coverage and participation will lead to further growth and development. As commercial partners continue to see return on their investments in women’s basketball, there is a sense that the cycle in very much in motion.

“The business case, to me, is that’s where consumers are, so that’s where we’re going to go,” says Morris. “And as long as people are flocking to that environment and that trajectory is going upward, that’s the right investment for us against our entire portfolio.

“The good thing about that uptick, or hockey stick in terms of demand, is that it also breeds innovation. You’re seeing that happen, and that’s going to create new opportunity for brands and advertisers to do more different things. It’s going to create more opportunity for the women in this sport and the leagues.

“And to me, that’s a rising tide that’s going to raise all boats. As that continues to happen, then the business investment question becomes less and less of a question, and I think we’re seeing that play out.”

This is the third instalment of a multi-part series on the business of women’s basketball, which explores the ongoing commercial growth of the sport and how those within the game are looking to capitalise.

To read part one, click here. To read part two, click here. To have future articles delivered directly to your inbox, sign up to the SportsPro Daily here.