The WNBA proves that last year’s success was not a stroke of luck. : NPR

Indianapolis – You could not deny the extent of last season’s success in WNBA, where assessments and attendance have reached historical heights in the middle of the Boom of interest in female sports – in particular basketball – while the Caitlin Clark phenomenon made its debut.

But there were questions about the question of whether growth would be sustainable – or if it would be temporary, a temporary trend.

Now, halfway from the 2025 season, the WNBA is on a victory tour. TV notes are even higher than last year, up 23% in all areas. The attendance also continued to climb, the matches on average 13% more fans than last year and the total sales of tickets up 26% in total with the beginnings of the 13th League team, the Golden State Valkyries.

The League grasped its moment, with an ambitious plan to switch to 18 teams by 2030.

“We knew that great things happened. We did not know the speed at which they were going to come, or the level, but we were ready for everything that happened to us,” said Phil Cook, marketing director of the League. “We knew how great the game was. We knew how incredible the athletes were. We knew it was the best basketball in the world. And we just needed to unlock access to a fans base that did not recognize or did not see that.”

And players are also looking for their own share of success, with pressure for a transformer union agreement that will end a legacy of low wages. The minimum WNBA wage this year is around $ 66,000.

“It’s not a matter of laughing. It’s not a trend, it’s not a moment in time,” said A’ja Wilson, the Las Vegas Aces star and the Triple MVP of League. “You are dealing with me, my livelihood, my future, the next generation. So we are going to take this very, very seriously.”

A more sophisticated commercial strategy

This weekend stars festivities in Indianapolis are a clear indicator of league growth. Two years ago, around 96,000 fans voted to send Wilson to the star match, which only sold three -quarters of the 12,000 -seat arena to Las Vegas.

This year, Clark won the vote with nearly 1.3 million fans’ ballots, and the 18,000 seats in Indianapolis Gainbridge Fieldhouse sold months before this evening.

In addition to attendance and ratings, other measures are increasing, in particular sales of goods and the commitment of social media. League officials say that this is the result of an informed commercial strategy, including improvements to digital offers, expanded access to playing games and efforts to build fans, such as pre-season game planning in the university cities of star players.

Last month, Commissioner Cathy Engelbert announced the arrival of expansion teams in Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia in 2028, 2029 and 2030. Two other new franchises, the Toronto Tempo and Portland Fire, were already joining the League next season. In all, the WNBA will finally understand 18 teams, the largest in the league has ever been.

The three new teams will pay expansion fees of $ 250 million each – five times the amount paid only two years ago by the Valkyries. Next season, the record agency of $ 2.2 billion in media rights, which, according to WNBA, is the most important in the history of female sports.

Among the league officials, he is convinced that the upward trend will not continue. The principal vice-president and the director of growth Colaie Edison underlined the success of the Valkyries, which became the most popular team in the league in its first season on the back of 10,000 seasonal subscription holders, only 4% overlapping with the Golden State Warriors.

“We find that it is a new fan that others (leagues) cannot reach,” said Edison.

Missed opportunities?

Everyone in the basketball sector has not always been a believer. Minnesota Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve, who has been working around the League since 2001, told journalists on Friday that she thought that the current success could have been even greater if the WNBA franchises affiliated with the NBA had not been confronted with skepticism in previous years.

“There was this long nuance of” yeah, the WNBA is pleasant and everything, but it will never become current. “This kind of nuance put us in a position that perhaps, when it was time to capitalize, that we have missed on certain things,” said Reeve. “Now, some of these same people go:” Oh, there is money now. “”

The average frequentation of the league has increased rapidly – its current average of more than 11,000 fans per game is currently about that of 2022. But certain franchises, such as the Washington Mystics and Atlanta Dream, are limited by playing in arenas that welcome only a few thousand fans, reflecting what was once a largely detained belief that WNBA teams were Complete areas. Now, these teams frequently move matches in larger arenas when teams like Clark’s Fever and The Chicago Sky, with his Star Angel Reese, come in town.

Another notable change is the renewed interest of the NBA ownership groups. When the WNBA was launched for the first time, all its franchises belonged, by rule, belonging to the owners of the NBA teams. This changed at the beginning and in the mid -2000s, when the public interest in the league failed and the ownership groups began to sell their WNBA franchises.

Last year, only five of the 12 League teams had an NBA owner. Now, this inverse trend: the shared property of Golden State Valkyries with the Golden State Warriors, and each of the three new teams announced last month will belong, in whole or in part, by the owners of the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Pistons de Detroit and the 76ers of Philadelphia.

Talks about a new collective agreement

Rapid growth has also increased the challenges of negotiations on a new collective agreement between owners and players. The current agreement expires at the end of October.

The biggest collision points, say the players, are the problems of money: wages, income sharing and what is called “prioritization” – in other words, the capacity of players to play in other leagues to complete their income, which WNBA players have done for a long time.

“If this is the price requested and it is the televised agreement, then give a meaning on the other side to the other,” Breanna Stewart, the New York Liberty Forward and the vice-president of the union players said on Friday.

In addition to expansion, the league has sought to increase its income by adding matches to the calendar. This year, the teams will play 44 games in the regular season each, and the finals are extended from a series of five games to a series of seven games. But the traditional league calendar – from mid -May to mid -October, intended to avoid walking on the NBA season – has not yet changed, which means that players must play more matches every week than before.

Last week, when players and officials met for the star match, more than 40 players attended a person in person between the two games. Addressing journalists this week, players raised questions about injuries, alignment size and officers.

“If we are going to add all these expansion teams very quickly – which is great, it means that the game increases – but at the same time, I hope that we do so responsible,” said Gabby Williams, an attacker for the Seattle storm, who stressed the number of stars forced to withdraw from the game for health reasons.

This includes Clark, who suffered an injury to the groin last week who put him away from the three -point competition of Friday and the star match of tonight. Other stars have also missed matches this season, including Lynx Forward and the frontrunner MVP Napheesa Collier and Arike Ogunbowale of Dallas Wings, who scored the second points in the League last year.

If the two parties cannot reach an agreement, they risk a work stoppage. This loss of play has proven to be damaged in the past in other professional sports leagues, including the National Hockey League and the Major League Baseball. Such a brutal stop of the WnBA momentum could be difficult to bounce back.

The players who have been in the league for years, including the 11 -year -old veteran, Kayla McBride, always marvels at the rapid change. “We were in Holiday Inn Express, and now we stay in all four seasons wherever we go,” Lynx Guard said on Friday.

However, there is more progress to be made, says McBride. She, like many other WNBA players, argue that their requests are deserved according to what they have done on the field.

“We ask all these things in our (collective agreement), and we develop, we do all these incredible things, but we also put. We also have hoops,” she said. “Our game supports what we ask.”