On Sunday evening, New York Liberty head coach Sandy Brondello proclaimed with exuberance that her crew’s WNBA championship was one for the historical past books.
The Liberty had simply outlasted the Minnesota Lynx in a must-win Sport 5 extra time for his or her first title within the franchise’s 28-year historical past. It additionally marked the primary main skilled basketball title in New York Metropolis in additional than 4 a long time. “That makes me very proud,” Brondello stated.
However the championship wasn’t the one time the historical past books had been re-written throughout a landmark 2024 WNBA season.
“The finals mark the fruits of what I believe is essentially the most transformational 12 months within the WNBA’s historical past,” commissioner Cathy Engelbert stated final week earlier than the finals. The sequence’ fifth recreation was the most-viewed finals recreation (2.2 million) in 25 years with viewership for your complete sequence up 115 p.c in comparison with final 12 months’s finals.
4 years after an “existential” second, the WNBA ascended into the general public zeitgeist like by no means earlier than. Viewership (it was the most-viewed common season ever throughout ESPN platforms with a mean of 1.19 million viewers), attendance (up 48 p.c league-wide from final 12 months), merchandise gross sales (a 601 p.c enhance on the WNBA Retailer) and digital engagement (a single-season document with almost 2 billion video views throughout league social media platforms getting into the playoffs), had been all at or close to all-time document ranges. A brand new landmark media rights deal that might be price greater than $2 billion over the following 11 years was signed this summer season as an indication of future progress.
MOST-VIEWED WNBA FINALS IN 25 YEARS 🔥🎉 pic.twitter.com/P0Sj7M6s9u
— Ladies’s Hoops Community (@WomensHoops_USA) October 22, 2024
Final fall, the WNBA introduced the Golden State Valkyries will start play in 2025 because the league’s thirteenth franchise. Toronto might be residence to the league’s 14th franchise, and in September, the league introduced Portland could have the fifteenth crew. Portland’s franchise, which is able to start play in 2026, drew an all-in payment of $125 million, greater than doubling what the league sought in enlargement charges when it began and what it price the Golden State Warriors possession group to purchase in a 12 months earlier.
Final 12 months’s worth was not this 12 months’s worth. And it gained’t be subsequent 12 months’s worth as Engelbert has stated 10 to 12 cities are viable choices for a sixteenth franchise, which the league is in no rush to pick out as the value for potential possession teams continues to extend.
“They see the financial impression of getting a WNBA crew of their metropolis, the position mannequin in the neighborhood these gamers symbolize,” Engelbert stated.
The Indiana Fever drafted Caitlin Clark, who graduated from Iowa, with the No. 1 decide. Her reputation translated instantly and naturally to the WNBA. Six league tv companions set viewership information for his or her highest considered WNBA video games when airing Fever video games in the course of the common season. As Clark set rookie information en path to her All-Star Sport choice and All-WNBA first-team honors, Fever attendance hit new marks to steer the league in attendance (17,036 per residence recreation) for the primary time.
Caitlin Clark’s rookie 12 months highlights 💥
the primary participant in @WNBA historical past to complete a season because the league’s help chief and high 10 in scoring – 19.2 PPG, 8.4 APG, 5.7 RPG and three.1 3PM.
watch the total 20+ minutes on our YouTube: pic.twitter.com/adPhOuvAMg
— Indiana Fever (@IndianaFever) October 11, 2024
As Clark skilled during the last 12 months, the ladies’s basketball calendar strikes shortly. In two weeks, the 2024-25 faculty season begins. When it does, onlookers expect a reprisal of final 12 months’s increase.
Although replicating that success precisely is likely to be a excessive bar to clear (with Clark as its driver, the ladies’s Ultimate 4 was the most-viewed on document and the title recreation averaged a document 18.9 million viewers), the 2 sports activities work synergistically. Dave Roberts, ESPN’s head of occasion and studio manufacturing at ESPN instructed The Athletic final April,“We merge from ladies’s faculty basketball to the WNBA, and we couldn’t be in a greater place to proceed the momentum that was exemplified all through this event.”
The logic will be utilized to the current because the cycle continues flowing.
On the faculty stage, a crop of stars is prepared for the highlight left by Clark and Angel Reese.
UConn’s Paige Bueckers toured the U.S. this summer season, making appearances at New York Metropolis Trend Week, WNBA All-Star Weekend and the ESPYs. USC star sophomore JuJu Watkins not too long ago agreed to a profitable endorsement take care of Nike and introduced a partnership with Gatorade.
Each are anticipated to be prolific when the season begins subsequent month, and hope to have their groups contending for a title alongside reigning undefeated champion South Carolina. The 2024-25 nationwide championship will once more air on ABC — for simply the third time — and conclude a university season which has its personal new media rights bundle valued at round a document $65 million yearly.
Newly injected into the ladies’s basketball calendar is one other skilled league, known as Unmatched, which is able to tipoff in January. It’s idea is completely different than the WNBA — 3-on-3 as a substitute of 5-on-5, six groups not 12 — however it has drawn in a few of the world’s finest gamers (Breanna Stewart, Napheesa Collier, Kelsey Plum, Rhyne Howard, Arike Ogunbowale, Brittney Griner) and it seems to be a gorgeous possibility somewhat than enjoying abroad in the course of the WNBA offseason. It’ll air on TNT two nights per week. Gamers obtained fairness within the league, and it promised to pay the best common wage in ladies’s skilled sports activities historical past.
The way it fares might be watched carefully, however its mere existence is a mirrored image of the game’s ongoing transformation.
“Ladies’s basketball’s on such an increase proper now,” stated Collier, one among its co-founders.
Challenges stay throughout ladies’s basketball, a few of which had been augmented this 12 months. Nearly all of WNBA gamers’ compensation is made off the court docket, and the gamers affiliation introduced it’s opting out of the league’s CBA this week “demand(ing) a enterprise mannequin that displays their true worth, encompassing greater salaries, enhanced skilled working circumstances, expanded well being advantages, and essential investments wanted for long-term progress.”
WNBA gamers additionally shared that this season’s surge in reputation introduced upticks in on-line harassment and threats. A not too long ago revealed NCAA research on social media abuse of athletes discovered that 80 p.c of abusive posts had been directed at March Insanity athletes, with ladies basketball gamers receiving about 3 times extra abusive messages than their male counterparts.
The WNBA has famous it can try to guard its gamers from dangerous on-line assaults as the game’s reputation continues to rise. The NCAA vowed to do the identical.
However with extra video games televised and ladies’s basketball gamers often turning into marketable stars, there’s no trace that the eye will wane.
“Clearly we’ve had our watershed second as we had been rising,” stated Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve, who has coached within the WNBA for greater than twenty years “I’m glad I’m nonetheless teaching throughout this as a result of it’s what we’ve at all times believed in.”
(Picture: Ethan Miller / Getty Photographs)
