The State of the WNBA, Lessons from the NBA, and Next Steps for Growth

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All it takes is one glance at the comments section of a WNBA article or video to get a sense for how much of pop culture views the league. Beyond recycled jokes about sandwiches, the kitchen, and low attendance, the WNBA finds itself in an interesting position in its 22nd season. Despite its position as the most competitive female professional basketball league in the world and a proven ability to stay in business which is unfortunately rare in women’s team sports, questions of legitimacy still hinder the WNBA’s place in the sports world.

One of the main criticisms of the league is that people find it boring. Sure, it’s not the hyper-athletic entertainment juggernaut the NBA has become, but the WNBA is far from uninteresting. When talking about the WNBA, I think people often mistake the quality of the product from the way it’s marketed.

Personally, I’ve never watched as much WNBA as I’ve wanted to or followed a season nearly as closely as the NBA. It’s a difficult league to follow, and one that isn’t shown as much on TV as its parent league. I suppose that’s the difference between a TV deal worth $25 million annually and the NBA’s 9-year, $24 billion dollar deal with ESPN and Turner.

From a pure availability standpoint, the WNBA does okay. Currently, ESPN2 shows a maximum of 33 games a year (13 regular season matchups, the All-Star Game, and every playoff game). This season, NBA TV aired an additional 54 contests, and for the second straight year, 20 games were live streamed on Twitter. In-market, most teams are shown on regional sports networks. Out-of-market, the WNBA offers a good deal with a $16.99 league pass, with additional $9.99 single-team pass and $1.99 single-game options.

The problem is, I don’t think any of these options actually generate new fans for the league. It’s great for the existing fanbase to have options, but how is the league pulling people in? Some of the more hardcore hoops fans might throw on a televised game in the background, but unless something really special is happening, it won’t sell them on the league, just like you wouldn’t expect a Knicks-Nets game to convert someone to being an NBA fan.

I’m highly skeptical of Twitter as a viable option for live sports in general, and as for league pass, you have to create fans before you can sell them season packages.

So how do you generate a fanbase? In my opinion, it all starts with better marketing of the athletes, although we’ll get into that a bit later. Another major component is higher visibility for the league. The NBA has longstanding partnerships with marquee networks –  including ESPN, weeknight doubleheaders on TNT, and the NBA Finals on ABC for maximum reach. Beyond that, there’s all the coverage on sports talk shows, radio shows, journalism, and social media. This is an incredible amount of content and advertising being generated for the league. Think about how much interest in the NBA and entertainment value has been generated through the Inside the NBA team alone.

The WNBA is very much an on-the-court league, by which I mean there isn’t much else that’s noteworthy happening off the court. In other words, it’s basketball, but outside of that, there’s no appeal factor. Now, what if we could get WNBA games shown on ESPN, which averages six times more primetime viewers than ESPN2 in primetime, and create storylines around these matchups to continue the conversation off the court?

In theory, the opportunity is there. The WNBA season lasts from roughly mid-May to September, meaning that for the majority of the season, the league’s biggest competition is midseason baseball, which typically draws a much older audience than basketball does. The core NBA audience is and market newcomers are up for grabs. However, even in the offseason, the WNBA is struggling compared to the NBA.

ESPN networks and NBA TV broadcast all 82 Las Vegas NBA Summer League games this year, and while I don’t have complete numbers, through the first four days of the 12-day event, games were averaging 185,000 viewers. By comparison, regular season WNBA games in 2017 averaged an all-time low of 171,000 viewers. Considering the high volume and relatively unimportant nature of Summer League games, this wouldn’t seem to bode well for the WNBA, who also faces basketball challenges from Ice Cube’s Big3 League and The Basketball Tournament (TBT).

Despite this, in 2017 the WNBA actually saw its highest live attendance since 2011 and achieved record merchandise sales. This indicates that the league is successfully growing franchises in-market, but has struggled to parlay that into a national fanbase. How do you draw in people without a hometown team to cheer for? Get them to care about the players.

The NBA is driven by the athletes. For proof of this, look no further than free agency, a period which over the last decade has become arguably more exciting than the actual season. Rumors about where a player will sign swirl for weeks, months, or even the summer before the player becomes a free agent. In a league dominated by super teams, the stakes are monumental – the decision of one player can alter the trajectory of a franchise.

The Cleveland Cavaliers franchise value dropped over 25% from $476 million to $355 million when LeBron James left to join the Miami Heat in 2010. When LeBron returned to Cleveland in 2014, the team’s value nearly doubled, from $515 million to $915 million.

Superstars shape league storylines. Consider the 2017 NBA Finals. Sure, it was the third-straight Finals meeting between the Warriors and Cavaliers, but that isn’t what made it so exciting. It was the rivalry between Stephen Curry and LeBron James. It was the Warriors’ redemption arc after blowing a 3-1 lead the previous season. It was a chance for LeBron and Kevin Durant to determine who was the best player in the world. Perhaps above all else, it was Durant’s quest for a ring and validation that his highly controversial move from the Thunder to the Warriors the previous offseason was the correct decision.

All this was just a single chapter, and knowing this, it’s easy to tell how players’ careers become stories. Stories we care about. Among athletes, NBA players are uniquely recognizable, and with the increase in player-controlled media, fans know players better than ever before. We know their style, their personality, their family. We’ve watched them grow up, some even since high school.

A whole generation of ballers grew up wanting to Be Like Mike. The current generation has a ton of stars to idolize, and it seems like every young boy I know wants to play in the NBA. We need these same types of role models for young girls to nurture interest in the game which will help grow the future of the league and continue to fight gender stereotypes in athletics. I commend NBA Live 19 for becoming the first major basketball video to implement a female Create-a-Player feature, a year after the franchise added WNBA teams and complete rosters.

I’m not trying to say strong role models don’t currently exist, although I don’t think we’ve seen anyone with the cultural impact of, say, the Williams sisters in tennis. Certainly, many players such as Diana Taurasi, Elena Delle Donne, Breanna Stewart, Sue Bird, Candace Parker, Maya Moore, and Britney Griner have made large impacts on the game. But you don’t know much about them, do you?

This is what puzzles me when I see people asking the NBA to stop promoting the WNBA on social media. Obviously, we’re not promoting this league enough, and as a backer of the league, the NBA has some responsibility to aid in the growth of the WNBA.

Some will say that it’s a waste of time, that men will never want to watch women play basketball, especially considering NBA players are much better than WNBA players. I concede this is probably true for some men, although the NBA’s TV audience is 30% female.

However, the idea that at the highest level, men will have higher performance than women is true of most sports. Yet, this hasn’t stopped many women’s sports from achieving popularity. Tennis is a great example, as is golf. Many “Olympic” sports, such as track and field and swimming are viewed pretty equally, and sports such as gymnastics and volleyball are arguably more popular on the women’s side, although there are additional factors in play there.

We have to eliminate the notion that separating men’s and women’s sports somehow diminishes the value of female athletic achievement. Viewed individually, it’s easy to recognize greatness among both genders.

A common argument made by both men and women, including some very notable names in the world of women’s basketball, states that the WNBA should lower the rims from 10 feet, down to perhaps to 9 or 9.5 feet. This would allow for more dunking and play above the rim, making the game more interesting. For reference, just seven women have dunked in a WNBA game, with Britney Griner’s 13 career jams accounting for the majority of all dunks.

The prospect of WNBA dunks might offer a marginal viewership boost at first, but I would strongly advise the WNBA against this rule change. Lowering the rims would be a major step backward, essentially caving in to the critics and admitting that basketball is unwatchable without the looming possibility of a dunk.

This simply isn’t true. The 2018 NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Championship Game was watched on ESPN by 3.54 million people, a number in line with viewership over the last 20 years. On the other hand, the 2017 WNBA Finals averaged just 559,000 viewers, including 902,000 for the decisive Game 5. Again, it’s all about marketing.

Female golfers play from shorter tees because they can’t hit the ball as far. Women’s volleyball nets are lower because girls are shorter on average, and spikes and plays at the net are essential to the game. That’s the fundamental difference between rules changes in these sports and basketball. Dunking isn’t essential, and shooting on a 10-foot rim isn’t an issue for female players.

Furthermore, lowering the rims will not stop criticism of the game. Next, it will be that there still aren’t enough dunks, or highlight reel dunks, or that they need the rim to be lowered to dunk, or that some players still can’t dunk. If people only tune in hoping to see dunking, then dunking becomes more of a distraction for the league than anything else.

We shouldn’t even be having this conversation. The rims will never be lowered, and there’s a very simple reason why: it’s impractical to the point where implementation would be impossible. Lowering the rims means altering the game at every level. All of a sudden, the rim has to be at 9 feet for every college game, every high school game, every AAU game. What do you about co-ed leagues for younger kids? Now, boys and girls can’t play or even practice together anymore, and suddenly every outside park court in the world is unsuitable for females.

While this is far from a complete strategy, I think the league should put a lot of effort into trying to create stars that permeate sports and pop culture. Give the players voices. Make features about player’s stories, and highlight these individuals and let them speak in commercials. Encourage and promote athletes being more involved on social media.

Just as important as TV viewership is ticket and merchandise sales. To grow, the WNBA needs to get cities to identify with their players, and in turn, their teams, and want to support them. As still a comparably young league, this will take some time, but with continued emphasis, should improve. Recent numbers indicate things are on the right track. Additionally, the league has succeeded in generating more sponsorship revenue through court and jersey sponsorships.

For everything to come together, though, the league and the players need to be on the same page, and right now, there are a few major issues coming between them.

The first of these is player salaries. Currently, the average WNBA salary is around $79,000 with a minimum salary of $41,202 and a veteran maximum of $115,500. These numbers pale in comparison to the NBA, with a minimum contract of $838,464 and an average salary of over $7.5 million.

A minimum NBA contract is comparable to a WNBA team’s entire payroll. Even entry-level NBA referees make more than any WNBA player at $150,000 per year, while the closest WNBA comparison can be found with NBA G League players.

Obviously, it would be unrealistic for WNBA players to make similar salaries to NBA players, and they’re aware of this. The NBA generated a staggering $7.4 billion in revenue last season, a 25% increase from even just the year before. It’s also worth noting that an NBA season more than twice as long as a WNBA season.

The main problem lies with how revenue is split between the league and the players. NBA players earn roughly 50 percent of league revenues, while WNBA players earn a maximum of around 22 percent, and possibly much less. It shouldn’t be surprising that WNBA players get a smaller cut, as teams have operating costs, and it’s much easier to pay players a higher percentage when there is greater total revenue. Still, the discrepancy is extreme.

Low salaries have had another impact – a majority of WNBA players spend their offseason playing professionally overseas, where they often make more (and sometimes much, much more) than they do in the States. This opens up the dangerous possibility of players leaving the league entirely in favor of their other teams. WNBA all-time leading scorer Diana Taurasi sat out the 2015 season when her Russian team, UMMC Ekaterinburg, offered to pay more than her then $107,000 salary to rest over the summer. Taurasi then made $1.5 million that winter playing for the team.

The players can’t be blamed for this. The career of an athlete is finite and can end at any moment, making it important to make as much money as possible during your playing days. While most players would rather play in the States, outside opportunities might be too good to pass up.

This has been the case the Dallas Wings’ Australian superstar Liz Cambage, who played in the WNBA this year for the first time since 2013. Cambage led the league in scoring this season and scored a record 53 points in a game against the New York Liberty, but has already said her return to the league in 2019 is uncertain, citing salary and travel concerns.

Issues with travel have become a big storyline in the WNBA this season, following the first forfeit in league history. While the NBA charters planes, WNBA teams fly coach as a cost-cutting measure. This put the Las Vegas Aces in a difficult position as a nightmarish sequence of cancellations and layovers made traveling to D.C. take 26 hours, with the team arriving only four hours before their game against the Mystics.

This forced the Aces, a team fighting for one of the league’s final playoff spots, to make a decision: play the game, and risk injuries due to a lack of decompression and fatigue, or make a stand, and refuse to play. The Aces chose the latter. The league offered to move the start time back an hour but were unable to reschedule the game for a later date, ultimately ruling the game as a forfeit. The Aces would finish one win out of the playoffs. One team that did make the playoffs was the Los Angeles Sparks, but they fell in the second round after traveling 5,567 miles in just four days.

I have mixed opinions on the Aces’ decision, but I respect the players’ willingness to take a risk and make a statement in the hopes of achieving positive change in the future. The league’s current CBA runs through 2021, but the players are able to and are expected to opt out following the 2019 season. Salary and travel concerns will be major talking points in the development of a new CBA.

From the league’s perspective, a similar revenue split and chartered flights remain unrealistic. What needs to happen, though, is for the league to be honest with the players about league revenues (much of WNBA finances is still unknown), and show a willingness to work with players to improve conditions. This means creating a better plan to increase player salaries over time.

Scheduling was difficult this year, as the league condensed the regular season three weeks to finish the season in time for players to participate in the 2018 FIBA Women’s World Cup, which starts on September 22. Moving forward, the league should be open to starting earlier on World Cup years, and continue attempts to eliminate back-to-backs, three games in four days, etc. Finally, the WNBA should adopt Article XX Section 7(b) of the NBA’s current CBA, which states teams shall not be required to play on the same day they have traveled across two time zones.

Many of the WNBA’s problems simply stem from being a young league. As franchises continue to grow and develop rivalries with other teams, and we see the next generation of stars market themselves and the league, the WNBA should continue to grow. Back in the NBA’s 22nd season (1967-68), the league was just expanding to 12 teams (equaling the current WNBA) and averaged 6,749 fans per game, roughly 1,000 less than the WNBA.

Right now, the WNBA should focus on creating growth while maintaining stability and creating a strong player environment. If the league can succeed in its current state, there will be strong prospects for expansion. Currently, the WNBA does not have franchises in Boston, Philadelphia, Houston, or anywhere in Florida. The WNBA has always been a legitimate league, and it’s about time the sports world finally takes notice.