Athlete-Driven Media and WNBA Expansion

The WNBA is an expanding sports league that has seen growth in viewership and sponsorships in recent years. This is largely in part due to their approach to athlete-driven media. The release of the ESPN documentary “144” in May, which covers the WNBA experience in the “wubble” and social justice issues is another example of media exposure and storytelling. This innovative storytelling-based content is one of the ways they’re bringing in new fans to the league specifically new female fans. Fluid Fans, and more specifically Fans of Women’s Sports, want more Access to the athletes on and off the court. What a player has for lunch and their diet can be more interesting than how many points and assists they accrued on a given night.

Fashion has become a big part of the WNBA and pictured above are players entering the arena in unique outfits. This has become a trend and has helped the players grow their own individual brands. That is something that makes the WNBA different compared to the NBA, and that’s the focus on the athletes themselves. When looking at the top Google trends for the NBA, the results are mainly about player stats and general career attributes, but the search results for the WNBA are much more centered around the individual players. Common search results include players’ salaries, net worth, personal relationships, and social media. From the outside perspective this may seem a bit prejudiced against female athletes, only caring about personal aspects of their life as opposed to their performance on the court. But in fact, our data shows that these are the topics that WNBA fans and Fans of Women’s Sports care about. Credit to the WNBA for listening to their fans and creating content around fashion and the athletes off the court lifestyles.

We know through the launch of the Fan Project that Fans of Women’s Sports are digitally native and consume content on multiple platforms. The WNBA has taken advantage of this fan behavior and focused on athlete-driven media and individual player brands. Just last month, the Jordon brand partnered with 11 emerging WNBA players marking the largest group of Jordan endorsees in women’s sports. The “144” documentary is more focused on the collective WNBA offering an alternative approach to their normal media strategy as the league was at the forefront of fights against systematic racism and police brutality. Data from 2017 shows that the NBA makes over 60% of their revenue from jersey sales, TV, and sponsors while the WNBA makes only roughly 16% of their revenue from those sources. What does that mean for the WNBA? There are opportunities to create diverse streams of revenue and the athletes can be the driving force.