Seismic change is coming to the WNBA. Brace for the aftershocks.
On mixed emotions, impending backlash, Caitlin Clark, and Candace Parker.
Hi, friends. How are you all doing?
This past month, from the Final Four in Cleveland (which I was blessed enough to cover in person), to the WNBA draft (which I watched from my couch in my pajamas), to the start of WNBA training camp (which was, somehow, this past weekend), to the never-ending news cycles surrounding it all, have been full of monumental, paradigm-shifting moments in the world of women’s basketball.
The women’s Final Four in Cleveland averaged 13.1 million viewers. The national championship game, which saw South Carolina defeat Iowa 87-75 to cap off an undefeated season, drew 18.9 million viewers, over four million more viewers than the men’s national championship game received the following day. Just over a week later, 2.4 million people watched the WNBA draft on ESPN, a 307% increase over 2023. The Wall Street Journal reports that Indiana Fever rookie Caitlin Clark — whose record-shattering senior season at Iowa, fueled by her signature logo three-pointers, brought millions of new eyes to the sport — is nearing a $28 million, eight-year deal with Nike, the largest ever for a women’s basketball player.
These are all staggeringly good numbers.
But, it turns out, seeing a sport you’ve covered for a decade and loved for far longer *finally* get the attention it deserves stirs up a lot of conflicting emotions.
I, of course, feel elated and vindicated and energized. But I also feel angry that it didn’t happen sooner. I feel protective and almost territorial listening to people — especially media members — who have never paid attention to the sport before suddenly present as experts. I feel resentful that the women’s sports community is expected to graciously roll out the welcome mat for people who have either ignored, insulted, or outright impeded the growth of women’s basketball for decades. I feel guilty for said resentment, because isn’t this what we’ve been asking for all along?
I feel overwhelmingly lucky that I get to work in this space during this shift. I feel extremely anxious that I’m not going to figure out a way to be a part of the influx of attention and capital and investment in this space, that this whole boom is going to leave me in the dust, that I’m not doing enough to take advantage of it. And, perhaps more than anything, I feel a lot of fear over what happens next.
I’m not alone in having strong feelings, I am sure about that. I mean, have you been on social media lately? (Honestly, I hope not.) The conversations are happening in all caps, both literally and figuratively.
Everyone is watching women’s basketball. It’s phenomenal. Truly. But it also means that everyone, seemingly overnight, has learned how meager WNBA salaries are compared to NBA salaries; it means that everyone, seemingly overnight, has become experts on the economics of women’s sports; it means that everyone, seemingly overnight, has gotten their degree in marketing and intersectionality; it means that everyone, seemingly overnight, has found their voice and lost their mind.
When I step back, the reactions, from myself and others, aren’t surprising. As I’ve learned in therapy and coaching, success isn’t always comfortable. It doesn’t always feel good. Even positive change comes with negatives. This is as true for the people experiencing the newfound success as it is for those around them.
In the very first edition of Power Plays — which stands the test of time, if I do say so myself — I wrote, “Sometimes it seems that those in positions of power in the sports world aren’t afraid of what happens if women’s sports fail; they’re afraid of what would happen if women’s sports are truly allowed to flourish.”
Well, despite the best efforts of the Powers That Be, we are officially in an era of flourishing. That means a power shift is happening in real time.
I’ve spent the past few weeks trying to write about, well, all of this. I’ve honestly been stuck, just mentally drained by the never-ending storm of discourse. Today. I want to look at what history teaches us about the belittling, backlash, and bloodsuckers that lie ahead. Then I’ll examine why, thanks to legends like Candace Parker, despite my fear, I feel more bullish than ever about the future.
There will be undermining
Throughout the history of women’s sports, whenever there’s been significant progress, there’s been significant backlash. A couple of glaring examples came in the 1920s; in the United States, First Lady Lou Hoover was so alarmed by girls’ basketball becoming a popular pastime that she formed a national committee, which ultimately recommended that girls’ basketball be banned. It was just a recommendation, not a requirement, but it carried significant weight.
Across the pond, as another women’s sport — soccer/football — was flourishing, the Football Association in England took things a step further after 53,000 fans came to watch the Dick, Kerr Ladies beat the St. Helen Ladies, and banned women and girls from playing football on any FA grounds because “the game of football is quite unsuitable for females, and ought not to be encouraged.”
According to Dr. Brenda Elsey and Dr. Joshua Nadel in Futbolera: A History of Women and Sports in Latin America, “The potential of women's empowerment through team sports frightened sporting and state institutions.”
Now, I’m not suggesting that we’re headed towards a ban of women’s basketball. However, I do think that people are going to come out of the woodwork to attempt to “humble” women’s basketball players as the sport continues to gain more financial and social capital. We’ve already seen multiple examples of this recently — both from trolls on social media, who have seriously violated the privacy of a few stars, and from mainstream journalists.
By now you’ve probably heard about Gregg Doyel, a prominent sports columnist at the IndyStar, behaving inappropriately at Clark’s introductory press conference with the Fever. When it was his turn to ask a question, Doyel made a heart sign with his hands, mimicking the sign Clark makes after every game. After an uncomfortable back-and-forth, in which Clark said the gesture is for her family, Doyel told her, “Start doing it to me and we'll get along just fine.”
Doyel was trying to establish his dominance and import, to put Clark in her place. In the upcoming months, he won’t be the only media member with that mission. Some colleagues will follow in Doyel’s footsteps, wielding infantilizing and condescending comments tinged with sexism. Others will and use more in-your-face tropes, such as hyper-sexualization, homophobia, and racism. Many — even those who consider themselves allies — will incessantly poke tiny holes at the foundation of women’s basketball, insidiously trying to diminish its newfound shine and return the sports world to its patriarchal status quo.
There will be undervaluation
Earlier this year, the NCAA signed an eight-year deal with ESPN that valued the Division I women’s basketball tournament at $65 million. While that is a drastic increase over its previous paltry valuation of about $7 million annually, it already feels outdated. Remember: This year, the women’s championship game out-drew the men’s!
Now, the men’s tournament still gets more viewers overall than the women’s, and it’s reasonable to be unsure if the peak of 18.9 million viewers can be attained without Clark in the championship game. However, given the steady growth of the women’s game year after year, the math is still off. The men’s tournament averaged 9.9 million viewers per game, compared to 2.2 million viewers for the women’s game. That means the men’s tournament had about 4.5 times the viewers than the women’s. But the men’s tournament’s $1.1 billion valuation is 17 times the $65 million valuation of the women’s tournament.
There’s plenty of blame to go around — from the NCAA, to ESPN itself, to advertisers and brands who still don’t see women’s sports as a valuable venture. But no matter who is at fault, the outcome is the same: Conservative media rights deals discourage investment and impede growth, and are ultimately another tool that limits the success of women’s sports.
The current WNBA media deal expires after the 2025 season. Today, it is worth about $60 million a year with television and streaming contracts with ESPN/ABC, Amazon Prime Video, CBS, NBA TV and ION. WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert recently said she hopes to “at least double” that price with upcoming negotiations. I certainly hope that she aims higher.
There will be leeches
In 1972, when Title IX was enacted, more than 90 percent of the coaches in collegiate women’s sports were women. About a decade later, that number fell below 50 percent, where it has remained.1
When interest and prestige and money started to flood women’s collegiate sports after Title IX, a disproportionate amount of the coaching opportunities went to white men. Many of the women who helped form the foundation of women’s collegiate sports through the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) were left in the dust.
My fear is that history is going to repeat itself. A bunch of powerful people in sports and entertainment are flocking to women’s basketball because of the popularity of Clark and her draft-mates, like Angel Reese, Cameron Brink, and Kamilla Cardoso. And that’s good! But most of these people don’t actually care about growing the sport in the long-term; they care about siphoning off its power.
Take Ice Cube, for example. The rapper and co-owner of the Big3 basketball league publicly offered Clark a two-year contract (allegedly) worth around $15 million to become the first woman to play in the three-on-three league, which consists mostly of retired NBA players. Obviously, that’s far more money than she will make in the WNBA right now, given the collective bargaining agreement caps her salary at $76,000 this season. But Ice Cube doesn’t care about women’s basketball; he is using Clark’s popularity for personal gain. The WNBA and Big3 seasons overlap. Yet, for years, he has gone around selling the Big3 as the “hottest league in the summer.”
When the WNBA was launched in 1996, there were so many NBA owners and major brands excited to join forces with the league and its stars, desperate to capitalize on the success of the 1996 women’s Olympic team in Atlanta, and, in a less-direct way, the 1999 women’s World Cup. The WNBA debuted in 1997 with eight teams. By 2000 there were 16. But when things got difficult, when franchises didn’t turn a profit overnight, when the novelty expired, a litany of powerful people bailed on the league. From 2002-2009, six franchises folded completely and three changed ownership and cities.
Over the last 15 years, so many players, coaches, trainers, die-hard fans, and mostly independent media members have fought tooth and nail to bring the league back to the forefront. Now that it’s en vogue again, who will truly get to benefit?
Thankfully, there is also a super strong foundation
I started off this newsletter talking about my complicated feelings. And so, it was somewhat fitting that as I was wrapping up this up on Sunday, Candace Parker announced her retirement from the WNBA, I was flooded with grief, denial, gratitude, and awe. While I could, and probably should, dedicate an entire newsletter to Parker herself, I actually think it’s instructive to put her story in context of this moment.
Parker has been a basketball sensation since her high-school days. In 2003, she announced her commitment to Tennessee on ESPNews, a first for a female athlete. At Tennessee, crowds flocked to watch her play. The Associated Press called it the “Candace Parker Effect,” noting that everywhere Parker went, “arena attendance swells with screaming girls and people who would not usually make the effort to watch a women’s basketball game.” Her senior year, Tennessee set a record for average attendance, at 15,796. Schools around the nation smashed their attendance records by upwards of 9,000 fans when she came to town. (Sound familiar?)
In 2008, after leading the Vols to back-to-back national championships, the Los Angeles Sparks picked her No. 1 overall in the WNBA draft. She was the Rookie of the Year *and* league MVP that season. Between draft day and being crowned MVP, she won gold with Team USA in Beijing. She was the It Girl.
That summer in the New York Times, Pete Thamel wrote, “With her resplendent smile and transcendent game, Parker is close to becoming the first international icon in her sport.” Long before the days of NIL, she signed long-term deals with Adidas and Gatorade. She was said to have the “whole package,” on and off the court.
But Parker came into the WNBA during the aforementioned dire time for the league. The country was in the middle of the most severe economic crash since the Great Depression. Historic franchises were folding left and right. It was survival mode.
But despite these struggles, despite having to go overseas to play in the offseason, despite the lack of investment she endured from both the Sparks and the Sky, Parker was able to earn three championships, two MVPs, seven All-Star appearances, and two gold medals. Perhaps most importantly for this conversation, she was able to amass wealth and cultural cache through it all. She’s been an analyst for the NBA and men’s college basketball on TNT since 2018. In 2021, she became the first WNBA to grace the cover of NBA 2K.
Her success speaks to an inevitability of women’s sports, a permanence of their power even during dark times. And the state of the WNBA as she says goodbye speaks to its resiliency.
If and when the WNBA sees skyrocketing attendance and viewership numbers this season, it will be dubbed the “Caitlin Clark Effect.” And given the ticket sales for Fever home and road games this season, that moniker is deserved. She’s a supernova.
But to me, the most important indicators of growth are the ones independent of Clark. Just a few years ago, the Las Vegas Aces sold for a reported $2 million. Last year, the Seattle Storm achieved a $151 million valuation and the Chicago Sky received an $85 million valuation. The Dallas Wings, Atlanta Dream, and Las Vegas Aces have already sold out of season tickets. The Aces and Storm have brand new practice facilities, and the Mercury have one on the way. The Mercury just sold a jersey patch sponsorship for $3 million.
Clark isn’t being tasked with making a fire from scratch; she’s adding her accelerant to an already-burning flame.
So yes, the WNBA will be bigger than ever this summer. I will be regularly annoyed by new fans, awestruck by new records, and exhausted by bad takes. The increase in popularity will bring out the worst from many in the mainstream media, and plenty of fair-weather friends will show their faces. It will be wonderful and uncomfortable and exhilarating and infuriating. And I will love every second, even when I hate it.
For better or for worse, it’s time for the WNBA to thrive.
We’re only recently starting to see a shift; in the past five years, the percentage of women coaching women’s NCAA sports has increased from 41 percent to 46 percent; in basketball, it’s gone from 59 percent to 72 percent, per the 2022-23 Women in College Coaching Report Card published by the Tucker Center and WeCOACH. (Twenty-three percent of coaches in women’s college basketball women of color.)
I share your frustration and fear. I’ve been freelancing in this space for a decade, trying to convince editors there is an audience for this and now that publications are finally covering it, I’m *still* not getting the assignments. So much nuance is being lost, the coverage feels juvenile and uninformed. It feels like spending all this time helping set the table and then when it’s ready, they take away your seat.
Fun read Lindsey. Agreed, women's basketball is enjoying a good market ride. The ride is a wave. Most of us are standing on the shore gazing in amazement at this wave. ESPN Viewed the wave, wrongly, for decades as a ripple. Its not. It large and sustainable and will be for decades. Good news, ESPN is a male centered sports media complex with very little story telling abilities in women's sports. Women's sports is a story, a story that needs to be told and retold by writers like you.