Alex Editorial 4: The WNBA is at an Impasse. How Can They fix it?
In researching this article, I Googled the above title and the top suggested searches included, “wnba is unwatchable”, “wnba is a lesbian charity”, and “wnba is a charity”. Those harsh statements may just perfectly sum up the mentality of someone who hates the W. However, to move the league towards a prosperous future, the executive must address that crowd.
The WNBA and its future has become a hot topic among sports personalities and around the sports universe, yet in many circles it is talked about by people who largely know nothing about the league. Shane Gillis’ Espy Speech last year proved that many people involved in the sports world wouldn’t be able to recognize the league’s stars. Many Americans watched women’s basketball for one reason and one reason only: Caitlyn Clark. These more casual fans make up a majority of the league’s support, but are less committed to its development.
Outside of the casuals, hardcore fans still drive a significant portion of the league's revenue. The Aces have sold out each of their last two seasons, and that’s with all but three or four not including the former Iowa star. Diehards have shown up in every single WNBA stadium, as almost every single team has seen attendance increase each of the past four years.
To create a successful business model, the WNBA has to serve, or at least acknowledge, the needs of the above three groups: haters, casuals, and diehards. It may be an uphill battle, but here’s how they got here, and what they need to do to move forward.
In the 90s and 2000s, right at the start of the league, the WNBA was very successful, even more than today. From 1997 to 2000, the WNBA had its four of its most watched Finals to date, all eclipsing one million viewers. However, between 2000 and 2023, the W didn’t have a single final series with more than one million viewers. What changed, other than the league’s novelty declining, was that WNBA was not being as prioritized by sports media.
It can be argued that no man embodied the death of women’s basketball more than Mark Shapiro, the former executive vice president of programming at ESPN. Shapiro controlled ESPN’s media rights over the WNBA when they were granted it in 2002, and had to negotiate programming with then-NBA commissioner David Stern.
Stern had always been an advocate for the women's game, but Shapiro tried to convince him, “the WNBA stinks, it doesn’t rate, and I didn’t want it”. What ended up being decided is that important games would be shown on ESPN2, which received lower engagement, but made people like Stern happy about their inclusion.
Viewership numbers in the 2000s tanked because of decisions like Shapiro’s. With women’s college players in the 2010s like Sabrina Ionescu and Kelsey Plum, and superteams like UConn and South Carolina, there were still small signs of the sport being successful, it just didn’t have the support it needed.
What changed in 2023 was the dominance of Caitlyn Clark, her rivalry with Angel Reese, and the arrival of stars like Paige Bueckers and Juju Watkins. Not only women's basketball, but women’s sports in general have seen a renaissance, with the Clark-Reese rivalry emblematic of the Bird and Magic broadcasting boom in the 80s.
That more-or-less brings us to today’s concerns. The WNBA Players Association (WNBPA), and the league itself are at a standstill where the players have demanded more pay and the league executives have offered what they can. On October 30, the players were granted a 30-day extension on the current CBA (Collective Bargaining Agreement), giving them more time to negotiate the next one.
The key WNBA demand has been an increasing amount of revenue. The league recently agreed an 11-year, $2.2 billion media rights deal with Disney, NBCUniversal, and Amazon, similar to the men’s league which will continue to bring money and eyeballs on women’s basketball. With this increase in funds going to the WNBA, the players are demanding a higher revenue share than their current 9.3%; hoping to increase to the NBA’s 50%.
The W may need to be aware, however, the slight chance of this TV rights deal blowing up in their face. Like Formula 1, what has enabled the casuals to get into the sport has been the accessibility on TV, and splitting up the coverage amongst networks may hurt the viewing experience.
Another hot-topic in the WNBA landscape has been expansion. The Golden State Valkyries started playing this year to great success, as they found themselves in the playoff hunt without major starpower. The Connecticut Sun have had similar concerns, but their issue has been relocation with new ownership. For the future, Toronto and Portland have previously been announced as expansion cities for 2026; and this July, the league announced three new teams in Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia by 2030.
Expansion hasn’t come without its criticism, however, as Fever guard Sophie Cunningham criticized the plans. Cunningham said, “at the end of the day, you want to make sure that you're not expanding our league too fast… I don't know how excited people are to be going to Detroit or [Cleveland].” Cunningham’s comments became part of a growing trend of players speaking out about their dislike for commissioner Cathy Engelbert and the WNBA administration.
No player has been more vocal in the fight against the league management than Minnesota Lynx star Napheesa Collier. After a game 4 loss and elimination from the playoffs, she said, "[we] have the best players in the world. We have the best fans in the world, but right now we have the worst leadership in the world”. She explained that she had sat with Cathy Engelbert at a negotiating table before the start of the season to address the player’s concerns, only to have her desires shrugged off by the Commissioner.
In that press conference, Collier revealed that she had asked how Engelbert planned to pay players like Clark and Reese more, especially considering their impact on the league. Engelbert’s hard-to-believe response was that players like Clark, “should be grateful. She makes $16 million off the court because without the platform that the WNBA gives her, she wouldn't make anything.” and “Players should be on their knees, thanking their lucky stars for the media rights deal that I got them.” Whether this is a direct quote or only what Collier remembers is up to question, but the comments generated uproar in the league and unanimous support for the Lynx player.
Collier also revealed a similar concern to one her coach, Cheryl Reeve, had previously made regarding the officiating. Reeve had been ejected from game 3 and suspended from game 4 after criticizing the league’s referees. Collier believed that she’d been sabotaged with these bad refereeing calls because she had previously brought up officiating complaints in that same pre-season meeting. In that meeting, Engelbert’s response was allegedly, “Well, only the losers complain about the refs”. Engelbert was booed when giving out the WNBA Finals trophy this year.
The interesting thing is that Collier finds herself in a similar position to Engelbert in that she is also a league commissioner. Collier runs the Unrivaled league with Liberty forward Breanna Stewart, a 3 on 3 women’s winter league. Unrivaled had a decently successful first year in 2025, but Napheesa Collier’s involvement has drawn some criticism of conflict of interest.
One thing that I believe the Unrivaled league does very well is that it makes it much easier on the players during the league’s offseason. Most players play overseas in the offseason to work on their games when not playing during the regular season. Since the W has 44 games as opposed to the NBA’s 82, players need to fill the gap in the year when they aren’t scheduled to play and Unrivaled has brought in some perfect competitive, but fun, contests.
One last point I wanted to bring up, key to the development of the WNBA is that the league is increasingly male. According to the New York Times, 57% of the league’s fanbase is men and younger people are driving this growth as the “number of boys under 18 who watch W.N.B.A. games has grown by 130 percent over the past four years”. While some of these “fans” are certainly sports bettors obsessed with the sex toy throwing and league detractors, the WNBA may be able to celebrate the amount of Clark 22 jerseys amongst male fans. The only warning sign about this statistic is that the league must always be able to attract female fans in order to grow the game, and that presents another challenge.
So finally, what can the WNBA do to create success? The first order of business is creating fair bargaining for the upcoming CBA. As I mentioned before, it works much better for the revenue sharing to go up, but very gradually. It may make the most sense for 30% next year, 40% the year after, and then if the media rights deal works out, 50% would be viable. Whatever is negotiated should be done so without Collier; and the WNBAPA would likely be able to meet their demands without her, based on their support for her earlier comments.
What should also expand gradually is the adding of new teams. I believe it would work best for one team to be added at the most frequent every two years, but also the league should keep expanding to push revenue the same way the MLS has. It makes the most sense to me to cap the number of teams at 20, and then see how the revenue shapes out.
In terms of gameplay fixes, I have ideas as well. The W must expand to 48-minute games in my opinion. I have never seen even a sliver of evidence suggesting that women handle endurance worse than men can, and lower statistical numbers are hurting the league’s ability to advertise itself. I have also been a part of the “lowering the hoop” and “changing the season schedule” crowds, but it doesn’t make sense to kill the shooting abilities of some of the WNBA’s top players, and the players seem happy with a summer season.
The WNBA is now fixed, right? Probably not. Keep in mind that I am a suffering Connecticut Sun fan, saddened by the disastrous past 12 months, and a large collection of changes feels pretty appealing to me right now. The league is going to experience substantial evolution in the coming years, from new teams in new cities and the arrival of players like Juju Watkins, so it will be incredibly difficult to assess what is best for the WNBA.
Sources:
https://brandonthurston.substack.com/p/wnba-attendance-data
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1236700/wnba-finals-viewers/
https://cececlay.substack.com/p/the-wnbas-financial-reality-losses
https://www.espn.com/wnba/story/_/id/46786835/wnba-players-association-extend-cba-30-days
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/21/us/wnba-fans-charlie-kirk-memorial.html