The most-anticipated WNBA season in the league’s 27-year existence begins Tuesday night with four matchups across the country, highlighted by the regular-season debut of former Iowa sensation Caitlin Clark (above) as the Indiana Fever visit the Connecticut Sun at 7:30 p.m. ET on ESPN2. Mainstream interest in Clark is putting an even bigger spotlight on the WNBA as it continues to grow and capitalize on the overall momentum of women’s sports.

Since last fall’s WNBA Finals, which saw the Las Vegas Aces win their second-straight title, the league has taken significant steps and experienced some profound changes. 

• Charter flights: This month, WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert announced the league would launch a full-time charter program as soon as possible, at an estimated cost of $25 million annually over the next two years.
• Expansion: An ownership group in Toronto appears set to soon be awarded the WNBA’s 14th team, to enter the league in 2026. Next season, a Bay Area franchise will become the 13th club. Engelbert has said she would like to see the WNBA expand to as many as 16 franchises this decade. For context, that’s still about half the amount of teams as their male counterparts in other pro leagues, including the NFL (32), NHL (32), MLB (30), NBA (30), and MLS (29). The NWSL currently has 14 teams.
• Viewership: Last month, ESPN’s coverage of the draft averaged 2.45 million viewers—the largest TV audience for any WNBA telecast since 2000. Meanwhile, demand for more broadcasts of preseason games has taken the league by surprise and led to some highly viewed illegal game streams. 
• Star power: After being selected with the No. 1 pick, the rush for Clark’s Fever jersey set off a firestorm. At NBA All-Star weekend, New York Liberty guard Sabrina Ionescu put on a show while battling Golden State Warriors phenom Steph Curry in a three-point contest.

Next Up: New Media-Rights Deals

The WNBA’s current broadcast partners are Amazon, CBS Sports, Disney, and Scripps Sports. Amazon and CBS recently extended their deals, and Disney is in negotiations with its deal expiring in 2025. Engelbert has said the WNBA’s goal is to double its rights fee intake, which currently stands at roughly $60 million annually. Disney’s current deal is tied to its NBA contract, and a new deal with both leagues could have a similar structure.

Meanwhile, the Fever are becoming the WNBA’s media darlings, as more teams begin to truly capitalize on the power of their local broadcast rights.

Caitlin Clark hasn’t even played her first regular-season game in the WNBA, but the Indiana Fever rookie has already had a huge impact on the league. There have been sellouts, teams moving their games against Clark to bigger arenas, and a drastic increase in broadcast coverage for Indiana both nationally and locally.

It doesn’t look like Clark’s effect will slow down anytime this season, at least. She’s the favorite to win Rookie of the Year by a mile, has the third-best WNBA MVP betting odds behind A’ja Wilson (above) and Breanna Stewart, and has the Fever as a top-five team to win the championship, according to most sportsbooks. That alone is notable because Indiana finished with a 13–27 mark in 2023—last place in the Eastern Conference—but still with more wins than the previous two seasons combined (5–31 in ’21 and 6–26 in ’22).

But what about the rest of the league? Clark’s ability to generate interest in Indiana, cities she visits on the road, and national TV broadcasts (if her draw from college carries over, which it appears to be doing) is a great thing for the WNBA. But there are 11 other teams in the league, and two more in San Francisco and Toronto on the way. To be sustainable, the WNBA will need to extend the Caitlin Clark effect to its other biggest stars, too.

Spreading the Love

Alongside Clark getting a reported $28 million endorsement deal with Nike that includes a signature shoe, Wilson—a two-time WNBA MVP and center for the defending champion Las Vegas Aces—has announced a similar sneaker deal, although terms are unknown. Clark and Wilson will join New York Liberty stars Sabrina Ionescu and Stewart as the only WNBA players with signature shoe deals. Ten other WNBA players have had signature shoes previously.

With that core of marketable stars in place, this WNBA will be a strong indicator of whether the league can quickly create more household names, particularly among rookies who are fresh in the minds of women’s March Madness viewers. No. 2 pick Cameron Brink will get to bask in the Los Angeles limelight with the Sparks, while Nos. 3 and 7 picks Kamilla Cardoso and Angel Reese look to help rebuild the Chicago Sky.

There should be some early results to check in on: Over the next seven days, Clark and the Fever will play games on ESPN2, Amazon Prime Video, ABC, and ESPN. There will also be six games not featuring Clark broadcast on cable or network TV channels. It won’t surprise anyone if fans are tuning in to the early days of Clark in Indiana, but the speed at which the league’s other stars gain notoriety will go a long way in determining the league’s continued growth and success.

One of the most overt and dramatic signs of the meteoric growth of the WNBA is not the sky-high pricing for games involving the Indiana Fever’s Caitlin Clark, but the rapid maturation of the entire secondary ticket market for the league. 

Ever since the Fever won the WNBA lottery and were set to select Clark with the league’s top draft pick, prices for the team’s games, both home and away, have soared in cost, sometimes into the thousands of dollars per ticket. But those headlines can obscure an even bigger reality: The popularity of the league is such that sellouts are now going to become a more regular occurrence, and with that heightened demand, resale of WNBA tickets is yet another way that the league is now going to more closely mirror older, more established leagues in men’s major pro sports.

“This does feel a bit like when the secondary market first really emerged for the NBA,” Patrick Ryan, cofounder of Texas-based ticket intelligence company Eventellect, tells Front Office Sports. “This also presents a big opportunity for teams to retarget fans to also consider other games that don’t involve Clark.”

Specific signs of the heightened demand include the Las Vegas Aces selling out their entire allotment of season tickets, the Dallas Wings and Atlanta Dream doing the same, and the Connecticut Sun announcing Monday their first opening-night sellout since 2003—thanks in no small part to the arrival of Clark and the Fever as the away team. Several individual games this season also have already shifted into larger venues due to the unprecedented demand. 

Some of this isn’t surprising, as even some recent WNBA preseason games have drawn record-level crowds. But as those attendance records are all but certain to extend into the regular season, the ticket economy existing around that interest is also expanding in real time. 

The maturation of the WNBA ticket market, however, won’t entirely be a straight line. Some Fever tickets in the upper deck of Gainbridge Fieldhouse can be had for as little as $2 each, as the team opened up the entire building for games this season—creating a big chunk of extra seating inventory that isn’t always coveted. 

Meanwhile, industry sources said there are still some pockets of market softness in the WNBA premium ticket market, with that segment likely to take longer to fully develop.