Loyal WNBA Fans Hit With Enormous Season-Ticket Price Hikes

Jennifer Nabers has loved going to Chicago Sky games for years. Every summer, the Sky’s home matchups are her “20 dates” with her husband. The season-ticket holder is a big fan of the rookie frontcourt duo of Angel Reese and Kamilla Cardoso and head coach Teresa Weatherspoon.

On Monday, the Sky emailed season-ticket holders alerting them to check their invoices for next year, saying they’ll be auto-renewed if they don’t make any changes. To Nabers’s surprise, the price for her two VIP seats more than doubled from $4,704 to $8,624, including taxes and fees, according to screenshots she shared with Front Office Sports. 

The generic email does not mention the price change, nor does it provide an explanation for where the new funds will go. As of Thursday morning, Nabers has also been unable to get in touch with the team to discuss her season tickets or changing to less expensive seats.

“I want the W to be wildly successful, but I also feel like you can take care of your fans. Those are not mutually exclusive things,” Nabers told FOS.

The Sky are one of a couple of teams in the WNBA that released significantly increased season-ticket prices this week. The Chicago Sun-Times reported one fan whose tickets skyrocketed from $8,960 to $19,712. The WNBA’s ticket prices have multiplied this season as the league rapidly grows in popularity, which to a certain extent is a natural function of supply and demand. Fans say they understand that prices will go up, but the quick, massive spikes and lack of transparency from teams have been frustrating.

Social media posts cited enormous price hikes for season-ticket holders of several teams, including Chicago, Phoenix, Connecticut, and Las Vegas. Representatives from the Sky, Mercury, and Sun did not respond to requests for comment, while the Aces said their 2025 ticketing information hasn’t yet been released. For the Sky and Mercury, if fans do not opt out, they will be automatically renewed for next year, with the first payment charged in August. (One interesting note from the Sky’s email, first reported by the Sun-Times: The team said it’s “expecting approval on a 44-game schedule,” a four-game increase from this season, which would add two more home games for season-ticket holders. Under the collective bargaining agreement, the league has the power to increase the regular-season schedule from 40 games up to 44.)

Another Sky fan, Leah von Essen, received an increase from $268.80 to $985.60 (including taxes and fees) for her 200-level seats. She says the team told her that her price more than tripled because she had received an early-bird discount last year, which helped her avoid a price hike in 2024. She says her “biggest concern” is whether asking to switch would relegate her to the team’s season-ticket waiting list, and as of Thursday morning still hasn’t learned the answer from the team. The Sky’s email says the team “will continue to offer ticket exchange, but inventory and opportunities may be limited.”

“I have to kind of scramble and see whether I can literally make the deposit, even if I decide that I’m going to [keep my tickets],” von Essen says. “I just need to literally figure out if I have the money, because I wasn’t saving for it, either, because I didn’t know this was coming up.”

The team’s CEO, Adam Fox, told the Sun-Times that the money would go to team operations, but he wouldn’t offer specific examples of how.

Both Nabers and von Essen said upgrading the Sky’s practice facility—which is currently a public gym in Deerfield, a Chicago suburb—would’ve been a worthy cause for the price jump. (The lack of investment from the team has been perceived as hurting it in free agency. The team’s lease in Deerfield runs out at the end of this season, and the front office has been coy about its search for a new practice space.) But without an explanation for where the funds are going, they say it feels like the team is jacking prices without regard for its season-ticket holders.

“Are we being asked to pay double just to keep the same old, same old, or are we being asked to pay double to actually help the team grow? Because that would be more appealing, but since we have no signs that that’s what’s happening, that’s a big part of why we all feel so taken aback by the prices,” von Essen says.

Some Mercury fans received clearer explanations for their price change. Two season-ticket holders tell FOS they received a follow-up email explaining their several-thousand-dollar increases were due to their seats gaining club access. One was able to switch to new seats in their current price range, while the other is trying to do the same. They say they’ve seen other Mercury fans post about price increases in higher sections and courtside.

“I always used to tell people that I was both excited for and dreading the day that the WNBA became popular enough that I would possibly be priced out,” von Essen says. “I think the difference for us is that we always assumed there would be some sort of gradualness to it, and or heads-up, rather than this incredible steepness of the way the ticket prices have gone up for next year.”