WNBA Sponsor Deals Jump 52% Since...

New players, new game

As much as the Fever and the Caitlin Clark effect are often credited for the WNBA’s uptick in both interest and revenue, when it comes to sheer volume of brand deals, Clark doesn’t crack the starting five. Clark’s fellow 2024 rookie Chicago Sky all-star Angel Reese leads the league with 22 brand partnerships, including McDonald’s, Amazon, and Beats by Dre. The New York Liberty’s Breanna Stewart shares the lead with Reese at 22, bringing in Ally, Delta Airlines, and Peloton. Two other members of the Class of 2024—the Los Angeles Sparks’ Cameron Brink and the Sky’s Kamilla Cardoso—have 20 deals apiece, including SoFi, Hulu, AT&T, and Sephora.

Even Dallas Wings rookie Paige Bueckers has higher sponsorship volume than Clark, counting Gatorade, Intuit, and Uber among her 18 deals. Of those five players, four of them have entered the WNBA within the last two years. 

That’s a pattern that’s drifting over to social media as well. Among the 10 WNBA athletes that brands engage with most on platforms, six (Bueckers, Reese, Brink, Clark, Cardoso, and the Sky’s Hailey Van Lith) are first- or second-year players. According to Lynch, not only is that the opposite of other major leagues like the NBA, where the biggest social media draws, including LeBron James and Stephen Curry, are nearing the end of their careers, but it’s lucrative.

Looking across major sports leagues, Lynch found that the average NBA team generates $4 in sponsorship revenue for every social media follower they have. In the NFL, it’s $9. For the WNBA, where Lynch compares the impact of Caitlin Clark to that of Lionel Messi on MLS, it’s $10.

“It’s a passionate, totally engaged group and as they expand and scale their social following, they’ll get the trickle-down effect of the players coming in and bringing their fans to the teams,” Lynch said. “That star power is going to start to lead to more and more fans, which they’re going to be able to capitalize on, but they do a pretty good job—they’re a small but mighty group monetizing what they have right now.”