Why Everyone Started Paying Attention to the WNBA – The Assignment with Audie Cornish

I’m Audie Cornish, and this is the Assignment. The WNBA launched in 1996 when I was captain of my high school basketball team. And don’t get excited, because we were terrible, but we were stoked. So Team USA had Olympic stars like Lisa Leslie and Sheryl Swoopes, and yes, I rocked the original Nike Swoopes with pride. But the arrival of Gen Z college stars in Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark have fueled an explosion in attention in recent years that has been good…

We are gonna go see Caitlin Clark, Indiana Fever, against the Aces. No way, really? Thank you guys!

Look out. Caitlin Clark pushes Angel Reese and Angel Reese gets right up into Caitlin Clark. Afterwards has something to say as Clark walks away.

There’s been now another incident of a disturbing new trend tonight. A sex toy thrown onto the court of a WNBA game between the Atlanta Dream and the Chicago Sky. This is the fourth time that a sex toy has been made made it onto the court in the last few weeks.

But as the league hits the offseason, there’s only been more drama. Union negotiations have been ugly, and not one but two potential new women’s pro ball startups are threatening to poach from the league’s roster of long underpaid free agents. So as it’s said, more money, more problems. And what does the WNBA boom tell us about what’s next for women’s pro sports? Stay with us. So, Cari Champion, hi, how are you?

So you’re here as host of Naked Sports with Cari Champion. You’re a contributor here at CNN, and you were literally the only person I wanted to talk to about this.

I appreciate you so. I have so much to say about it. So much.

‘Well, every time we’ve had you on air, you’ve been this like- I mean, obviously you’re an ex athlete, started in tennis, I believe, and you’re always like defending women’s sports and how people talk about them. But then I saw you I saw you, Cari, on the first broadcast for the new women’s track and field event spectacle known as Athlos.

Last night, Athlos 2025 kicked off with a historic event in an incredible setting. Times Square. Can you guys believe that? The crowd gathered as the sports’ brightest stars…

This is fascinating for a couple of reasons.

One, it’s it’s event programming.

Right? In an era where live sports is the money in TV, whether it’s football or basketball or whatever it is, like the fight for the streaming rights of various sporting events is huge. And then number two, track and field, in a way, it kind of makes sense when I think about it, right? Like when you think about some of the sports for women that during the Olympics, everybody is glued to. But lastly, this is where it ties into the WNBA. You’re telling me this story about being in a hub of potential investment, talking to a potential investor about professional women’s sports. A new one, right? Like launching a new venture. And it feels like, why now?

‘Yeah, I think the investment shows that there’s so there’s so much money to be made. Because there were before this this boom, if you will, there were only about two main investors in the WNBA that I can think of just like off the bat, which is like Ally Bank and State Farm. But those dollars that were committed, and I’ve talked to people who are in charge of marketing. In fact, I just did a did a panel with the global head of marketing at Ally. She said, we’ve been here since the beginning, but we have noticed that people are investing more because now that they see that this is a product which deserves investment and they can see the return on the investment, there’s so much money. So, say for instance, I’ll make a simple- I’m not a banker, but I was I have I have a a glass that has maybe a quarter full, right? That’s how much money they were getting. They were getting maybe less than 25%, if I’m being honest. And all of these marketing dollars were going elsewhere, and they weren’t seeing any return on that investment in terms of cult-like fans. People who are interested in, now we talk about the men who are interested in the sport, and and there are various reasons why they are. They may, as simple as they may think the chicks are hot to, this is actually entertaining. You know, like their words, not mine. But I I have noticed, she said, I’ve noticed that because there are so many more dollars that can be put there as opposed to investing in an NBA, which is great, always a good model, but very crowded, as opposed to investing in hockey. Great, good model, crowded. There are things like the F1 that people- F1, the rise of F1, the rise of the WNBA, the rise of another professional volleyball league LOVB, which just started a new chapter in LA owned by Alexis Ohanian. So they’re starting to see what it actually what the investment looks like. And I think it if I’m being honest, it started, yes, with Angel and Caitlin in terms of this new generation and what they’ve wanted. But I’m gonna go back a bit further than that. Do you remember when there was and her name was Sedonia and she was in the NCAA tournament, and I can’t remember the school that she was in. It could have been Colorado, Oregon at the time. She transferred to a bunch of different schools, but she took her little phone and she and she started to film-

‘She took her phone and she filmed the gymnasium of where the women were training for the NCAA tournament. And then she went to where the men were training across the way and what and and it showed the difference. The women’s weight room had maybe five or six weights. I’m exaggerating, but it was empty, like this empty hall, this empty ballroom with a few weights and the men had the state of the art training facility. That story went viral. And from that moment on, people started to see visually and say, what are you- is- are you serious? Is this really a thing? And they started to invest in women’s sports. And then when NIL came along and Dawn Staley started to win with South Carolina, and she was, I mean, killing the old school team of UConn and Geno Auriemma, not the same anymore. But they started to see, and so people started to say, well, this one is unfair, but two, these girls are really good.

Yeah. So caliber of play makes a difference and March Madness is so huge. I mean, it’s just such enormous business that that in of itself is a platform for college stars. There just wasn’t there wasn’t that much more you could go to. You could go to the WNBA, but the pay was so low there, people were playing abroad in the off season.

It feels like this is a real shift because of this mainstream attention.

As you talked about the money, that also means even the branding opportunities for the players. Like I think I was reading that Caitlin Clark makes something like one percent, right? She her pay is like seventy eight thousand.

But she clears well over ten or eleven million in sponsorships and deals.

‘Easy. Yes, she had a 20 million dollar Nike deal. Unheard of. It was her rookie year. She was-.

Me in my little swoops going back to the 90s.

‘Unheard of for women’s sports. I know that sounds like a small number in comparison to men, but for women’s sports, especially for a rookie, Nike really invested in her. And as a result, they started paying everyone else. Not so much like they’re paying her, but women are starting to see these seven-figure deals in a huge way. And I think it’s it can only do and all it does is raise the sport. Women are are much more successful. I I mean, and they have a lot more disposable income. You go to these games, women have no problem spending courtside. My friend owns has courtside tickets for the New York Liberty. She bought them five years ago when it wasn’t a thing. Now she has the hottest ticket in town. Like the return on investment in that for her was crazy. But she has always been loyal. And that’s what you’ll see. You’ll see women who really did love the sport had already been investing in it, and people are starting to follow suit.

And with that comes something like Coach now has a brand deal with the league. Like when the WNBA first started, they weren’t allowed to wear jeans and they had to dress in a feminine way so people wouldn’t think they were a bunch of lesbians. And I’m not saying this in a joking way. I’m saying that’s extremely important in an era where now people talk about a league that has a lot of queer players who are outspoken and like part of the conversation and dynamic. And I think has has been part of the reason the sh the league is also in the culture wars so firmly. Because there’s race, there’s sexuality, like there’s a lot to argue about when it comes to the WNBA.

The NBA is quite frankly gave birth to the WNBA. They started off with twelve teams, and it was hard to keep these teams afloat in terms of financing. So the NBA for years kept these teams afloat. And and there was a model that they wanted to put out. And that and that model also reflected how the beginning of the NBA started. There was a time in the NBA where they only had to wear they only could wear suits. And there was this guy, I don’t know if you ever heard of him, Allen Iverson, who came in and said, If I’m changing what this looks like. And they started to bring their culture and their style to the league. And for what it’s worth, the NBA has always led the way in terms of being the first. That’s why it was so difficult to understand why the WNBA had all of these rules. I would interview these women and they they made me feel like they would get in trouble if they said something they weren’t supposed to.

Because you couldn’t look or sound vulgar. It was an extension of the culture policing of Iverson, who was seen as a bad boy and who was bringing like the wrong sensibility, was accused of being a kind of violent personality. But it extended to the women’s game, which is like no one wants to see you women not acting like women, whatever that definition is.

‘How society says- whatever that definition is. It reminds me I’ve been watching Downton Abbey, have you?

Have you seen it? I know you’ve seen it. I’m just catching up.

‘I only care about the connection you’re about to draw, Cari, what is-

So the whole time I’m watching Downtown Abbey now, all I can think of is the fight to keep Downton Abbey and how houses like those didn’t exist with staff and a valet. And they were like, and they’re forcing everyone and the old versus the new. The dad doesn’t want to change the way that they make money and the old versus the new, and they and they’re dragging them into the future. And Mrs. Patmore doesn’t want a refrigerator. She doesn’t need a refrigerator. She’s like, why do I need a refrigerator? She doesn’t want, she’s like, we have an ice machine.

You know, and then there’s this the stirrer that helps you make the cakes. And she’s like, I can do it with my arms. I don’t need this machine, you know, this machine, this machine. And they’re fighting so hard. And that’s what they were doing with the WNBA until they realized the more that we allow these women to be free and be themselves, the more that we are going to attract the fans that actually want to see them. Novel idea. Let someone be authentic and see what happens, right? Novel idea. And so now they have something called WAGs. You speak of a queer community. I interviewed the wife of one of they’re two, they’re teammates that are on the New York Liberty, and and they love each other. So I and then and we’re talking about their love and their relationship and the story went viral.

Not only that, some fans we found online, it is w one of the many things they enjoy about the sport. They’re like sure, you have the typical sports rivalries and drama, but have you ever seen two exes battle it out on the court, you know, or like people who were dating and are no longer, it basically takes some of the drama that sports and sports press always plays up and it’s somehow amped to ten yeah in a league full of personalities.

‘You’re starting to see a shift because you can’t deny that one, it’s culturally relevant. Two, it’s the world that we live in. Three, these women at the end of the day though, like between all the fun and you laugh and you joke, they are ballers. Like they play well. And it’s not a comparison to men. I mean, they really are superstars out there on the court and or field. The same thing with Athlos. The things that we can see what they do, you’re like, oh well, I appreciate the fact that you are a true pure athlete. Have you ever heard the conversation- and I know you have, who’s your GOAT? And I remember before it was in Vogue, I was like, here are my GOATs. If I had to say I just threw them all together. Of course it would be Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods. But I would always throw in this name and then they would say, no, you have- you can’t- Serena Williams. They would go wait, no, no, no.

‘Why do people argue about greatest of all time and Serena Williams? Honestly, I it’s one of the more baffling things to me where I’m just like, What’s the incentive to discount- like, what do you is there a prize you win for not admitting this woman is the greatest of all time? Like in her-

‘The greatest of all time. And I’m like, does it is it assigned to a gender? Can a goat only be- the greatest of all time can only be a man? No. I’m talking about period, end of conversation. You know what I mean? Like we talk about the best of w of sport and what you do, and I’m not and then I’m not separating the two. We’ll get there. We’re not quite there, but we will get there.

‘That’s Cari Champion, she’s the host of Naked Sports with Cari Champion. We’re talking to her about the WNBA and the growing pains for pro women’s sports. Stay with us. So we’re talking about drama, we’re talking about eyeballs, we’re talking about this tipping point for the league. And as a result, the women are stepping up and saying, you know what? We deserve higher salaries. We deserve revenue sharing. And you even had a player speak publicly, criticizing the commissioner for a variety of reasons. But one of the more salient to our conversation is her effectively saying she thinks that she’s doing us a favor, that being in the league is about- when we are doing them a favor. Can you talk about this clash between the union and the commissioner?

‘Cathy Englebert is the commissioner and she has has seen the WNBA through unprecedented growth. I will say that. Cathy came from Deloitte and Touche, she was a- Touche, I believe if I’m pronouncing it correctly. But she was an executive there. And she brought her business mind and business sense to the WNBA, and it has grown.

Hired by Adam Silver, the NBA commissioner. So just to be clear, he is her boss and he has said look, they’re going through growing pains, which I thought is kind of a rough thing for your boss to say.

‘I I they’ve been going through growing pains. If I’m honest with you, they’ve had several commissioners that they haven’t really settled on one. And I think they they’ve done it’s been a lot of turnover. And she came along, Cathy Engelbert came along and she quieted things and she’s watched crazy growth. And the process, because I believe she is so business minded, the players feel as if they are commodities. They don’t feel any humanity. They don’t feel as if she has a connection with them for various reasons. And so right now they’re in the middle of a collective bargaining agreement. But to Cathy’s credit, she negotiated- I don’t know if it was just her by herself, and I don’t know if it was easy to do, but she has been able to negotiate a huge media rights deal, which means the women will get paid more because people will be watching them and different networks, i.e., ESPN, Amazon, are fighting for that right to air, the NBA and WNBA, and it’ll be split on NBC slash Peacock. It will be on Amazon and it’ll be on ESPN slash ABC. These are all the deals- she’s negotiating the same deals that the NBA is negotiating. And so to her, I’ll give her credit for that. What has happened though, while she is getting them some of the foundational dollars that they deserve, the players have felt ignored and unheard of. Napheesa Collier, most recently, she’s with the Minnesota Lynx, during her exit interview, decided not to actually talk about, you know, some of the basic X’s and O’s. She had a letter with quotes, i.e. receipts, based on a conversation she had with Cathy Engelbert. And she said, we have the worst leadership in the world.

I also asked how she planned to fix the fact that players like Caitlin, Angel, and Paige, who are clearly driving massive revenue for the league, are making so little for their first four years. Her response was, Caitlin should be grateful she makes sixty million off the court because without the platform that the WBA gives her, she wouldn’t make anything. And in that same conversation, she told me, players should be on their knees thanking their lucky stars for the media rights deal that I got them.

‘And it’s because every time Cathy has had an opportunity privately and publicly to defend the players- she went on I don’t know if you remember the CNBC moment when they asked her about Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese and the race issue that she might have. She immediately did not answer that question-

And the race issue meaning, people were talking about racial harassment against Black and Brown players as a result of fans who felt like Clark was being unfairly targeted.

‘Correct. And and and they created new fans, the growing pains of new fans, if you will, wanted to pick a side. People were weaponizing Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese and using them for their own benefit. And she totally bypassed that question. And obviously, yeah, you’re on a business channel, but she went to the business of it all. That was one moment that really upset the players that they still talk about to this day. She had an opportunity to address she had an opportunity to address the fact that the fans need to figure it out. There’s some problems happening, these vulgarities. And I don’t want to- and I and I’m talking to the I’m talking to the peanut gallery that says, well, it happens in the men’s sport. That’s not the point. We’re not talking about that. We’re talking about a growing league in its infancy stages of mainstream, and people want to be able to say this isn’t okay. You want to feel as if you’re protected when you’re on the court. You don’t want to feel like you’re be it’s okay for Joe or Jill to scream obscenities at me because they paid two thousand dollars for a courtside seat. And so she missed that opportunity.

But I can see how that would be a problem because if you’ve alienated the new fans, let’s say the Clark fans, and then you’ve alienated the old fans and the players they represent, now you’ve got Engelbert in the position we saw her in the past week where she’s getting booed when she’s on the court.

Yeah. You know, Natasha Cloud, who plays for the New York Liberty said something the other day at a rally, at a actually at a a panel I saw her on. She goes, Cathy Engelbert, she has the best opportunity to really support women. And she could be screaming for the rooftops for all of us, but we just don’t feel like she wants to be in the womb with us. We feel like it’s a solo mission of what she wants to do about putting herself at the forefront, not the entire league. And she’s like, she has this opportunity to be the biggest girls’ girl, meaning like promote us, be one of us, come with us, stand arm in arm. Don’t make us feel like you don’t want to be with us and it’s just about you. And she and I and I really I really felt that from Natasha Cloud, right? She’s a veteran player in the league. She’s seen several commissioners come and go. She’s seen this new growth. She’s seen what it’s done for her. And she’s speaking really in a way that to me, it really personified why there’s a sentiment of dislike. And what about us? And I don’t know what these phone calls are like because I hear that the CBA is going on right now, the collective bargaining agreement. They’ve made some headway in terms of minimum and maximum. And these are all according to reports, nothing is finalized. Minimum pay right now is lives somewhere between seventy five, maybe, if you’re a rookie, they’re thinking of bringing you in somewhere between two fifty and three right now.

‘Two hundred and two hundred fifty thousand dollars is just-

‘Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Rookies would go from-

‘Seventy five, around seventy, seventy five thousand to about two fifty, three hundred. This is where the negotiate- wild, right?

That’s wild. Honestly, just when you think when I think of something like minor league baseball, like the negotiations they’ve had, the struggles they’ve had with pay for you know, in those systems and like that’s massive. That’s a massive leap.

It is. And the women will still tell you it’s not enough, but it is massive considering where they’re coming from.

‘Yeah. But these are all reports. They haven’t settled yet. And the max, there was a report the other day that the max is somewhere bubbling around eight fifty. So not that they’re at a million, but bubbling at eight fifty. And and maybe they’re- but the women still want more. You know, they still the players are still asking for more.

And I’m not saying they don’t deserve it. It’s just to me a sign of just how much more money they’re making that they could even make that offer that the league is gone to this point where, as you said, there’s so many deals coming in. And even there are rumors about expansion. And I mentioned earlier these potential other leagues. Like I heard of a like a three on three kind of league that’s exhibition type thing somebody wanted to launch. Like there’s other people out there who can say, hey, WNBA, you don’t want to pay her, I’ll pay her.

‘I’ll pay her. Yeah. You know why Napheesa Collier, I think was the perfect spokesperson to say the quiet part out loud. She and her husband and Breanna Stewart created Unrivaled, which is the three on three league that’s based in Miami that says to the players, you don’t have to go overseas, come here. Not only will we start you at a quarter, which is about two, two fifty, but we’re gonna give you an ownership. We’re gonna give you an ownership percentage in the league. And they have been signing JuJu Watkins, which is a huge NIL deal. She plays at USC. They signed Paige Bueckers when Paige Bueckers was coming out of UConn. And because she has created, she, with the help of her husband and Breanna Stewart and some other investors, they’ve created a model that invests in the women and gives them ownership. She knows that it can be done. And so that’s why I felt it was the perfect moment for her to say that quiet part out loud, speaking directly to Cathy, like look what- Cathy invited the players to do that. She said, you want to create your own league? So be it. And then they did. And people like it. And it’s popular. And the women are getting paid.

That’s Cari Champion. She is the host of Naked Sports with Cari Champion. She’s a contributor here at CNN. You can also now catch her on Athlos. Cari, thank you.

Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Thanks so much for being with us. We’ll be back next week.