WNBA Sponsor Deals Jump 52% Since 2022

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When WNBA players say they want a greater percentage of growing league revenue, a portion of that comes from sponsorship deals that have increased 52% since 2022.

In its first-ever WNBA Partnerships Report—released just after the league’s 2025 All-Star Weekend—sports and entertainment sponsorship data platform SponsorUnited placed the value of WNBA sponsorships at the end of 2024 at $76 million. Its teams averaged more than 44 sponsor deals apiece, but that number is expanding rapidly.

The report noted that in 2024 alone, following Caitlin Clark’s Rookie of the Year campaign with the Indiana Fever, sponsorship deals increased 17%, league attendance was up 48%, ESPN viewership jumped 170%, and merchandise sales rose by 600%. More than 450 brands signed 531 deals with teams, with the Phoenix Mercury, Las Vegas Aces, and Fever taking in the most brand revenue.

Brands themselves spent bigger, with Ally Financial signing on as the Aces’ official banking partner and placing its logo on the team’s jersey patches and training center. The WNBA alone accounted for 25% of all of Ally’s marketing spend across major sports, but grew even greater when Ally became the league’s banking partner this April.

Eli Lilly, meanwhile, invested in a jersey patch for its hometown Fever and spends 75% of its sports budget within the WNBA—where it sponsored mobile mammograms in Indianapolis during All-Star Weekend. Eli Lilly’s support of the Fever is three times that of its spending on their Gainbridge Fieldhouse roommates, the NBA’s Indiana Pacers.

SponsorUnited founder and CEO Bob Lynch sees both seasoned sports sponsors and brands that haven’t traditionally gravitated toward the space drawn to the “29-year-old startup” of the WNBA by its fairly low price of entry and lack of category competition At the same time, a new generation of women’s college basketball players is signing name, image, and likeness rights while in school and bringing those brands into the WNBA with them.

“Essentially, it becomes a minor league feeder system for brands that are now starting to say, ‘We were able to do a very low-cost deal with a women’s college basketball athlete. It worked well. We can replicate this with other athletes. Maybe we should do more with the teams in a more integrated way than just social content and appearances,’” Lynch said, noting his initial inspiration for the report. “That’s really feeding into this, and what I saw was this coming wave of commerce that was going to come into the WNBA.”

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.”

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The game ahead

Lynch noted that the addition of the Golden State Valkyries this year, the arrival of the Toronto Tempo in 2026, and the recently announced expansions into Cleveland, Detroit, and Philadelphia should have an immediate positive impact on WNBA revenue—as should new media rights deals.

The expiration of long-tenured, discounted legacy brand deals should also increase sponsorship value going forward, but Lynch said there’s plenty of room for more investment. The average men’s team has 100 sponsor deals, compared to a league-high 92 for the Fever. But that’s quickly changing: Much as the Pacers Sports & Entertainment group is able to use sales and marketing resources across leagues and teams to bring in more sponsors, the Washington Mystics’ owners at Monumental Sports have driven 65 sponsorships using similar strategy.

While WNBA teams owned by groups like PS&E, Monumental, the Liberty’s Brooklyn Sports and Entertainment, and the Valkyries’ Golden State have certain advantages through shared resources with NBA teams, Lynch says both they and independent teams like the Chicago Sky (57 sponsors) face obstacles that may have similar solutions.

WNBA teams generally do not own their buildings, limiting the amount of revenue they’re able to draw from them and making their business model different than even the National Women’s Soccer League, where the Kansas City Current built and owns its facility.

But Lynch sees a path forward from his early work with another league that also didn’t own its facilities: UFC.

Lynch noted that UFC initially worked with its fighters to incentivize social media, sponsorships, and revenue growth and create a model in which both the league and the fighters benefited. The SponsorUnited CEO sees an answer somewhat similar to college name, image, and likeness rights for sponsorships and even ticketing, where the WNBA and its players can develop a yet-unused plan for sharing revenue, giving players a bigger piece of the revenue while assuring WNBA owners and investors continued to share in the league’s growth.

“You got to come out and say, ‘Look, we’re both stakeholders. We know where we’re at.’ There’s alignment. There’s transparency there,” Lynch said. “How are we going from $76 million to $760 million over the next 10 years, and how are we doing it alongside our players so we’re both benefiting from it?”