So when Caitlin Clark came over to the WNBA last year and all of a sudden the league had a lot of eyes on it and games were selling significantly more tickets and the TV rights got renegotiated for many many times more money than was being paid for them previously a lot of people starting thinking that wow, Caitlin has really turned this league around and those people were called "racist" by the media and by the pundits who have been WNBA fans for years.
The thing is it wasn't racist, it was just a fact. For whatever reason people were now watching the WNBA and that reason was Caitlin Clark. The started watching her like crazy when she was in college at Iowa, and the draft that she was involved in is probably the only time that anyone ever watched the WNBA draft that wasn't in it. Does it matter than Caitlin is white and not gay? I mean probably to a certain degree, but let's stop being foolish by trying to look for a reason to hate on her. People are watching now and they have their own reasons and it doesn't matter what they are.
The WNBA attendance and eyes on screen started looking like this league really could be profitable, yet towards the middle of the season we started hearing reports that even with Clark in the league it lost $50 million - which I find difficult to believe and think this is creative accounting on the part of the management over there. Believe it or not, there are some shady organizations out there that want their business to show as little revenue as possible so that they don't have to pay taxes.
There is a lot of speculation out there that the whole reason why the WNBA exists is so that the NBA can get tax write offs. There are many WNBA teams that are owned by the same people that own a partnered NBA team. There are only 13 WNBA teams and 6 of them are owned by NBA team owners.
I have a little bit of a background in taxes, not much but I do know that it is very common for a business to hold a lot of different things and for one of them to be intentionally losing money so that the entire corporation can get that written off.
This is really the only way that you can explain that after over 20 years of losing money that the WNBA isn't shutting down. Not only is it not shutting down, but there are people out there fighting over where the next expansion team is going to get to be. GET TO BE. The people aren't being forced by some sort of DEI initiative to do this, they want to do it.
The above chart is the attendance just for the Indiana Fever, but the rest of the league is up a lot as well. Why do I know this? Because I have eyes and I watch highlights. Game in the past that were simply made fun of had stands that were completely empty, nowadays they look like a fun and rather packed event even for teams I do not watch, which is most of them.
Here is why the WNBA could be popular
The games are not as exciting as NBA, we all know that. But to a lot of people the game is more relatable because very few of us can just over a car to slam a rock into a hoop. We might be reasonably good at shooting a ball though and the women are that. The game isn't a fast paced and there are a lot of really silly mistakes that the men don't make, but to me at least, the games are really fun because it doesn't seem like I am watching god-like athletes out there. It seems more grounded if that makes any sense. I have never attended a WNBA game because where I live has a team that I hate. I might attend if they were playing the Fever but the problem is that this is when everyone else wants to go as well and that drives prices up.
The average ticket price for a WNBA game is less than $50. The average price for an NBA ticket is around $100 but trust me, you are not getting a ticket for that much money. That is the price that the owners charge, all NBA tickets are bought up by scalpers and sold for significantly more than that. The WNBA tickets? Hell, mostly you can just buy them at the gate.
This is another reason why the WNBA could be popular if they tried. One of the reasons why I don't ever go to professional sports games in my city is because I already know that it was going to be extremely expensive to do so. We had a UFC event here not that long ago and I looked online and saw that nosebleed section tickets (really far away from the action) were going to be over $500 and to me, that is just insane.
I actually would go to see a WNBA game for $20-$40 and this is part of the reason why farm-league baseball is so popular. These aren't the pro teams but it costs very little to go to the games and I guess this is poor man's day out. With the WNBA having a chance to be on the rise, I really think that they could turn a profit on this if they really wanted to.
But then again, if they continue to abuse any new player just because they happen to be the wrong skin color, that could be a real problem. If Caitlin Clark or Paige Bueckers is not playing, viewership tends to drop a great deal and while the WNBA is reluctant to admit it because both of these girls are white, they are the most popular players in the league.
That's another story though.
I believe that all of the WNBA teams could be financially successful. The eyes are already on all of the teams now and much of this has to do with Paige, Caitlin, and unfortunately some of the stupid crap created by Angel Reese constantly whining for more money in a league that isn't turning a profit.
But the point is that people DO know about it finally. People actually know the team names and a couple of players, this is a start and it could be built upon to make all of the teams profitable. They will NEVER be as profitable as NBA teams of course, but they could be out of the red if they wanted to be.
But the main reason why I think they never will be is because the owners don't actually want the league to turn a profit. If the league always loses money on paper they can claim a financial loss and then end up paying little to no taxes. This is a far more complicated topic than I am prepared to investigate but when I look at the Indiana Fever games this season and see that every single one of them, home or away was sold out... how can you claim that you are losing money?
I believe the books are cooked even for the value of the individual teams. For example, the Indiana Fever are at the moment anyway, by far the most popular team. Yet they claim they are only worth $90 total, making them the 6th most valuable team in the WNBA. I gotta call BS on that.
If you look at this report from Sports Illustrated it shows that every individual team was profitable... so now are they as a unit, losing money? I think it is creative accounting and that they are already turning a profit but they don't want to admit that right now especially when there are contract re-negotiations going on.
The over conspiracy theory that I have is that the WNBA was always going to be a money laundering outlet for the NBA or whatever that is called. In any other industry if you were claiming that a branch of your business portfolio lost money every single year for 23 years, the IRS wouldn't really believe you, but since they are able to make this look like a charity for the women, which many people would say that it is, it is allowed to continue.
This is all just my opinion though and it is because I kind of always feel this way about big business. They are never going to tell the public the truth when it comes to their finances.
But in the meantime I think it could be a lot of fun to take the family out to a WNBA game especially since this is something you can likely accomplish for very little money.