The WNBA Racks Up More Points Leading into Streaming Talks

All anyone could ever wish for is a bright future. No one knows this better than the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA), which struggled to find viewers before fully engaging hoops fans in the past several years. SportsProMedia reports that the 2023 WNBA Finals averaged 728,000 viewers for each game on ESPN, making it the most watched finals in the past two decades. This follows a viewership increase of 36% in 2022.

Notably, interest in women’s basketball at the professional and collegiate levels has not yet peaked. The NCAA women’s finals brought in more viewers than the men’s final, a historic first. Fox Sports averaged more viewers for women’s college hoops in-season telecasts than men’s. Viewer enthusiasm for rookie superstar Caitlin Clark has kept audiences watching in the ’24 season. And the league is trying new things. The July 20th WNBA All-Star Game drew 3.4 million viewers, up 300% over last year’s contest. The game pit the US Women’s Olympics Basketball squad versus the rest of the league’s All-Stars — including Clark and another sensation, Angel Reese. 

Across the pond for the Paris Olympic Games, the US Women’s Hoops team is seeing similar gains in tuned-in audiences. Despite a 3pm ET time slot, their opener against Japan on July 29th netted 3 million viewers, besting viewership for both men’s and women’s games from the last Summer Olympics in Tokyo. 

Now, fresh off of a victory over their German rivals, viewership momentum will likely continue as the team enters the elimination phase of the tournament this week as the No. 1 seed — riding a formidable 58-game win streak.

Back stateside, the WNBA’s 28-year-old contract expires after the 2024-2025 season, and it believes its media rights are undervalued. “The WNBA currently earns about $60 million annually from its TV and streaming deals with ABC-ESPN, Amazon Prime Video, CBS and ION,” reports Front Office Sports. League officials are optimistic the enthusiasm over the last few years will yield results in contract negotiations. For example, that article indicates that The National Women’s Soccer League procured a $240 million deal — 40x its prior contract. It’s early, but that figure may also apply to the WNBA’s impending contract.

While the WNBA is likely to see a boost in its streaming rights, there’s an additional complexity in that the NBA owns half of the league. As each negotiates its own streaming rights deals, the outcome could benefit the other. As noted in The Washington Post: “That means the NBA’s massive deal could be rocket fuel for the WNBA — or that the WNBA’s increased popularity is more of an afterthought. It also could be a bit of both.”

A Slam Dunk for Advertisers?

Two robust basketball leagues are great news for advertisers for obvious reasons. Not only does it provide additional viewing opportunities to engage with audiences, but the WNBA is expanding female viewership. Look no further than the WNBA’s Draft — 1.06M (of the 2.45M) were women, a 374% increase from the previous year. The move to streaming enables advertisers to take advantage of the increased targeting and reach available with connected TV (CTV).

As we pointed out in June, “CTV is becoming the center of gravity for sports advertising, too. A Deloitte study found that “30% of all fans have paid for a subscription to a streaming video service to watch sports over the past 12 months. For Millennials, it increases to 46%.”

Yet, CTV measurement is a hurdle for advertisers — if they’re not working with a cookieless advertising partner. As a cookieless, people-based technology partner, Viant offers deterministic reach, frequency and measurement, ensuring you reach the right audiences for a timely and holistic understanding of return on ad spend (ROAS).

Advertisers can tap Viant Audiences segments to reach tuned-in hoops fans. They can layer these audience segments with contextual-based, predictive TV viewership and location data for geotargeting. Viant Audiences also offers innovative machine-learning predictive segments, which are custom-built from brands’ first-party KPIs such as online or offline conversions, foot traffic, in-store CPG purchases and more. We can optimize or integrate your first-party data with our expansive list of third-party data partners. 

Our Household ID™ solution is the main differentiator in the CTV marketplace. With our high match rates and the ability to activate any first-party data file within hours, our identity graph scores big in CTV environments to better reach target hoops fans.

Reach out to your Viant rep or get started with Viant to start your WNBA strategy today.