The players of the WNBA have always been stars. Now, new audiences are getting a real chance to see them.
This success is due, in part, to college players benefitting from NIL deals .
“I was wrong about [NIL]. I thought it’d be just another place for women to be undervalued in sports,” WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert told reporters in attendance Monday evening. “I went from the Final Four in Dallas to the Master’s, and everyone at the Master’s was talking about women’s basketball. It was pretty incredible.
This newly-implemented policy means draftees are coming fully loaded with brand deals and a younger, digital-native audience: precisely the sort of fans the WNBA wants to court.“I think NIL really allowed college athletes to start to build their brand,” Villanova’s Maddy Siegrist, drafted by the Dallas Wings, told Jezebel when asked how she hoped to take advantage of her new platform within the league. “I’m fortunate I kinda caught the beginning of that in the last two years.
The league continues to eye expansion in markets like Portland and Toronto and has finally brought in enough revenue to guarantee charter flights for the postseason and select back-to-back games .Of course, the WNBA isn’t without its staggering systemic issues, and growing excitement around the league won’t snuff those out.
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