No Brand Experienced More Growth In 2024 Than the WNBA

After a record-breaking season, the WNBA’s winning streak continues.

A new report from data analytics firm Morning Consult, which tracks how consumers perceive thousands of brands each day, reveals no brand’s reputation rose more throughout 2024 than the WNBA’s.

“It’s rare that a sports league ever makes any type of ranking that we put out,” said Ellyn Briggs, a brands analyst at Morning Consult and co-author of the report. “We’ve certainly never had a women’s pro league.”

To generate its report on the fastest-growing brands, Morning Consult examined how many consumers said they were considering purchasing from a brand in Q3 compared to Q1.

Although the WNBA’s purchase consideration rate remains relatively low—16.7% of U.S. adults expressed interest in Q3—it improved by 3.82 percentage points from Q1, giving it the biggest overall gain.

Part of the league’s growing appeal is due to higher purchase consideration levels across several demographics. Whether it was men, Baby Boomers, or individuals with an annual income of either less than $50,000 or more than $100,000, consumer groups of all sorts are warming up to the league.

Other brands that boosted their standing among American shoppers in 2024 include Ben & Jerry’s, which saw its purchase consideration rate increase 3.74 percentage points to 47.5%, and Brisk Iced Tea, which climbed 3.67 points to 37.7%

Overall, Morning Consult included more than 1,700 brands in its analysis.

How the WNBA did it

While top draft pick Caitlin Clark, along with fellow rookie Angel Reese, brought a great deal of attention to the league throughout the year, much of the WNBA’s story in 2024 centered around its fanbase—which came out in droves.

More than 54 million unique viewers tuned in for games across ABC, CBS, ESPN, ESPN2, ION, and NBA TV, delivering the league its biggest broadcast audience in 24 years. ESPN platforms (averaging 1.19 million per game, up 170% from 2023), CBS Sports (1.10 million, up 86%), and Scripps’ ION (670,000, up 133%) all had their most-watched WNBA regular seasons ever.

The 2,353,735 fans who attended WNBA games marked a 48% increase from last season. Around the league, 154 sellouts amounted to a 242% spike.

Given that a WNBA team only has 40 games on its schedule each season, no one team or player can take all the credit for the league’s surging popularity.

Indeed, additional figures from Morning Consult show the number of U.S. adults who reported recently seeing, reading, or hearing something positive about the WNBA remained elevated throughout the 2024 season compared to any season in the past few years.

“For every organic moment they’ve had, it seemed like they had a marketing beat ready to go,” said Briggs.

Myriad WNBA stars also served as the faces of new brand partnerships in 2024. This year alone, Delta Air Lines, Bumble, New Balance, Skims, CarMax, DSG, Tissot, Opill, La Crema, Glossier, and UWM’s Mortgage Matchup either announced or extended deals with everyone from former basketball great Candace Parker to rookie Cameron Brink to link their brand with the WNBA.

All this activity has helped the league pursue another kind of growth. In May, the WNBA announced its 2025 Bay Area expansion team—the Golden State Valkyries—had signed up CarMax as a founding partner and Kaiser Permanente as a jersey sponsor before it had even drafted a single player. The league also awarded new franchises to Toronto and Portland, with each paying a $50 million expansion fee to join in 2026.

In July, the WNBA renewed its broadcast deals with Disney and Amazon Prime Video, and entered a new agreement with NBCUniversal (NBCU), that will distribute games on ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN’s forthcoming direct-to-consumer service, NBC, Peacock, and Prime Video. The entire deal is reportedly worth $2.2 billion.

As the WNBA expands to a 44-game season and seven-game final next year—and its stars’ shoes and shooting draw increased attention—the brand’s growth in both popularity and value continues to be a team effort.