Trying again on the 2025 WNBA All-Star Weekend in Indianapolis, the tone was set not with accomplice actions at Indianapolis Motor Speedway or activation previews on the conference middle, however an unsatisfying assembly between the gamers’ union and the league on Thursday.
After the league signed a brand new broadcast deal final 12 months value an estimated $2.2 billion over the following 11 years, and gamers opted out of their collective bargaining settlement with the league searching for higher working circumstances and a larger share of income, gamers left Thursday’s assembly dissatisfied with the outcome. As Los Angeles Sparks guard and All-Star Kelsey Plum, who additionally serves as vp of the WNBPA, advised The Athletic, “We’re gonna use this weekend to indicate our price and our value.”
Arguably, they waited till Saturday evening’s All-Star Sport to take action, donning black WNBPA-made shirts studying “Pay Us What You Owe Us” throughout warmups and the Nike Match Verify. Throughout the MVP trophy presentation to the Minnesota Lynx’s Napheesa Collier, who scored an All-Star-record 36 factors, followers chanted, “Pay them,” at league Commissioner Cathy Englebert as Washington Mystics All-Star Brittney Sykes stood behind them with an indication studying “Pay The Gamers.”
In a post-game press convention, Plum famous that the followers’ involvement “applies stress.”
However that stress has additionally been constructing for some time from all sides of the sports activities trade.
With gamers claiming their calls for are being met with league observations that they “don’t perceive the enterprise,” ADWEEK spent All-Star Weekend—and the time main as much as it—watching gamers and types together with Aflac, Samsung, Ally, Sephora, and State Farm make a enterprise assertion stronger than simply WNBA shirts and indicators—each of which are on the market.
For its half, Ally changed US Financial institution because the WNBA’s official banking sponsor in April, however was additionally among the many first aboard the Napheesa Collier-and-Breanna Stewart-founded 3-on-3 league Unequalled and, based on Marciano, helped the league land its six-year cope with Warner Bros. Discovery’s TNT Sports activities. With WNBPA chief Nneka Ogwumike named one of many founding members of the corporate’s Staff Ally group of athlete ambassadors, Ally sees participant success as important to its personal.
“Listening to the gamers has been a precedence for us from the beginning,” Stephanie Marciano, head of sports activities and leisure advertising and marketing at Ally, mentioned in a dialog at WNBA All-Star Weekend. “A whole lot of us at Ally, from an government standpoint, are additionally former athletes ourselves. I performed in school, and I performed basketball overseas in Germany—so we went by means of it, and we perceive the disparity in assets as we come up, so we actually know what levers we needed to push and pull as properly.”
Jason Notte/ADWEEK
In the meantime, along with teaming with media and tradition agency Togethxr to host an All-Star panel with Unequalled-affiliated NBA gamers, together with Rickea Jackson and Kate Martin, Aflac touted its partnership with the WNBA and handed out supplemental checks to WNBA Expertise Competitors and 3-Level Contest winners Natasha Cloud and Sabrina Ionescu.
This 12 months, Aflac kicked in $115,000 to spice up the prize pool for each the 3-point contest and the All-Star expertise problem. Based mostly on the league’s 2020 collective bargaining settlement, which gamers simply opted out of in October, the WNBA itself supplies the winners of each competitions with simply $2,575 every.
Extra monetary safety has been one among Collier’s targets in Unequalled, which had solely 36 gamers in its first season, however attracted buyers together with John Skipper, former Turner president David Levy, Moira Forbes, Alex Morgan, Michelle Wie West, Daybreak Staley, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Megan Rapinoe. Within the first 12 months on TNT Sports activities, Unequalled drew 221,000 followers per broadcast and paid its gamers a mean of $220,000 per recreation—or simply below the WNBA’s $250,000 most wage.
Throughout Collier’s All-Star MVP trophy presentation, WNBA broadcaster and ESPN’s Holly Rowe reminded everybody that Collier and her fellow gamers and model companions had been making their case for worth independently of the WNBA all through All-Star occasions. Rowe not solely requested Collier throughout the trophy presentation what was necessary for her and the gamers at this second, however introduced up the WNBPA vp’s fellow government committee members, Nneka Ogwumike (president) and Breanna Stewart (vp), to make their calls for identified.
The latter, Stewart, not solely hinted that the time between Saturday evening’s All-Star recreation and Tuesday’s return to regular-season play ought to probably be longer, however earlier that day, noticed Unequalled prolong seven collegiate gamers’ title, picture, and likeness rights offers with assist from its accomplice Samsung. The announcement got here at an Unequalled activation that adopted the league’s profitable first season and was a roughly 12-minute stroll from the WNBA All-Star host website at Gainbridge Fieldhouse.
“That’s actually at all times been the aim: How will we uplift ladies’s basketball total?” Kirby Porter, chief model officer at Unequalled, advised ADWEEK. “It’s cool to see it have a ripple impact throughout completely different leagues, so how will we proceed to actually innovate and push a needle for our followers but additionally our companions?”
Along with the NIL announcement, Samsung powered a recruiting-themed tour, Ally arrange a locker room, Sephora constructed a glam station and tunnel for pregame appears to be like, State Farm helped construct a reproduction court docket, and Beneath Armour provided a merch retailer. When gamers together with LSU’s Flau’jae Johnson, Notre Dame’s Hannah Hidalgo, and the College of Connecticut’s Sarah Sturdy and Azzi Fudd took the court docket for the NIL announcement, they have been already surrounded by manufacturers working independently of the WNBA.
“We at all times measure issues twofold. Are we impacting the panorama by means of new media offers, extra endorsement offers for gamers, ladies’s sports activities turning into a billion-dollar trade, gamers getting greater offers, salaries proceed to rise, a wholesome CBA—these are issues that you could word that the trade is rising,” Marciano mentioned. “The opposite method we measure is how our enterprise and model are rising, and by each metric, followers of ladies’s sports activities are extra favorable to our model.”
Investing sooner or later
Within the press convention after the All-Star Sport, Collier famous {that a} CBA sometimes lasts for seven years, and that when gamers negotiate one, they accomplish that to arrange the following CBA and have an effect on future generations. So, at the same time as Collier moved by means of All-Star Weekend, interviews, model activations, and appearances, the CBA and the Thursday assembly was foremost in her ideas.
“I really feel like I haven’t been capable of overlook it, like folks received’t allow us to, which is wonderful, simply the notice that we’ve raised this weekend,” Collier mentioned. “The followers doing that chant gave me chills, so the truth that we’ve saved this so current within the dialog, it’s by no means left my thoughts due to that.”
If an settlement isn’t reached on a brand new CBA by Oct. 31, a participant strike or league lockout may imperil a number of years of progress. Nevertheless, with all of the model and fan assist—and alternate options like Unequalled—the stress is mounting for the WNBA.
“The driest industrial worth of any league are model companions and media companions,” mentioned Alex Bazzell, co-founder of Unequalled, NBA and WNBA expertise coach, and Collier’s husband. “Then you definately begin to perceive the place the worth comes from: It’s the followers, it’s the manufacturers, and it’s the companions, collectively, and I feel the gamers perceive that mountain now greater than ever, which I feel is necessary for our league, together with each different league that operates.”
