The Ladies’s Nationwide Basketball Gamers Affiliation opted out of the WNBA’s present collective bargaining settlement (CBA) final October, looking for higher wage incentives and advantages, particularly as league viewership and attendance proceed to develop.
Now, with the CBA set to run out on Oct. 31, a possible work stoppage is on the horizon for 2026 if an settlement isn’t reached.
Because the WNBA postseason approaches and the CBA deadline looms, gamers imagine they’ve a proper to a higher share of league income from sources together with sponsorships. With no animosity towards the league, manufacturers and their observers are inclined to agree—as do the numbers.
The info doesn’t lie
Wasserman’s women-focused observe, The Collective, launched a report in 2023 that famous that athletes in males’s sports activities earn 21 instances extra wage than ladies enjoying those self same sports activities. In consequence, ladies in sports activities depend on manufacturers and sponsorship for 82% of their earnings (in comparison with simply 37% for males) whereas their wage includes simply 18% of their complete compensation (67% for males).
“The explanation that they’re prolific on social media is as a result of they must be … that’s the place they construct their audiences. That’s the place they construct their model. That’s the place they get their cash. So in consequence, they’re good at it,” Elizabeth Lindsey, Wasserman’s world president of manufacturers and properties, mentioned throughout a panel in Nike World Headquarters in Oregon in July.
Wasserman famous in the identical report that males’s sports activities nonetheless acquired 90% of sports activities sponsorship {dollars} regardless of ladies’s sports activities having audiences which are youthful, wealthier, higher educated, and extra numerous—and extra prone to acknowledge and purchase from sponsors.
In the meantime, because of their social prowess, ladies athletes double males’s engagement on social media and are particularly priceless to the WNBA—which noticed 48% development in attendance final 12 months and is forecast to see 32% viewership development by 2027 after its new estimated $2.2 billion media rights offers with Amazon, NBCUniversal, ESPN, and ION kick in.
With a Wasserman report launched earlier this 12 months discovering that 72% of girls across the globe determine as avid sports activities followers, however solely 49% really feel manufacturers perceive them, Wasserman sees a novel alternative for manufacturers to exert their affect and assist improve on-court pay for WNBA gamers.
“How do you ignore 50% of your viewers? Do the mathematics, and for those who take a look at what it’s worthwhile to accomplish, do the analysis. Know who’s shopping for your product; know what ladies consider your merchandise; then your funding path turns into clear,” Lindsey mentioned.
With manufacturers together with Aflac, Ally, and Samsung already bettering participant compensation choices whereas remaining cordial with the league—and, in some circumstances, instantly partnering with it—they’re in a priceless place to affect change throughout the sport … and will use some assist off the bench.
The manufacturers fill within the gaps
Exhibiting the stark pay discrepancy between males’s and girls’s basketball, the WNBA pays the winners of its All-Star 3-Level Contest and Abilities Competitors $2,575 apiece. That’s not even sufficient to pay the taxes on what NBA gamers make for his or her All-Star contests.
So heading into this 12 months, Aflac CMO Gareth Knutson defined that his firm, which is all about filling in gaps round medical insurance coverage, stepped in to make a distinction and fill one other pay hole.
“These ladies—the union and the gamers—imagine that they weren’t getting as a lot as they need to, and we mentioned we’ll provide you with a test,” Knutson mentioned. “To me, the only concepts, when executed nicely, have the most important impression.”
When New York Liberty guard Natasha Cloud received this 12 months’s competitors, Aflac teamed with the WNBPA so as to add one other $55,000 to the prize. After profitable and hugging her teammate and accomplice, Isabelle Harrison, Cloud let the gang at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis understand how a lot that increase in prize cash meant.
“This mama over right here instructed me I higher win at present for a down fee on a home,” she toutdated ESPN’s Holly Rowe. “So child, you’re going to get that home.”
One other of Cloud’s teammates, Sabrina Ionescu, received the 3-Level Contest and agreed to break up the prize with fellow contestant and Washington Mystics rookie Sonia Citron. As an alternative of $2,725, nevertheless, Aflac lumped one other $60,000 on high of it and despatched every residence with greater than $31,000.
However the firm’s assist goes past financial transactions.
Throughout a wet Saturday on All-Star Weekend, Aflac and media and commerce firm Togethxr hosted a panel at Indianapolis venue The Cabaret that includes WNBA gamers Sydney Colson, Rickea Jackson, and Kate Martin, in addition to College of South Carolina coach and Aflac endorser Daybreak Staley. Practically an hour earlier than the present, with followers lined up down the block, Knutson went exterior and handed out plush Aflac geese sporting Togethxr “Everybody Watches Ladies’s Sports activities” shirts.
That weekend, he additionally accompanied Staley to a panel hosted by Deloitte that included rapper and actor Frequent. Amid each panels in rooms crammed to capability, Knutson noticed Aflac’s relationship with Staley clearly outlined: Not making a press release, however amplifying hers. He sees an identical relationship with the WNBPA, the place Aflac is amplifying its level about supplementing earnings whereas not dismissing the concept of in the future working with each the union and the WNBA—as has lengthy been the case for sponsors in different leagues.
“This concept of doing sponsorships with the gamers’ union, I’d be stunned that that isn’t one thing that continues to develop. The entry level is decrease. It additionally offers you a particular sort of affect on the influencers,” Knutson mentioned. “What I’d love to have the ability to do is, if we’re talking 18 months or 36 months from now, let you know about how we’re approaching as a brand new, official accomplice of the W.”
An Unequalled alternative
Ally Monetary turned the WNBA’s official banking sponsor and Changemaker investor this 12 months after sponsoring the league’s Las Vegas Aces in 2024. At this 12 months’s WNBA All-Star, it arrange an arcade at WNBA Dwell with sport debit playing cards that includes its athlete ambassadors (Breanna Stewart, Sydney Colson, and Paige Bueckers), gave 1,500 followers complimentary League Cross subscriptions, and put its brand on the Gainbridge Fieldhouse courtroom and beneath the edges, amongst different activations.
Nevertheless, the corporate’s assist for the athletes goes past the league.
The monetary firm additionally served as a founding sponsor of the Unequalled 3-on-3 ladies’s basketball league in Miami and had its brand on parts of that league’s activation at WNBA All-Star. Whereas the common $220,000 wage paid to Unequalled’s 36 gamers by sponsors, broadcasters, and traders is greater than double the WNBA common ($102,000)—and Unequalled founders Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart additionally function members of the WNBPA govt committee—Unequalled performs a winter schedule that doesn’t battle with the WNBA’s and has been seen as typically additive for the game.
For Ally, Unequalled represented a approach the model might persistently assist each gamers all year long whereas contributing to the expansion of girls’s basketball general.
“We’re on the jersey of all of the groups, and that’s actually vital because it not solely pulls via among the social forex of the gamers, however it exhibits how a lot we’re invested within the gamers,” mentioned Stephanie Marciano, Ally’s head of sports activities and leisure advertising and marketing. “We need to be as near the gamers we are able to, as a result of we wish them to know that we’re an ally to them.”
In the meantime, manufacturers that won’t have entry to their class throughout the WNBA have discovered methods to spice up participant pay and alternative at Unequalled. Samsung not solely let followers take media-day pictures with its Samsung Galaxy Z Fold through the Unequalled activation at WNBA All-Star, however introduced title, picture, and likeness rights offers for 14 collegiate gamers—who went all the way down to Unequalled’s Miami headquarters for its The Future is Unequalled Summit earlier this month.
“Backside line: We’re so pleased with the work Unequalled is doing to raise ladies’s sports activities and our partnership with them is constructed on shared ethos,” mentioned Olga Suvorova,vp of cell expertise advertising and marketing at Samsung Electronics America. “This occasion is a large step for rising ladies’s sports activities, and this partnership displays our shared values round innovation, fairness, and shaping the way forward for ladies’s sports activities.”
