Originally published in April 2024. Updated in August 2026 with two seasons of audience data, the WNBA’s new collective bargaining agreement, expansion, and the changing economics of women’s professional sports.
When this article first ran in April 2024, Caitlin Clark had not played a minute in the WNBA. The Indiana Fever had not officially drafted her. We were asking whether the audience that followed her through Iowa’s NCAA tournament run would follow her into the pros.
Two seasons have provided plenty of evidence. The 2024 WNBA regular season reached more than 54 million unique viewers. Twenty-two regular-season broadcasts averaged at least one million viewers. Attendance rose 48 percent, and the Fever set a league record with 340,715 fans at home.
A Fever-Aces game in July 2026 averaged 2.64 million viewers on NBC and Peacock, making it the most-watched WNBA game of the season at that point. Clark remained a major draw, while A’ja Wilson, Aliyah Boston, Kelsey Mitchell, Paige Bueckers, Angel Reese and others gave the growing audience more reasons to stay.
The WNBA now has more viewers, more expensive franchises, and a labor agreement built for a larger business. Its future depends on how well the league handles the growth Clark helped accelerate.
The 2026 CBA Changed Player Economics
The WNBA and its players signed a new seven-year collective bargaining agreement in May 2026 after both sides ratified its terms in March. The 2026 salary cap rose from $1.5 million to $7 million. The maximum salary jumped from roughly $249,000 under the previous agreement to $1.4 million. The league projects an average salary above $583,000, with minimum salaries between $270,000 and $300,000 depending on experience.
Under the new scale, the WNBA projected a $500,000 rookie salary for the No. 1 pick in the 2026 draft. That figure is twice the previous maximum salary before endorsements or other income.
Player compensation is now connected to league and team revenue. The WNBA projects more than $1 billion in salaries and benefits over the seven-year agreement. The deal also codifies charter travel, expands roster and developmental spots, improves retirement and family benefits, and allows the schedule to grow to as many as 50 games in 2027 and 52 by 2029.
The old salary structure gave some college stars a financial reason to remain in school and collect NIL income. The new CBA changes that calculation immediately and gives players a direct stake in the league’s growth.
WNBA Expansion Fees Reached $250 Million
Golden State reportedly paid a $50 million expansion fee to launch the Valkyries. In 2025, ownership groups in Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia agreed to pay $250 million each. The WNBA and NBA boards formally approved those teams in April 2026.
Toronto and Portland began play this season. Cleveland arrives in 2028, Detroit in 2029 and Philadelphia in 2030. The league is moving from 12 teams in 2024 to 18 by the end of the decade.
Private franchise valuations remain estimates, and leading estimates don’t fully agree. CNBC valued the Golden State Valkyries at $1 billion in 2026. Sportico put the same franchise at $850 million and estimated that the average WNBA team value had risen 59 percent in a year.
The expansion fees offer a firmer measure of demand. Three ownership groups committed five times Golden State’s reported 2023 entry price. Those owners are buying ticket inventory, sponsorship opportunities and media windows in markets where they believe women’s professional basketball can build a lasting audience.
Expansion will also stretch the player pool and test six new markets. The fees show confidence. The results will come from ticket sales, sponsorships, media audiences and the daily work of running the teams.
Clark Became a Proxy Fight
The WNBA now produces a steady supply of conflict. Clark gets fouled, and one side sees resentment. The other side sees ordinary basketball under extraordinary scrutiny. Every hard foul, missed call, postgame comment, and television segment gets sorted into a pro-Clark or anti-Clark camp.
At times it resembles the rap rivalries of the 1990s. Some of the animosity is real. Media, brands, and fans also know how to package a side, allowing the rivalry to grow larger than the original event. The modern sports media system takes it from there.
SportsEpreneur has examined the same dynamic in the NFL, where controversial calls keep the league in the conversation long after the game ends. The WNBA is receiving a version of that attention. Arguments create clips, replies, television segments, and a reason to watch the next matchup.
The league still has to protect trust in the competition. Rivalries draw attention, while poor officiating or inconsistent discipline can eventually wear down an audience. The business challenge is keeping the intensity without allowing every game to become a referendum on one player.
What the Original Article Saw in 2024
The numbers from the spring of 2024 are worth keeping because they show how quickly the market moved. Iowa’s Final Four game against UConn drew 14.2 million viewers. Its Elite Eight win over LSU drew 12.3 million, then the largest audience ever for a women’s college basketball game. The 2023 WNBA Finals averaged 728,000 viewers per game, the league’s best mark in two decades but a small fraction of the audience Clark brought to college basketball.
Clark left Iowa averaging 28.4 points, 8.2 assists and 7.1 rebounds while shooting 37.7 percent from three-point range. The Fever selected her first overall and paired her with 2023 Rookie of the Year Aliyah Boston.
Before the draft, Boston described the basketball fit in an NBC Chicago interview: “I just think the way she is able to see the floor. She’s able to pass the ball. I think she just sees the cuts before it happens and she’s just able to find the right angle.”
After Iowa’s final game, Clark spoke about the new audience following women’s basketball: “I don’t really get offended when people say, ‘I’ve never watched women’s basketball before.’ One, you’re a little late to the party, yes, but two, that’s cool. We’re changing the game. We’re attracting more people to it.”
The original article compared Clark and Angel Reese with the individual rivalries that helped the NBA grow. Women’s basketball had personalities who could bring casual viewers into a league-wide conversation, and that conversation followed them into the WNBA.
A Halftime Show in Charlotte
In August 2026, my 15-year-old daughter played guitar at halftime of a Charlotte Crown game. The Crown is part of UPSHOT, a new professional women’s basketball league playing its inaugural season in 2026.
Four months earlier, I couldn’t have taken her to that gig because the league hadn’t started playing. Now a paid women’s basketball team was on the court in Charlotte. People bought tickets. They treated my daughter kindly. She became part of a live sports production that, not long ago, had no local equivalent.
The game gave me a glimpse of where the current interest in women’s basketball can lead. More games create more jobs, more local events and more opportunities for athletes, coaches, trainers, performers and the businesses around them.
Basketball has company. Sixth Street’s investment in Bay FC was described at launch as the largest institutional investment ever made in a women’s professional sports franchise. Investors across women’s sports are funding teams, facilities and operations with expectations that would have been difficult to imagine a few years ago.
Sports may be the last media product that gathers people in all the same places at once: in an arena, around a television, at a bar and on a phone with a group chat open. A major concert can sell out a stadium. Sports also return the next week with a hometown identity and a result nobody knows in advance. The WNBA sits in the middle of that demand, with enough size to lead women’s professional basketball and enough growth ahead to influence what gets built below it.
The Work Ahead for the WNBA
The league enters the rest of the decade with a seven-year labor agreement, plans for 18 teams and evidence that national audiences will watch. Expansion now has to produce dependable local support. A longer schedule has to create valuable inventory without making individual games feel disposable. The league also needs stars and rivalries that matter when Clark is injured, off the schedule, or eventually gone.
Officiating and discipline will receive more scrutiny as the audiences and financial stakes grow. The WNBA can benefit from strong opinions and heated rivalries, but the competition has to remain credible.
The WNBA has secured a larger place in the sports calendar. Its remaining work is practical and difficult: run 18 healthy teams, develop stars throughout the league and give people reasons to keep showing up after the novelty has passed.
Frequently Asked Questions About the Future of the WNBA
How much do WNBA players make under the new CBA?
For 2026, the WNBA projects an average salary above $583,000. Maximum salaries rise to $1.4 million, and minimum salaries range from $270,000 to $300,000 based on experience. The agreement also introduces comprehensive revenue sharing tied to league and team growth.
Which WNBA expansion teams are joining the league?
Toronto and Portland began play in 2026. Cleveland is scheduled to join in 2028, Detroit in 2029 and Philadelphia in 2030. Those additions will bring the league to 18 teams.
Did Caitlin Clark increase WNBA viewership?
Clark’s arrival coincided with record growth across the league. The 2024 regular season reached more than 54 million unique viewers, and the Indiana Fever set a WNBA single-season home attendance record. Fever games have continued to produce some of the league’s largest national television audiences.
Why are WNBA team values rising?
The league has larger television audiences, higher attendance, new media revenue, more sponsorship interest and a growing group of ownership bidders. The clearest market signal is the expansion fee: Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia each paid $250 million, five times the reported fee for Golden State two years earlier.
Is the WNBA part of the NBA?
The WNBA and NBA are affiliated leagues. The WNBA has its own teams, players and collective bargaining agreement, while the NBA holds an ownership interest and the leagues share some governance and business relationships.
Related reading on the business of basketball
Load Management in the NBA: Who’s Actually to Blame?
The Evolution of the WNBA: From the Eyes of an Original ESPN/Lifetime Network Producer
How NIL Rights Are Quietly Destroying the WNBA’s Talent Pipeline (The NBA’s Next)
Eric Kasimov is the founder of SportsEpreneur, part of the KazSource media network. Since launching the platform in 2015, he has hosted over 500 podcast episodes, written and published more than 1,500 articles, and advised business leaders, founders, and creators on building authority through media strategy.
Through his brands — KazSource, KazCM, SportsEpreneur, and QuietLoud Studios — Eric leads teams that produce podcasts, develop brand platforms, and help companies grow through modern content ecosystems. He also scaled KazSource Insurance into a seven-figure boutique agency, providing the foundation for the broader media network he operates today.
His work has been featured in Forbes, Axios, and Front Office Sports, and his podcasts have included conversations with top founders, investors, and athletes turned entrepreneurs.
The Future of the WNBA: Caitlin Clark, Expansion, and a Bigger League
Originally published in April 2024. Updated in August 2026 with two seasons of audience data, the WNBA’s new collective bargaining agreement, expansion, and the changing economics of women’s professional sports.
When this article first ran in April 2024, Caitlin Clark had not played a minute in the WNBA. The Indiana Fever had not officially drafted her. We were asking whether the audience that followed her through Iowa’s NCAA tournament run would follow her into the pros.
Two seasons have provided plenty of evidence. The 2024 WNBA regular season reached more than 54 million unique viewers. Twenty-two regular-season broadcasts averaged at least one million viewers. Attendance rose 48 percent, and the Fever set a league record with 340,715 fans at home.
A Fever-Aces game in July 2026 averaged 2.64 million viewers on NBC and Peacock, making it the most-watched WNBA game of the season at that point. Clark remained a major draw, while A’ja Wilson, Aliyah Boston, Kelsey Mitchell, Paige Bueckers, Angel Reese and others gave the growing audience more reasons to stay.
The WNBA now has more viewers, more expensive franchises, and a labor agreement built for a larger business. Its future depends on how well the league handles the growth Clark helped accelerate.
The 2026 CBA Changed Player Economics
The WNBA and its players signed a new seven-year collective bargaining agreement in May 2026 after both sides ratified its terms in March. The 2026 salary cap rose from $1.5 million to $7 million. The maximum salary jumped from roughly $249,000 under the previous agreement to $1.4 million. The league projects an average salary above $583,000, with minimum salaries between $270,000 and $300,000 depending on experience.
Under the new scale, the WNBA projected a $500,000 rookie salary for the No. 1 pick in the 2026 draft. That figure is twice the previous maximum salary before endorsements or other income.
Player compensation is now connected to league and team revenue. The WNBA projects more than $1 billion in salaries and benefits over the seven-year agreement. The deal also codifies charter travel, expands roster and developmental spots, improves retirement and family benefits, and allows the schedule to grow to as many as 50 games in 2027 and 52 by 2029.
The old salary structure gave some college stars a financial reason to remain in school and collect NIL income. The new CBA changes that calculation immediately and gives players a direct stake in the league’s growth.
WNBA Expansion Fees Reached $250 Million
Golden State reportedly paid a $50 million expansion fee to launch the Valkyries. In 2025, ownership groups in Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia agreed to pay $250 million each. The WNBA and NBA boards formally approved those teams in April 2026.
Toronto and Portland began play this season. Cleveland arrives in 2028, Detroit in 2029 and Philadelphia in 2030. The league is moving from 12 teams in 2024 to 18 by the end of the decade.
Private franchise valuations remain estimates, and leading estimates don’t fully agree. CNBC valued the Golden State Valkyries at $1 billion in 2026. Sportico put the same franchise at $850 million and estimated that the average WNBA team value had risen 59 percent in a year.
The expansion fees offer a firmer measure of demand. Three ownership groups committed five times Golden State’s reported 2023 entry price. Those owners are buying ticket inventory, sponsorship opportunities and media windows in markets where they believe women’s professional basketball can build a lasting audience.
Expansion will also stretch the player pool and test six new markets. The fees show confidence. The results will come from ticket sales, sponsorships, media audiences and the daily work of running the teams.
Clark Became a Proxy Fight
The WNBA now produces a steady supply of conflict. Clark gets fouled, and one side sees resentment. The other side sees ordinary basketball under extraordinary scrutiny. Every hard foul, missed call, postgame comment, and television segment gets sorted into a pro-Clark or anti-Clark camp.
At times it resembles the rap rivalries of the 1990s. Some of the animosity is real. Media, brands, and fans also know how to package a side, allowing the rivalry to grow larger than the original event. The modern sports media system takes it from there.
SportsEpreneur has examined the same dynamic in the NFL, where controversial calls keep the league in the conversation long after the game ends. The WNBA is receiving a version of that attention. Arguments create clips, replies, television segments, and a reason to watch the next matchup.
The league still has to protect trust in the competition. Rivalries draw attention, while poor officiating or inconsistent discipline can eventually wear down an audience. The business challenge is keeping the intensity without allowing every game to become a referendum on one player.
What the Original Article Saw in 2024
The numbers from the spring of 2024 are worth keeping because they show how quickly the market moved. Iowa’s Final Four game against UConn drew 14.2 million viewers. Its Elite Eight win over LSU drew 12.3 million, then the largest audience ever for a women’s college basketball game. The 2023 WNBA Finals averaged 728,000 viewers per game, the league’s best mark in two decades but a small fraction of the audience Clark brought to college basketball.
Clark left Iowa averaging 28.4 points, 8.2 assists and 7.1 rebounds while shooting 37.7 percent from three-point range. The Fever selected her first overall and paired her with 2023 Rookie of the Year Aliyah Boston.
Before the draft, Boston described the basketball fit in an NBC Chicago interview: “I just think the way she is able to see the floor. She’s able to pass the ball. I think she just sees the cuts before it happens and she’s just able to find the right angle.”
After Iowa’s final game, Clark spoke about the new audience following women’s basketball: “I don’t really get offended when people say, ‘I’ve never watched women’s basketball before.’ One, you’re a little late to the party, yes, but two, that’s cool. We’re changing the game. We’re attracting more people to it.”
The original article compared Clark and Angel Reese with the individual rivalries that helped the NBA grow. Women’s basketball had personalities who could bring casual viewers into a league-wide conversation, and that conversation followed them into the WNBA.
A Halftime Show in Charlotte
In August 2026, my 15-year-old daughter played guitar at halftime of a Charlotte Crown game. The Crown is part of UPSHOT, a new professional women’s basketball league playing its inaugural season in 2026.
Four months earlier, I couldn’t have taken her to that gig because the league hadn’t started playing. Now a paid women’s basketball team was on the court in Charlotte. People bought tickets. They treated my daughter kindly. She became part of a live sports production that, not long ago, had no local equivalent.
The game gave me a glimpse of where the current interest in women’s basketball can lead. More games create more jobs, more local events and more opportunities for athletes, coaches, trainers, performers and the businesses around them.
Basketball has company. Sixth Street’s investment in Bay FC was described at launch as the largest institutional investment ever made in a women’s professional sports franchise. Investors across women’s sports are funding teams, facilities and operations with expectations that would have been difficult to imagine a few years ago.
Sports may be the last media product that gathers people in all the same places at once: in an arena, around a television, at a bar and on a phone with a group chat open. A major concert can sell out a stadium. Sports also return the next week with a hometown identity and a result nobody knows in advance. The WNBA sits in the middle of that demand, with enough size to lead women’s professional basketball and enough growth ahead to influence what gets built below it.
The Work Ahead for the WNBA
The league enters the rest of the decade with a seven-year labor agreement, plans for 18 teams and evidence that national audiences will watch. Expansion now has to produce dependable local support. A longer schedule has to create valuable inventory without making individual games feel disposable. The league also needs stars and rivalries that matter when Clark is injured, off the schedule, or eventually gone.
Officiating and discipline will receive more scrutiny as the audiences and financial stakes grow. The WNBA can benefit from strong opinions and heated rivalries, but the competition has to remain credible.
The WNBA has secured a larger place in the sports calendar. Its remaining work is practical and difficult: run 18 healthy teams, develop stars throughout the league and give people reasons to keep showing up after the novelty has passed.
Frequently Asked Questions About the Future of the WNBA
How much do WNBA players make under the new CBA?
For 2026, the WNBA projects an average salary above $583,000. Maximum salaries rise to $1.4 million, and minimum salaries range from $270,000 to $300,000 based on experience. The agreement also introduces comprehensive revenue sharing tied to league and team growth.
Which WNBA expansion teams are joining the league?
Toronto and Portland began play in 2026. Cleveland is scheduled to join in 2028, Detroit in 2029 and Philadelphia in 2030. Those additions will bring the league to 18 teams.
Did Caitlin Clark increase WNBA viewership?
Clark’s arrival coincided with record growth across the league. The 2024 regular season reached more than 54 million unique viewers, and the Indiana Fever set a WNBA single-season home attendance record. Fever games have continued to produce some of the league’s largest national television audiences.
Why are WNBA team values rising?
The league has larger television audiences, higher attendance, new media revenue, more sponsorship interest and a growing group of ownership bidders. The clearest market signal is the expansion fee: Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia each paid $250 million, five times the reported fee for Golden State two years earlier.
Is the WNBA part of the NBA?
The WNBA and NBA are affiliated leagues. The WNBA has its own teams, players and collective bargaining agreement, while the NBA holds an ownership interest and the leagues share some governance and business relationships.
Related reading on the business of basketball
Load Management in the NBA: Who’s Actually to Blame?
The Evolution of the WNBA: From the Eyes of an Original ESPN/Lifetime Network Producer
How NIL Rights Are Quietly Destroying the WNBA’s Talent Pipeline (The NBA’s Next)
Eric Kasimov is the founder of SportsEpreneur, part of the KazSource media network. Since launching the platform in 2015, he has hosted over 500 podcast episodes, written and published more than 1,500 articles, and advised business leaders, founders, and creators on building authority through media strategy.
Through his brands — KazSource, KazCM, SportsEpreneur, and QuietLoud Studios — Eric leads teams that produce podcasts, develop brand platforms, and help companies grow through modern content ecosystems. He also scaled KazSource Insurance into a seven-figure boutique agency, providing the foundation for the broader media network he operates today.
His work has been featured in Forbes, Axios, and Front Office Sports, and his podcasts have included conversations with top founders, investors, and athletes turned entrepreneurs.