Hey everyone, I’ve been digging into how much money the WNBA makes, and I gotta say, it’s been quite the journey. So, let me walk you through what I did and what I found out.
First off, I started by just hitting up the usual spots online, you know, the big search engines. I typed in stuff like “WNBA revenue” and “how much money does the WNBA generate”. I wanted a general idea of what kind of numbers we were talking about.
After that, I started to look into some specific years. I figured, hey, things change over time, so let’s see how the money situation has evolved. I found some interesting stuff about 2023, which seemed to be a pretty big year for the WNBA. Apparently, they pulled in around $200 million. Not too shabby, right?
Then, I got curious about how this compares to the NBA. I mean, they’re the big sibling in this basketball family. From what I found, the NBA is in a whole different league, raking in billions each year. In the 2023/24 season, the NBA’s total revenue was a whopping $11.34 billion.
But here’s a twist I didn’t see coming: the NBA actually helps out the WNBA quite a bit. They give them over $15 million every year. And guess what? The NBA owns about half of the WNBA. When you add up all the NBA owners’ stakes, it’s more like 75%. That’s a lot of support, which is pretty cool, but it also makes you wonder about the WNBA’s own financial game.
So, I kept digging. I wanted to know more about where all this money was coming from. It turns out, ticket sales are a big part of it. More people are going to games, and that’s great for the league. They’ve also got some new stars bringing in fans, which definitely helps boost the numbers.
Here’s a little summary of what I found in a neat list:
- 2023 Revenue: Around $200 million. Pretty good, and way up from what they were making just a few years ago.
- NBA Support: The NBA throws in over $15 million a year to help the WNBA with costs.
- Ownership: The NBA owns about half of the WNBA, but if you count all the NBA owners, it’s closer to 75%.
- Growth: The WNBA’s revenue has actually doubled since 2019. They were at $102 million then, and now they’re at $200 million. That’s some serious growth!
Wrapping It Up
So, that’s the gist of it. The WNBA is definitely growing and making more money than before, but they’ve still got a ways to go to catch up to the NBA. It’s interesting to see how much the NBA supports them, and how that plays into the whole money picture. Overall, it was a pretty eye-opening deep dive into the business side of women’s basketball. I hope you guys found this as interesting as I did!
