Women’s basketball is quickly emerging as one of the country’s most popular spectator sports. Stand-out stars like Caitlin Clark and A’ja Wilson have become fan-favorites, selling out arenas from Phoenix to New York City and attracting massive online followings. And, as of late August, the Women’s National Basketball Association saw record-breaking attendance numbers. At over 2.5 million fans in the 2025 season, viewership was the highest it has been in 23 years.
The WNBA and its’ star players are becoming increasingly culturally relevant– but why?
One possible reason for the striking rise in popularity can be found outside of the professional league. Women’s March Madness, the national tournament for college basketball teams, has seen all-time-high viewership in recent years. Across ESPN networks, game viewership averaged at 1.2 million viewers, up 22% from 2023. Diligent media attention and digital accessibility through broadcasting platforms like ESPN, CBS and ABC, along with audience bracket participation, identifies excellent players earlier in their career– before they even step foot onto a WNBA team.
“[Women’s] March Madness has become so much bigger as well,” Mia Steinwurtzel ‘26, an avid women’s basketball fan, explained. “Men’s March Madness has always been big, but as soon as you have players like Caitlin who are breaking records, people think, ‘Wow, I want to actually watch the game to see if she’s like, actually doing that, or go to the game to be in that environment.”
March Madness for women’s college basketball is a relatively young development. Created in 1984, the tournament initially only included 34 playing teams. Since then, the women’s bracket has more than doubled, boasting 68 teams from schools across the country.
Another draw to the women’s professional league is the style of play.
“It’s just a completely different game. And personally, I enjoy watching women’s [basketball] more,” Steinwurtzel said. She explained that because of the women’s physical size relative to the court, they have to “do more” to get to the basket. “They’re just smaller, like, they just can’t literally take five [steps] down the court.”
This extra room and the discrepancy in physical athletic ability relative to NBA players creates more room for passing and technical plays. So, those in search of a more collaborative, team-focused style of game, may feel more inclined to watch women’s games rather than the “isolation play” associated with men’s basketball.
“There’s a lot more finesse,” Mikelle Sacco, the assistant athletic director, said. “It’s kind of like the difference between [boys and girls] lacrosse. You have the girls that are all finesse and all about the passing and the movement, and the boys get to just tackle each other.”
Additional drivers for the WNBA’s vogue are the digital spaces created around the league. Social media communities precipitate endless rounds of memes, fan pages and even hate posts (which sometimes reach the broadest audience). Younger players with their own pages, like Clark with 3.6 million followers on Instagram and over 800,000 on TikTok, feed their fans locker room content and provide a window into their personal lives, fanning the flames of cultural fame.
On the business side of the equation are the brand deals and subsequent marketing campaigns that trail players with massive followings. Whether the sponsorships or fame come first is debatable. However, it is undeniable that these marketing ploys tied to players and the league at large for beauty brands, sportswear and even contraception, further the WNBA’s popularity.
Even more, despite cult-following and broadening appeal, WNBA players make substantially less money than male athletes in less popular leagues, and suffer a gap between their own, and NBA wages. Claudia Goldin, a professor of economics at Harvard University, estimates that WNBA players should be paid approximately one-third relative to NBA players, crunching the numbers to account for discrepancies in viewership and additional factors. But, Goldin points out, the women are only paid one-eightieth of the average NBA salary. So, a big chunk of the players’ income derives from these campaigns– a motivating factor in securing brand deals and sponsorships.
From both the platform that the women’s college basketball scene provides, a distinct style of play and subsequent media fame, players like Clark and Bueckers have become household names, reaching an audience outside of devoted basketball fans.
“There’s now a following [surrounding the WNBA]. It’s a bigger deal. People are seeing it, more people. And it’s just not women, it’s men and women watching the games, which is fantastic,” Sacco said.
