The WNBA: What is it?

Long term profitable investment? Entrepreneurial error? Or just an expensive boondoggle the NBA was badgered into wasting money on?

I recently learned that the WNBA (the all-female version of the National Basketball Association) is on track to lose $40-50 million this year. And worse, that in its 28 year history, it has never once been profitable.

Damn. I knew it wasn’t doing so well, but I didn’t know it was that bad. All this while people who have invested zero time or money in the WNBA screech about the “gender pay gap” between the male and female professional basketball players.

Umm… people like to watch the men play. That league makes money. Lots of it. They sell tickets, jerseys, and ad revenue in the billions. The women’s league loses money, and you’re screaming that the players are underpaid?

So, why is the WNBA so unsuccessful? Some people point to the embarrassingly poor level of play compared to the NBA (or even men’s college basketball). Others point out that the natural fan-base for the league, female sports fans, just doesn’t seem to care.

Perhaps Bill Burr is right, and the vast majority of women would rather watch anything else than the WNBA. And if the business model was to expect male sports fans to care, well… that’s idiotic. You might as well complain that there doesn’t seem to be a strong male viewership for The Real Housewives of Wherever.

It would be kinda weird.

What astounds me is that the people who own the WNBA aren’t giving up on it. So, who are they? The NBA owns half of the WNBA directly. But if you account for the fact that several owners of NBA teams also own the associated WNBA team in their region, that percentage grows much higher.

So, mostly, it’s the NBA who owns the WNBA. The league that makes money is subsidizing the league that doesn’t. Why do they do that?

Maybe it’s a long-term investment. Maybe they think if they pour enough money into this over a long enough timeline, that eventually the WNBA will grow into something so popular and profitable that it more than makes up for these decades of financial losses.

Or maybe they think there’s some synergistic effect. Perhaps having a WNBA out there in some way is enhancing the profitability of the NBA.

Both of these are possible, but I have my doubts. I can’t help thinking that given the political/cultural climate we have been suffering under for the past 30 years, that the NBA is being browbeaten and shamed into throwing money away on the WNBA just because of… muh patriarchy, or something.

But of course, I’m sometimes a curmudgeon and a cynic. I could easily be wrong.

Maybe the WNBA’s new star, college phenom Caitlin Clark, will help make the league generate more revenue. Maybe women will eventually come to enjoy watching women’s basketball instead of whatever Desperate Housewives and Ugly Betty are.

(I asked the LLM in my web browser what the top-rated TV shows for women are these days.)

So, we will see. But I predict that the WNBA will never generate enough (inflation adjusted) profits to cover all the millions thrown at the project. I think that, like the Edsel, New Coke, and the USFL before it, the WNBA is an expensive entrepreneurial error.

Prove me wrong, ladies.

Naturally,

Adam

PS: We live in such insane and immoral times, that I fear we will see “trans-women” (men) enter the WNBA. I hope that never happens. That would be adding insult (and injury) to injury. Female sports needs to stay female sports. A man can’t just announce his mental illness one day and then automatically become a woman.

That’s not a thing.

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