During the 30 years that Sports Poll has been tracking sports fandom, no property had a better year for building fans than the WNBA did in 2024.

They added 17 million fans and now rank as the largest women’s sports fan base in the US with 119 million (age 8 or older). With the 2025 season tipping off this week, we wanted to highlight a few of the stories we are watching to see how the league can build off last year’s gains.

Can the WNBA sustain interest with its new fans?

The first step to growing the fan base is to simply sustain the gains from the past few years. The biggest driver for the increase in 2024 was the jump in interest with males 35+, a group who has historically been the least interested in the WNBA (Sports Poll, May 2023-Apr 2025). Based on the sheer size of the 55+ population, it will also be critical to hold their interest. Since 1994, we’ve seen a handful of sports that showed sharp increases in fandom but were unable to maintain momentum as their new fans moved to something else. This was already a challenge for leagues twenty years ago. Now sports face more competition for free time than ever before (from both sports and non-sports activities), so holding fans’ interest is even more difficult.

Will the WNBA become a higher priority with its fan base?

Just because someone is a fan doesn’t mean they are actively engaged. A typical fan simply has too many interests competing for a finite amount of free time. The most active fans are those who prioritize the sport. By “prioritize”, we mean that they identify the league as their favorite sport or the teams and players as their overall favorites. Given the increased competition, priority fans hold even greater value today. They are the ones who seek out games to watch or attend, pay the closest attention to social media, and spend the most money. While WNBA fandom has increased substantially, it remains a relatively low priority for its fans. Less than 5% of fans name the WNBA as their favorite sport or WNBA teams or players as their overall favorites (Sports Poll, May 2024-Apr 2025). “AVID intensity” (the number of total fans who identify as AVID fans) also remains relatively low at 14%. If these numbers begin to grow, we should see even greater increases in viewership, spending, and other fan behaviors.

Can the WNBA develop stronger connections with its teams?

One of the foundational pieces for building an engaged fan base is developing connections with favorite teams. The stronger the bond, the more likely a fan is to stay with the team through good times and bad. “Belonging” is more difficult to achieve for sports that are player-focused because the connections are more transient, but players can provide an entry point for favorite teams. A simple short-term goal would be to increase the number of WNBA fans who have a favorite team. Only 49% of fans say they have a favorite team, which is still below the larger traditional leagues in the US (Sports Poll, May 2024-Apr 2025). Granted, those leagues have a larger number of teams, longer histories, and more multi-generational connections established over time. Yet there’s no reason that the WNBA can’t leverage its young stars to create new bonds with teams.

Will WNBA stars become the favorite athletes for female teens and tweens?

There have been plenty of female star athletes to emerge in the past 20 years. Simone Biles, Serena Williams, and Alex Morgan are just a few. Yet no female athlete has ranked as the overall favorite for teenage girls since Mia Hamm in 2007. For nearly 20 years, male stars like LeBron James, Steph Curry, Lionel Messi, and Peyton Manning have ranked as the favorite athletes for female teens. This is largely because girls have been more interested in male sports like the NFL, NBA, and MLB compared to the newer women’s leagues. Change could be on the horizon though. In her first year, Caitlin Clark ranked as the fifth-favorite athlete among teen girls (Sports Poll, May 2024-Apr 2025). Angel Reese ranked eighth. With pre-teen girls (ages 8-11), Clark ranked sixth. Other young stars like Paige Bueckers are also entering the league now. Because of the growth of women’s college basketball (+12 million more fans in 2024), these players now begin their careers with established fan bases of their own. Their ability to engage female teens and pre-teens will go a long way to developing lifelong fans and could help push the WNBA above the traditional men’s leagues with these groups.

The WNBA stars aren’t just popular with young females either. Clark now ranks among the top ten favorite overall athletes for the US population. She was the most popular rookie we’ve seen in any sport over the past 30 years, including former young stars like LeBron, Manning, Sidney Crosby, and Aaron Judge. There’s no doubt that her star power helped drive the WNBA to higher levels in 2024, but we’ll be watching to see if this leads to stronger team connections and greater prioritization to push fan engagement even higher.