The Brooklyn Academy of Music will be the site of this year’s draft and will have room for 1,000 spectators.getty images
Tickets to this month’s WNBA Draft are going for as much as $1,000 on the secondary market, just for the right to see a certain someone in the flesh. You know a draft is legit when it is (a) mocked up, (b) on ESPN, (c) sold out in 15 minutes, (d) staged in an opera house, (e) hyped by Wieden+Kennedy and (f) able to roll Caitlin Clark into its green room.
Clark may not be carrying the league yet, but she already has turned the WNBA Draft presented by State Farm into a tentpole event for the first time. The “3 To See” draft of 2013 — with Brittney Griner, Elena Delle Donne and Skylar Diggins-Smith going 1-2-3 — may have been deeper, and perhaps was matched by the Candace Parker/Sylvia Fowles/Candice Wiggins draft of 2008. But Clark and the rest of the 2024 draft class are creating a whole other level of cash register.
“I call it the business or economics of Caitlin Clark,” said Cheryl Reeve, the Minnesota Lynx head coach and president of basketball operations who, according to some WNBA mock drafts, could end up with Clark’s rival Angel Reese with the seventh overall pick.
If nothing else, this is the WNBA’s all-eyes-on-us moment. Over the last calendar year, NCAA women’s basketball had Clark and Reese all to themselves — first with the Iowa-LSU title game in 2023, and culminating with the Elite Eight rematch last week that drew 12.3 million viewers, the most-watched college basketball game ever on ESPN. But, that entire time, the WNBA has been laying in the weeds, planning for Clark and Reese’s pro promotion.
“We started thinking about this a year ago,” said Phil Cook, the WNBA’s chief marketing officer. “When you watch the women’s final from last April, you were part of a community of 10 million people watching. You recognize this is the talent, this is the energy, this is the fandom that’s coming into our league next year. So we’ve got to go. We’ve got to start planning and thinking about: How do we embrace that and meet the moment? And not at the last second. So we’ve all been thinking about what happens on April 15, 2024, starting in April of 2023.”
Buzz about the draft encouraged the league to launch its first ad campaign outside its season.WNBA
One of the first questions was location. The WNBA’s 2023 draft was held at the Spring Studios in New York, a private made-for-TV event that was open only to sponsors, draftees and their families. Basically, no noise. In fact, the league hadn’t staged a selection show in front of fans since the 2014-through-2016 drafts at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Connecticut, and it was clear — at the mere size of Clark’s fan base — that had to change.
Using a pro arena was an option, but a more eclectic decision was made to stage the event at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where the acoustics would be perfect for Commissioner Cathy Engelbert’s presumed announcement: “With the No. 1 overall pick, the Indiana Fever select … Caitlin Clark.”
BAM had an intimate seating configuration that would limit attendance to 1,000 people, which put tickets at a premium. The league placed 800 on sale, selling out in 15 minutes at price tiers of $99, $79 and $49.99. “We wanted to make [prices] attainable,” said Colie Edison, the league’s senior vice president and chief growth officer. “We want our fans who have been with us from the start to know we have not forgotten about them.’’
But, out of league control, secondary sellers such as Vivid Seats, as recently as this past week, were listing draft mezzanine seats at $1,102, increasing to $1,463.90 with fees. The “business of Caitlin Clark” was a real thing.
Anticipating the demand, the league partnered with Quint to sell premium draft packages through WNBA Experiences — akin to what Quint has done with NBA Experiences. According to Edison, 100 fans will get a VIP ticketing experience that includes walking the orange carpet that WNBA draftees stroll in on.
“We just did a partner town hall last week,” Edison said, “and the No. 1 question I got was: ‘How can we help amplify the draft?’ All of our partners understand how important this moment for us really is. It’s the milestone we’ve been wanting to reach for so long, which is connecting that NCAA fan to the WNBA, and this is our moment to do it.”
To hear Cook describe it, the WNBA had “tried and tried” to convert the rabid women’s college basketball fan base to the WNBA, with mixed success. But between Clark’s logo 3-pointers and Reese’s swagger — reminiscent of how Larry Bird and Magic Johnson entered the NBA 45 years ago — Cook couldn’t whiff on this chance to capitalize.
He foresaw an ad campaign that would overlap with the NCAA Tournament to subliminally invite college fans to follow Clark, Reese, Stanford’s Cameron Brink (the projected No. 2 overall pick) and Tennessee’s Rickea Jackson (projected third overall) to the WNBA. Cook would need an agency to carry it out. And not only did Wieden+Kennedy want in, Cook said, “I have never seen an agency more willing to embrace and attack this. I got their A-plus team. They dropped everything, and it’s been relentless. I’m on the phone with them 12, 14, 16 hours a day. Because they just are so hungry for this opportunity.”
The result was the commercial “Welcome to the W,” the first time the league started an ad campaign outside of its season. But the WNBA knows momentum when it sees it. Clark’s college career may have ended this past weekend, but she won’t be out of sight or mind for long, because the draft is in only a week and WNBA training camps start April 28.
The business of Clark is staying in business.
