As it nears tipoff of the 2017 season, the WNBA is turning to the NBA for additional promotional support as the league looks to build on its growth from last year.
The women’s league will debut its new “NBA Tribute” 30-second spot today during the start of the NBA’s conference semifinal games. The spot, produced internally by NBA Entertainment, features a host of NBA stars including Steph Curry and Kevin Durant of the Golden State Warriors who pay tribute to the WNBA talent and competition.
The ad, along with the WNBA’s “Your Move” commercial that debuted during last month’s WNBA draft, will run across all NBA and WNBA television, digital and social outlets, and follows a similar strategy used by the WNBA when it premiered its “Watch Me Work” campaign last January during ABC’s prime-time national coverage of a Cleveland Cavaliers-San Antonio Spurs game.
“NBA Tribute” comes in advance of the May 13 start of the WNBA’s 21st season and signals the increased cross-promotional efforts in using the NBA to spark interest in the 12-team league. Last year, the WNBA also rolled out a spot using NBA players to promote the league. The WNBA saw its attendance increase by 4.6 percent last year, averaging 7,655 fans per game, the best gate since the league’s 2011 season.
“We have a captive audience in the NBA and we share the opportunity to support the WNBA and its upcoming season,” said WNBA President Lisa Borders. “It is very helpful.”
The cross-promotional push follows a series of bold initiatives designed to raise the league’s profile. Last month, the WNBA overhauled its draft, holding it at Samsung 837 in New York. The league also will continue with last year’s dramatic change to its postseason format.
According to the league, combined viewership on ESPN and ESPN2 increased by 11 percent last season over 2015, with the 2016 season-opening game on ESPN between the Phoenix Mercury and the Minnesota Lynx drawing 505,000 viewers, the highest-rated, regular-season WNBA game on ESPN since 2011.
This year, the WNBA is hoping for increased viewership as ESPN adds two more regular-season games to its schedule for a total of 16 regular-season games. ESPN also will broadcast the WNBA All-Star Game to be held this July for the first time in Seattle.
Though bolstered by the league’s improved business metrics, Borders would not disclose the number of WNBA teams expected to be profitable and said that her biggest challenge remains growing the league’s attendance.
“We are in a business that requires fans in the stands,” she said, declining to disclose season-ticket sales numbers or renewal rates for the upcoming season. “As the leader of the league, the most constant concern is filling up the arenas in every market.”
The biggest team stories for the 2017 season are in Washington, where the Mystics this offseason landed WNBA All-Star Elena Delle Donne in a blockbuster trade with the Chicago Sky, and in San Antonio where the Stars selected Kelsey Plum, the all-time leading scorer in NCAA women’s basketball, as the top pick in the 2017 draft.
Delle Donne, who hails from nearby Delaware, has helped revive the Mystics’ business with combined new and renewed season-ticket revenue up 123 percent to date from last season. The team has a 95 percent season-ticket renewal rate and saw a 600 percent spike on the first day single-game tickets went on sale compared with first day single-ticket sales last year.
“We are getting people who wouldn’t have come out otherwise and this year have decided to come out,” said Jeff Bowler, vice president of business operations for Monumental Sports & Entertainment, which owns the Mystics. “We have more energy and people dedicated to the ‘W’ than we have had in a long time.”
