Judy Berkowitz isn’t really the type of fan the Women’s National Basketball Association is focused on attracting these days.
Ms. Berkowitz, 57, lives in Dunwoody, Ga., and has been an Atlanta Dream fan since the team’s first season in 2008. When she was in her late 30s, team representatives visited her local women’s basketball league and handed out tickets. The next year they offered a grateful Ms. Berkowitz free season tickets.
“She said, ‘Here’s the deal with it: Bring somebody new to every game, and if you can’t make a game, make sure the seats are filled,’” Ms. Berkowitz said of the Dream rep. “And I did. It was trying to get other people to enjoy the W.N.B.A.”
Ms. Berkowitz is now a single mother with two children ages 11 and 13. She used to work as a federal contractor, but her career prospects have suffered in recent years. She is unemployed and living off her retirement savings.
In the W.N.B.A.’s early years, Ms. Berkowitz recalled, four people could go to a Dream game and buy concessions for $40. Now, the better seats are around $70 or more. She hasn’t seen the Dream in person since 2016, though she has attended several men’s and women’s college basketball games in recent years. In March, the Dream announced that they had sold out their season ticket allotment for the second straight year.
“It’s such a great family-friendly event, but I can’t afford $250 for one night out with the kids,” she said.
The W.N.B.A., often treated like the National Basketball Association’s kid sister since launching in 1996, is rapidly maturing. The last two years have brought record attendance and broadcast ratings. Five expansion franchises will take the league to 18 teams by 2030, the largest it has ever been. A media rights deal starting next season will pay an average of $200 million a year, quadruple the previous deal. And expansion fees ($250 million each for the last three teams) and team valuations have ballooned.
That exceptional growth means fans both new and old are often recalculating what they’re willing and able to spend on their fandom.
The league declined to share ticket price data, and publicly available data is scarce. But prices have skyrocketed. During the 2024 season, Logitix, a ticket inventory management company, reported an average price of $88, a 75 percent increase from $50 in 2023.
At a New York Liberty game in September, fans wore “We’ve been priced out” shirts to protest rising season ticket prices. According to a spreadsheet with over 200 entries, organized by a Liberty fan named Caitlin Shann, the median price for Liberty season tickets will increase about 37 percent in 2026, to $81 from $59 per game.
Hooked and Paying More
Genevieve Cassidy is a newer fan willing to pay higher prices.
Ms. Cassidy, 25, grew up in the 2010s in the backyard of a men’s basketball dynasty: the Golden State Warriors. She went to a few Warriors games, but as the championships piled up, her family was eventually priced out.
A few years ago, women’s basketball started creeping into Ms. Cassidy’s social media feeds. More of her peers began mentioning the league. On a whim, she attended a Seattle Storm game in 2024 while on a work trip and loved it.
“It got me hooked, and the more I read, the more I realized the fan community was a completely different space from the often toxic and ego-driven conversation that surrounds men’s sports leagues,” Ms. Cassidy said. “I fell in love with the community’s positivity and pure excitement for women’s sports.”
Back home, Ms. Cassidy loved the electric atmosphere at the Golden State Valkyries games she attended. The Valkyries joined the league in 2025 and were the first W.N.B.A. team to sell out every game, in an arena that holds 18,000 fans. Ms. Cassidy is now zeroing in on season tickets for 2026.
Dave Berri, a sports economist, recently argued in a New York Times opinion essay that the W.N.B.A. should significantly increase player pay as the league grows in a trajectory similar to the N.B.A.’s. Caitlin Clark and other W.N.B.A. stars are filling the role that N.B.A. legends like Larry Bird and Magic Johnson did in the 1980s — capturing the attention of a broader audience exposed to the league via expanded broadcast deals.
“That is a wonderful place for the league to be,” said Caiti Donovan, the W.N.B.A.’s head of growth strategy. “It’s bringing more accessibility to fans across more channels, and ultimately increasing the overall visibility for our athletes and for the product at large.”
In 2025, the W.N.B.A.’s 29th season, the league averaged 10,986 fans per game. The N.B.A. didn’t average more than 11,000 until its 39th season in 1984-85 — six seasons into the careers of Mr. Bird and Mr. Johnson. The W.N.B.A. shares many arenas with the N.B.A. and, like its counterpart, is increasingly selling out its games.
“Unfortunately, the reality is, as more and more people get involved and your fan base increases, well, then you’re kind of stuck, right?” Mr. Berri said in an interview. “If you don’t raise the ticket prices, then people are going to buy them and resell them anyway. If you do market-rate, those people are priced out, no matter what you do.”
Higher earners like Ms. Cassidy have in part fueled the growth of the league’s fan base. According to the league, it has seen a 26 percent increase since 2018 in fans with household income over $100,000. Ms. Cassidy earns about $135,000 a year and is budgeting around $50 per seat per game for her 2026 season tickets.
Budgeting for W.N.B.A. Games
Well over 100 fans from across the league’s three-decade history responded to a Times questionnaire asking about their W.N.B.A. fandom and how they spend money on it. Their stories ranged from watching Sue Bird’s rookie season in 2002 for $10 a game to spending $14,000 on season tickets for 2026 to see the Los Angeles Sparks.
Ms. Donovan, the W.N.B.A.’s head of growth strategy, is focused on three types of fans: Young fans who stick around longer and whose parents bankroll their fandom. Broader sports fans who are seeing what the fuss is about and are already used to dipping into their wallet. And core fans, who data from the league suggests are more engaged than ever.
Hanna Melin is a core fan. Ms. Melin, 29, grew up in a Twin Cities suburb and became a Minnesota Lynx fan around age 10, attending games with her mother, Emma.
The pair went to a few games each season in the 2010s, witnessing a Lynx dynasty win four league championships in seven years, but it wasn’t until this season that Ms. Melin and her mother leveled up their fandom by committing to attend nearly every home game. They show their appreciation for the StudBudz, two Lynx players with a passionate online following, by wearing matching special-edition shirts and pink wigs.
In a survey conducted by Ally Bank in September, just under a quarter of U.S. sports fans reported that their spending on women’s sports had increased over the past three years.
“For women’s sports especially, it’s very values-based spending,” said Jack Howard, Ally’s head of money wellness. “People are deciding now more than ever to spend with intention, and every dollar that you’re spending specifically with the W.N.B.A. creates representation and the opportunity to have growth.”
Data from the W.N.B.A. and the Ally survey, as well as questionnaire responses, also painted a picture in which more casual sports fans, especially men, are increasingly finding the league.
Cooper Stepke, 24, is one of those young men. He grew up playing and following basketball outside Baltimore and became a W.N.B.A. fan as a teenager, largely influenced by his basketball-loving sisters.
Mr. Stepke started following the Dream when he was in high school. He bought a jersey of one of their players at the time, Brittney Sykes, and wore it to school as part of a tradition of wearing jerseys to promote his team’s games. It didn’t go well.
“I was like: ‘Oh, I’m going to show up in a W.N.B.A. jersey. It’s going to be really cool,’” Mr. Stepke said. “All the guys on the team were like: ‘What the hell are you doing? Why don’t you have a Damian Lillard jersey or something?’”
He put the jersey away for a few years. But then the W.N.B.A. exploded in popularity. Two of his co-workers at the law firm where he is a recruiter are even bigger fans than he is. He splits streaming costs with his two male roommates, who watch games with him. Crowds now gather at his local dive bar in Queens for big W.N.B.A. games.
A recent job change raised Mr. Stepke’s salary to $75,000, from $55,000, making him more willing to spend money on the W.N.B.A. He’s not as stingy about paying for ESPN anymore. He’d love to see a star like Ms. Clark or Angel Reese when her team visits the Liberty. And he dreams of living closer to the Liberty’s arena in Brooklyn, and maybe even raising a family of Liberty fans one day.
And that jersey? In 2019, Mr. Stepke bought it for $27. It now sells for $80.
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