Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese have already helped lead the WNBA’s massive boost in ratings and attendance at games.
Now, the superstar rookies are being credited with the league’s whopping 1000% increase in merchandise sales, too.
Fanatics – the official retailer of the W – has seen a 500% surge in business during the first half of the season when compared to the first half of 2023, a spokesperson told TMZ Sports on Tuesday.
The company also reported a 1000% increase in player-specific merch sales, with Clark and Reese leading the pack in No 1 and 2 respectively.
New York Liberty star Sabrina Ionescu, who was the late Kobe Bryant’s protégé, ranked third in jersey sales, while Las Vegas Aces rookie Kate Martin and her teammate, A’ja Wilson, rounded out the top five.
‘Fan gear sales for the first half of the season are the highest in league history,’ the Fanatics spokesperson said, noting sales at the All-Star Game in Phoenix last weekend also smashed the previous record for on-site purchases.
The WNBA’s surge in popularity is paying off for the league in more ways than one, having inked a new media rights package worth about $2.2 billion over 11 years last week, The Athletic reported.
It nets out to approximately $200 million annually, roughly four times the WNBA’s current media deals with Disney, Ion, CBS and Amazon, which are valued at $50 million annually.
The new package was negotiated by the NBA amid its own gargantuan rights talks, during which the league reached an agreement with Disney, NBC and Amazon on an 11-year, approximately $75 billion set of contracts.
As part of the deal, each network – ESPN, NBC and Amazon – will have their own WNBA package.
Several records have already been smashed throughout this WNBA season alone, with the league announcing last month that more than 400,000 fans attended games in May – the most in 26 years.
Additionally, the league’s viewership has increased greatly since Clark and Reese’s arrival.
Across ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, and CBS, WNBA games are averaging 1.32 million viewers – which is nearly triple last season’s standard of 462,200 viewers.
