America is banking on the WNBA business

Last weekend in Italian sport was dominated by Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s triumph in the Formula 1 World Championship, but the Italian sporting world – particularly the basketball community – also celebrated the second historic WNBA title won by Cecilia Zandalasini with the Golden State Valkyries. This is a significant achievement, secured within a sporting context that remains all too little known and followed in Italy, which is why it is worth giving it some thought. There are, in fact, profound differences compared to the title won by the Italian athlete in 2017 with the Minnesota Lynx. Firstly, there are the competitive and on-court differences, with a transformation from the then very young, non-paying spectator at the Finals to her current self: a highly effective, extremely reliable (particularly from the three-point line) and experienced role player, as they say in the States, who has been a key figure over the past two years in every stage of a fledgling franchise’s development. Then there are the environmental factors, relating to the unexpected calibre the WNBA has now reached.

This is the key point to note. The WNBA is not simply gaining a niche following. It is propelling women’s sport into an economic and media sphere never before reached, in an expansionary cycle that many analysts link in many respects to the explosion of the NBA in the early 1980s. A perfect case study for understanding just how rapidly the world of global sport can transform today. Until just a few years ago, it was an economically fragile league with a limited following, known almost solely for the political activism of its players, who could only make a living from basketball by supplementing their income with a European season. Many of them played in Russia, as in the well-known case of Brittney Griner, or in Italy, such as the star of Game 7, Gabby Williams, who previously played for Napoli. The iconic image is that of Joseph Tsai, who in 2019 bought the New York Liberty – who were playing at the time in a small arena in the suburbs of New Jersey – for ‘just’ 10 million dollars, because, regardless of any talk of equality, anything that fails to attract an audience is worthless, especially in the American mindset. In January 2020, the death of Gianna ‘Gigi’ Bryant – a potential future star of the league with her father as her mentor, who was already on good terms with many basketball players, including Gabby Williams, his daughter’s favourite, who, not coincidentally, had been invited to train at the Mamba Sports Academy.

In 2021, controversy surrounded the poor infrastructure at the NCAA women’s finals – a sign not only of their irrelevance, but also of how many sections of the American university sports management hierarchy have always viewed the Title IX equality campaigns as an imposition to be undermined; campaigns from which American women’s sport – and, by extension, global women’s sport – has developed since the early 1970s. No one—literally no one—could have imagined a successful future for the WNBA. Yet, just five years on, we are witnessing a concentration of iconic young talents who have come through the college basketball system, giving rise to a wave of popularity spearheaded by Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese and their competitive and verbal clashes, but now featuring many other leading figures. Almost three and a half million viewers tuned in for Game 7—a figure that has grown almost sevenfold compared to the peaks of 2021, and without the boost of the Clark effect. The Valkyries, having reached $100 million in revenue and a valuation of $1 billion, have become one of the symbols of the movement’s new commercial strength, while franchise values continue to rise. Deloitte provides the figures on this growth: the global women’s sports industry, virtually non-existent a decade ago, was worth six hundred million dollars three seasons ago; today it is worth three billion, with the WNBA accounting for 35 per cent of the pie (whilst Europe accounts for only 14 per cent, a figure bordering on irrelevance). There is also an important and unprecedented political shift. It is no longer simply the woke league under attack from the MAGA world from the outside, but cultural wars being waged from within through the differentiation and polarisation of icons – this season, above all, with Sophie Cunningham, increasingly a MAGA heroine, with her finger pointed at her rivals, her appeals to patriotism, and the highest seasonal growth on social media in the world of basketball, including NBA players. All of this fuels the attention.

A few final thoughts on Italy, the most Americanised nation in Europe, now even in sport, with football undergoing changes in ownership and outlook. There is a peculiar twist of fate that unites the two sports symbolic of American women’s sport – basketball and football – in their current economic and commercial expansion. In Italy, they are very minor sports, receiving little attention apart from the occasional summer peak involving the national teams, and with a player base that is one-tenth the size of volleyball and gymnastics combined. There is a radical geopolitical divide in sport between the Anglosphere, where ‘everyone watches women’s sport’ – namely basketball and football – and Italy’s insularity, which looks more towards the East, towards volleyball and horizons devoid of feminist demands and LGBTQ+ activism. And yet this ‘minor’ Italy has managed to reach the pinnacle of the WNBA’s thirty-year history thanks to the calibre of Cecilia Zandalasini. Yet another case study illustrating a characteristic of Italian sport that we have highlighted many times: the ability of the numerous sporting hubs and talent-nurturing centres scattered across the country to develop talents with unique versatility. In this instance, credit is also due to Geas in Sesto San Giovanni and the work of Cinzia Zanotti, as well as, of course, Famila Schio.