WNBA corporate sponsorship deals are growing. But not every athlete is getting their due

 

[November 18, 2024]  By CLAIRE SAVAGE

In a banner year for women’s professional sports, athletes who dominate their game are reaping the financial benefits.

The WNBA is a leading example. Last month, it wrapped up a historic season that notched all-time viewership and attendance records while racking up brand deals and corporate sponsorships for its players along the way. On Sunday, the league will hold its draft lottery for the 2025 season.

Many of the WNBA's young stars like Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese brought deals with them from their playing days in college, including name, image and likeness agreements that became endorsements with such companies as Nike, Reebok and Gatorade. Players of different backgrounds landed a variety of other endorsement deals with companies like CarMax and State Farm.

But for all those enjoying their newfound riches, there are still some players who are being left out. The WNBA recently partnered with Kim Kardashian’s underwear brand SKIMS, which featured women of color as well as LGBTQ+ players in its ads. The company received pushback, however, for excluding masculine-presenting athletes in its May campaign.

“Not the papis of the league being forgotten again,” Phoenix Mercury’s Natasha Cloud posted on X after SKIMS' “Fits Everybody” campaign dropped.

Two-time all star Natasha Howard of the Dallas Wings also criticized the campaign, saying it felt “like a smack” for the league’s more masculine presenting players, and that it is “absolutely” harder for Black LGBTQ+ athletes to get brand deals.

“I feel like a lot of people don’t want to see queer or lesbian people on the face of anything,” Howard told The Associated Press in a phone interview.

SKIMS did not respond to requests for comment.

Cloud and Howard decided to forge their own path. Both women scored partnerships with Woxer, a Latina and LGBTQ+-owned women’s boxer brand that offers a line designed for gender nonconforming customers.

Miami-based Alexandra Fuente, Woxer’s founder, said that working with Howard, Cloud, and Las Vegas Aces’ Kierstan Bell “was just a great match,” and the company is planning to collaborate with many more female athletes in the future.

“I think the major brands give deals to people that fit the box, and that is a great thing because it leaves opportunity for brands like us,” Fuente said. "For us ... everybody’s in the box.”

But for mainstream brands, partnering with athletes who don’t fit the traditional mold in today’s increasingly polarized cultural landscape fraught with anti-diversity backlash creates "this collective risk that some brands are unwilling to take,” according to Ketra Armstrong, University of Michigan professor of Sport Management and director of the Center for Race & Ethnicity in Sport.

Many brands are ”middle of the road, and want to be safe, and don’t want to offend other pockets of their consumers,” Armstrong said.

Risa Isard, assistant professor of sport management at the University of Connecticut, analyzed online articles from ESPN, CBS Sports and Sports Illustrated from the 2020 WNBA season and her peer-reviewed study found that Black WNBA athletes received less media attention than white WNBA athletes. Additionally, Black athletes who did not present in traditionally feminine ways “receive the least amount of media attention, while white athletes have the freedom to express their gender in a variety of ways and still capture media interest.”

Dallas Wings' Natasha Howard handles the ball as she works against the Indiana Fever in a WNBA basketball game on Sept. 1, 2024, in Arlington, Texas. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez, File)

Media attention matters because it shapes athletes’ perceived advertising value for brand deals, and is especially important for WNBA players since their salaries are much lower than NBA players and they instead depend on endorsements and playing abroad offseason despite safety concerns to pay the bills, Isard said.

But brands are missing the mark when they overlook Black LGBTQ+ women, said University of Massachusetts Amherst sport management professor Ajhanai Keaton, who studies the intersection of race and gender identity.

Like some of its players, the WNBA’s fan base also holds fluid gender identities, plus companies may underestimate how much consumers with different identities admire and relate to LGBTQ+ players, Keaton said. “Sponsors and brands are way behind the curve on this.”

Nonetheless, there has been progress, including in other women's sports like soccer.

Briana Scurry, goalkeeper for the legendary squad that won the 1999 World Cup, was one of the only openly gay “out” players of her time. Scurry, a two-time Olympic Gold medalist, said sponsorship opportunities in women’s soccer have improved significantly since her time playing.

After making a crucial penalty kick save that helped clinch her team's World Cup win, Scurry said she “thought for sure that I would have a landslide of sponsorship deals," but "I just didn’t.”

At first she thought it was because she was a goalkeeper. “And then it dawned on me, sadly, that it may have to do with my color and/or my sexual orientation,” she said. “I didn’t have any other explanation for it.”

Today, women’s soccer “has come a long way,” according to the former Washington Spirit assistant coach. When Scurry played, she was the only player of color with a starting role. Now, Sophia Smith, Trinity Rodman, and Mallory Swanson make up the U.S. Olympic team’s formidable front three, and Scurry said she saw several advertising and marketing campaigns reflect that star power.

“That made me very happy,” she said.

And endorsement opportunities that evaded Scurry 25 years ago? They're now beginning to surface.

“I am having quite a bit of success now that I didn’t have then," she said, which makes her hopeful that sponsorship opportunities for Black LGBTQ+ female athletes also will continue to grow.

“Women’s sports is now seen as a business proposition,” Scurry said. “No longer is it a charity.”

For anyone who questions the marketing potential and social capital of Black LGBTQ+ athletes, Keaton added, they need only glance at the comment sections of their Instagram posts, which are filled with fire emojis, heart eyes emojis, and, “‘Where’d you get those shoes?’”
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AP Basketball Writer Doug Feinberg contributed to this report.

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