WNBA Ranked as Fastest Growing Brand of 2024

The WNBA's success in 2024 has now been quantified and compared to other brands — and the results are staggering.
Aug 30, 2024; Chicago, Illinois, USA; Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark (22) reacts as she walks off the floor during the second half of a basketball game against the Chicago Sky at Wintrust Arena. Mandatory Credit: Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images
Aug 30, 2024; Chicago, Illinois, USA; Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark (22) reacts as she walks off the floor during the second half of a basketball game against the Chicago Sky at Wintrust Arena. Mandatory Credit: Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images / Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images

Anyone who followed women's basketball in 2024 could tell that the WNBA experienced a banner year in terms of overall growth and attention.

However, it could have been tough to compare this growth to other brands outside of the sports realm without having the statistics and data to back it up.

But that has now changed after Morning Consult’s 2024 Fastest Growing Brands report was released, which shows that the WNBA is the No. 1 fastest-growing brand in the USA.

The report shows that the WNBA experienced 3.84 Growth (which, "was determined by taking the share of consumers who said they were considering purchasing from the brand in Q3 2024 (Jul. 1-
Sept, 30, 2024) and subtracting the share who said the same in Q1 2024 (Jan. 1-Mar. 30,
2024)," among all U.S. Adults.

This was the highest out of all brands measured, with Ben & Jerry's coming in at second with 3.74 Growth.

According to an Instagram post from Boardroom, "This year marks the first time a sports league has been No. 1 on the fastest-growing brands list, as well as the first time a women’s league has appeared on any of @morningconsult’s lists.⁠"

In the Morning Consult report, Ellyn Briggs wrote, "From Clark’s ongoing rivalry with fellow rookie star Angel Reese to A’ja Wilson’s historic MVP campaign, the 2024 WNBA season had no shortage of discourse-sparking storylines — and discuss people did: The shares of both U.S. adults and sports fans who reported having recently seen, read or heard something positive about the WNBA nearly doubled between January and September 2024.

"In fact, the league proved such a consistently trending topic that most major publishers are now making significant investments to build out dedicated WNBA coverage."

Briggs later added, "Overall, there is little precedent for the kind of ascension that the WNBA experienced this year. If 2024 answered long-time questions about whether there are audiences for women’s professional basketball, the upcoming years will ask just how big these audiences can get."

It's cool to see the WNBA's success quantified in this way. Whether the league can continue furthering its growth in 2025 now becomes the big question.


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Grant Young
GRANT YOUNG

Grant Young covers Women’s Basketball, the New York Yankees, and the New York Mets for Sports Illustrated’s ‘On SI’ sites. He holds an MFA degree in creative writing from the University of San Francisco (USF), where he also graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing and played on USF’s Division I baseball team for five years. However, he now prefers Angel Reese to Angels in the Outfield.