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

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

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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.

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