Caitlin Shann attended her first New York Liberty game on pride night in June 2022. The WNBA had not been on her radar, and she didn’t know many people who followed the league. But during her first visit to Barclays Center, Shann, who identifies as queer, felt the Liberty had created a “loving and safe and fun place” for fans like her to cheer, she said. And the tickets were affordable, too.
She attended about six games the remainder of that season and the 2023 season. She was hooked and figured it was worth a season-ticket investment for the following season.
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Shann paid $600 for her season tickets in Section 3. The following summer, in August 2024, she was shocked to see her renewal cost. The price nearly doubled to just shy of $1,200 for the same seat and only two more regular-season games. Despite initially balking at the cost, her fandom won out and she re-upped.
“This was now a priority for me in my non-working time,” she said. “I could manage other sacrifices.”
But now, even as the Liberty begin a playoff quest to repeat as WNBA champions, Shann said she won’t be renewing. Not with a new ticket price for her seat increasing to nearly $1,700 for the 2026 season. “The value of what I get as a season-ticket holder has decreased over the last two years as my ticket prices have gone up astronomically,” Shann said.
Shann isn’t alone in her frustrations. As the WNBA has grown from a niche to mainstream league, its rise presents a familiar conundrum for loyal fans who supported the league long before it became popular. The league faces the challenge of maintaining a fan culture that has helped it grow but also recognizing the need to capitalize on a revenue stream as demand explodes.
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“I think every organization has to ask: What’s the cost-benefit of this choice that we’re making?” said Risa Isard, the director of research and insights at Parity, a women’s sports marketing company.
Around a dozen fans sitting courtside last week at the Liberty’s final regular-season game — dubbed fan appreciation night — wore orange shirts with an image of a frowning Lady Liberty and a message: “We’ve been priced out.”
Last summer, Shann created a Google spreadsheet to help Liberty season-ticket holders track their price changes. She posted it on Reddit, and it has been shared widely among fans since. (More than two dozen entries show a year-over-year increase of more than 100 percent.) A representative from Vivid Seats, a secondary ticket sale marketplace, said it found a 43 percent league-wide increase in the average ticket price year-over-year this season.
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“My goal was to make sure people didn’t just say, ‘That’s that. It’s business,” Shann said of the spreadsheet. “I wanted to give room to the fans to stop and say, this actually is really crappy.”
In recent years, WNBA attendance, television ratings and merchandise sales have sky-rocketed. The league is rapidly expanding, with five more franchises joining by 2030. Team valuations are at record highs — the Liberty have a $540 million valuation and said they set a league record with $2 million in ticket revenue for a game in May 2024. The WNBA also has boasted its $1.1 billion, 11-year media rights deal, which goes into effect next season.
Ticket supply has remained relatively stagnant amid the growth moment. Demand, meanwhile, has increased substantially, even as the league increased to a record 44 games this season.
Along with rising prices, franchise operational costs have also ballooned. Business and basketball staffs have expanded as well, requiring additional financial resources. Since 2023, eight franchises either opened new practice facilities, renovated or began development on new gyms, with some construction projects costing as much as nine figures.
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All of that requires additional revenue.
Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said last week on the “In Case You Missed It with Khristina Williams” podcast that ticket price increases are a function of the league arriving as a “legitimate sports and entertainment property.”
“When there’s high demand, prices go up, that’s just simple economics,” Engelbert said. “While I hope we didn’t price out families and a lot of our fans, I realize there are some issues in the system. But we do have to balance that with ultimately how this league has arrived in the sports landscape.”
Veteran Mystics forward Alysha Clark calls the current dynamic a “catch-22.” “(Rising ticket prices) is a good problem in the sense that (it) means we’re growing,” she said. “At the same time, we always want to make sure that we’re doing what we can to make sure our fans feel valued and included.”
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Eric Nemchock became a season-ticket holder after attending his first Chicago Sky game in 2012. At Chicago Bulls games, Nemchock said he “felt like a number.” But at Sky games, he said, “I felt like all the fans knew each other.”
Nemchock is thrilled to be part of the WNBA’s growth, and he didn’t expect static pricing. But when his two courtside seats in Wintrust Arena shot up from about $9,000 per season in 2024 to just over $22,000 this season? “I almost had a heart attack,” he said. Other Sky fans were similarly surprised and outraged by an unexpected announcement of an automatic renewal with a substantial increase last year.
Lisa Bodine, a Washington Mystics season-ticket holder for 15 years, has taken her husband and son to games through the years. She worries that arenas will become less family-friendly with the rising costs
“The grassroot supporters of the league have been family,” she said. “Some original fans can no longer afford the price.”
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The rising cost of tickets has implications extending beyond economics.
Long-time WNBA supporters take pride in the connection they formed with the league and its players before it achieved its current level of cultural cache. The league and its franchises have grown to embrace inclusivity through the decades and woven that into its brand identity. WNBA supporters and players frequently cite the league — and its arenas — as particularly welcoming to LGBTQ fans, especially compared to major male sports leagues. Fans worry that might change with the league’s new popularity and high ticket prices.
“The WNBA fan base is diverse with a really meaningful presence from Black and LGBTQ+ fans, who have played a key role in shaping W culture and sustaining the league for nearly three decades,” said Isard. “Meanwhile, the distribution of wealth and income earnings in the U.S. are more likely to advantage White and straight folks. So, statistically, raising prices potentially comes at the expense of these core fans.”
The rising number of corporate partners could also change crowd composition, fans said.
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Deidree Golbourne, a Liberty courtside season-ticket holder the past three seasons, is known as the “mayor of Barclays Center,” but she’s also reconsidering renewing after her $5,000 seat in 2023 rose to $7,500 last season and about $9,000 this season. She said it would cost $34,000 to renew for next season.
“My concern is that what a lot of teams want is more businesses. They want more folks that just have more income that are willing to spend,” she said. “They want more celebrities. They want people that are going to bring them notoriety.”
If prices are dramatically going up, she said she’d like to see more perks at games.
“We’re here for the love of the game, for the love of the team. But if I’m paying you $20,000, we’re gonna need a little bit more,” Golbourne said.
Liberty season-ticket holders receive a discount at the team store, have a separate entrance at games, and can pay for their tickets on a 12-month plan. For 2026 renewals, New York capped price increases for tenured season-ticket holders at 25 percent, excluding premium season-ticket holders.
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Liberty president Keia Clarke, who has been with the franchise for 15 years, said maintaining an inclusive and diverse fan base at games is important. The team offers tickets at a wide variety of price points, beginning at $25, even with season-ticket membership demand up 900 percent since play began at Barclays Center in 2021.
In other markets, decreasing concession prices is another way teams try to keep games affordable. Before this season, the Phoenix Mercury introduced a $2 value menu.
Some fans said they feel a moral obligation to pay for ticket prices, a tension that women’s basketball fans feel that fans of major men’s sports traditionally don’t face.
“That’s part of what’s keeping me on board, to be honest,” Nemchock said. “I trust that the money that I’m paying toward my season tickets is getting the players the payment they deserve.”
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New WNBA franchises are perhaps especially burdened with figuring out how to capitalize on the league’s popularity, their franchise’s novelty and creating a sustained fan identity.
After a successful inaugural campaign by the Golden State Valkyries — who sold out the entirety of their first season and led the WNBA in home attendance — fans are already documenting ticket price escalations between 10 and 15 percent in a spreadsheet similar to the one Shann created. It isn’t clear how the next wave of expansion teams, including Portland and Toronto next season, will price their season tickets.
Cleveland’s WNBA franchise won’t begin play until 2028. But team president Allison Howard has already begun charting the franchise’s future with this balancing act on her mind.
“I think a lot of people really are trying to listen in to the community and understand how to make it a place for everybody,” she said. “And with skyrocketing ticket prices, how are we still making sure that it’s affordable for everybody?”
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This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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