WNBA 2024 brings a host of new fans to the event

With the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) 2024 season having concluded with New York Liberty having claimed their maiden title, we dive into YouGov data to understand how the season fared with the audiences.

We noted earlier this year that interest in the WNBA was the highest it had ever been, and this trend continued through the course of the season. The positive Satisfaction score – a measure of the percentage of an audience that says they will give up time to follow a league – peaked at 9.9% during the latter stages of the event.

Looking at an average score across the duration of the WNBA 2024, positive Satisfaction rates were largely consistent across age groups, indicating that the league has made its mark among diverse audiences. And, there isn’t much between the Satisfaction rates registered among men (8.4%) and women (8.0%) either. There is, however, slight regional variance, with consumers in the Midwest (9.6%) more likely to say they would give up time to follow the league than those from the Northeast (7.2%). 7.9% of those in the South and 8.3% of those in the West indicate the same.

The 2024 event also generated quite the Buzz, peaking at 19.4 in May. While those levels were not matched throughout the remainder of the WNBA season, they remained consistently higher than levels registered in any previous edition of the tournament.

Unlike positive Satisfaction scores, average Buzz scores for the season saw variances across age groups. Buzz was highest among those aged over 65 (15.3), followed by those aged 30-44 (13.6). Buzz score across the season was relatively lower among those aged 18-29 (11.8) and 45-64 (10.9).

Overall, 2024 can be labelled as a breakthrough season for the WNBA, and Satisfaction scores suggest that the new waves of fans might be here to stay.