Is Demand for Tickets to Women’s Sports Really Increasing?

We start out this post by saying we love & support women’s sports. It’s long overdue that so many are discovering the talent on display in many of these women’s sporting events. That said, the purpose here is to offer our opinion on whether demand for tickets has increased significantly. Recent headlines from the WNBA are championing the leagues 47% increase in attendance for the 2024 season. A few months ago one of our competitors pushed a press release that said 2023 was the “Year of the Women” in which they referenced the huge demand for tickets to Taylor Swift and many other events. There is no debating the dominance women are having in the concert ticket space as both Taylor Swift and Beyonce have seen astronomical demand for seats to their recent (or current) concert tours.

The question of which women’s sports are seeing the biggest increase in demand for tickets is a bit more nuanced. We reviewed our tickets sales to see where there has been a big change over the past 1.5 years. The biggest winner in-terms of demand has been the WNBA, which has been driven by the huge demand to see Caitlin Clark. We sold more tickets for WNBA games this past season than in practically ever other season combined. The vast majority of those sales (over 90%) were for games where Caitlin Clark was playing. We did see an uptick in demand for other teams relative to past performance but the real growth in ticket demand was driven by Clark’s games. Of the WNBA games we sold this season the top 33 games all featured Clark. The first non-Clark game on our list of top selling WNBA games was #34 (Aces at Liberty). That data alone makes a pretty compelling case that Clark’s popularity really drove the surge in ticket demand.

Much of that demand to see Caitlin Clark play seems to draw from the rivalry that started between Clark and Angel Reese when they played college basketball. The four games the Chicago Sky (Reese’s team) played against the Indiana Fever (Clark’s team) totaled more than twice as much ticket revenue as any other WNBA series (and two of those games were played in the relatively small Wintrust Arena with limited capacity). Clark and Reese both say there is no rivalry, or feud, between them but whatever it is about these two playing each other, they draw big crowds.

Beyond the WNBA, where has there been a big uptick in ticket sales for women’s sports. While not nearly to the level of the WNBA we have seen more demand for Women’s college volleyball and Women’s college softball. Some of that is because we’re based in Austin, Texas where the Texas Longhorns volleyball (back-to-back National Champions) and softball (WCWS 2 of past 3 years) are very good. We also saw strong demand for tickets to events like Nebraska volleyball playing a match in the Cornhuskers football stadium which drew the largest crowd ever to a Women’s sporting event with over 92,000 fans in attendance. We always see strong demand for Women’s matches at marquee tennis events like the US Open, and Coco Gauff’s US Open final appearance in 2023 sold a lot of tickets. Beyond those above the landscape for demand for tickets to Women’s sporting events has remained relatively constant. There is a new Women’s professional volleyball league starting up now so that could be a future demand driver, but overall the WNBA seems to be standing out.

More specifically, it seems Caitlin Clark drives demand for tickets to Women’s sporting events.

Photo credit: The Indianapolis Star via Front Office Sports