The WNBA isn’t only finding huge upswings in TV viewership and primary ticket sales, but also in the secondary market.
Logitix, a ticketing platform, published a report that monitors multiple secondary ticket exchanges for WNBA games. Among its findings are that the average resale ticket price, without ticketing fees, has grown to $87.75 through the first half of the 2024 season, up from $50.10 during the 2023 season. While there’s no question that the arrival of Caitlin Clark has led to the jump, the average resale price for games not involving her Indiana Fever still trends upward to $61.36 per ticket.
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“Our analysis of WNBA ticket trends uncovers a fascinating narrative,” said Travis Apple, Logitix’s chief revenue officer. “The growing spotlight on women’s basketball is dramatically driving up demand for live games, with this surge in interest evident across the entire league.”
A headline finding in the report is that Clark is not as big of a draw at home—at least on the secondary market—as she is on the road. The Fever lead the league in average resale prices for road teams at $160.09, contrasted with an average price of $77.02 at home in the Gainbridge Fieldhouse. One factor in that disparity: Season ticket packages were quickly gobbled up as soon as Clark declared for the WNBA Draft in March as she was rightly assumed to be the league’s top pick for the Fever. Fewer seats for single-game ticket sales limits available tickets in the secondary market.
Clark isn’t the only draw across the league, rookie or otherwise. Fans are coming out to see the Chicago Sky, which drafted fellow rookie and double-double machine Angel Reese and her former SEC rival Kamilla Cardoso. The Sky are second in average road ticket secondary price at $115.72 and lead the WNBA in average home ticket resale price at $129.93. The Sky’s home price so far this season is nearly three times greater than the team’s resale value in 2023 at $46.04. In other words, much to the chagrin to her detractors, Reese was right when she said that Clark is not the only rookie the fans want to see.
Beyond the rookie draws are the two teams that dueled throughout 2023 for league supremacy, the defending back-to-back league champion Las Vegas Aces and the team they beat for last year’s title, the New York Liberty. Though the Fever and Sky are far ahead of the pack for road resales, the Aces ($89.59) and Liberty ($76.23) are third and fourth among Logitix’s rankings of the 12 WNBA franchises as of Monday night. New York has the third priciest home tickets on the secondary market at $103.96, which is $32 more than a season ago. Contrast that with the Aces, whose secondary tickets for home games have averaged $72.60, only ahead of Phoenix and Minnesota.
Logitix monitors ticket sales for teams across the four major North American male leagues as well as the NCAA and WNBA. The company uses the data to help their client teams develop pricing strategies to sell more tickets. As it relates to the WNBA, Logitix claims that in addition to the increase in average price, the volume of resale transactions has already tripled that of 2023.
Clark and the Fever account for nine of the top 10 games by average price so far this season, including the highest priced resale ticket of $280.43 for the second meeting with the Sky back on June 23. Just one of those contests was at home, when the Fever hosted the Sky on nearly three weeks earlier on June 1. That game, where the average ticket resale value was $146.52, included the infamous foul by Chicago’s Chennedy Carter that sent the media into a nearly two-week tizzy over how Clark has been treated by competitors in her nascent career.
Second on the list is this past Sunday’s tilt between the Fever and Phoenix Mercury where Clark squared up against WNBA legend Diana Taurasi. Resale tickets went for $194.26.
The only non-Fever game in the top 10 was the Sky against the Washington Mystics on June 14. Though Chicago has brought fans to arenas around the league, it helped that the Mystics are going through an ugly rebuild and are without the services of former league MVP Elena Delle Donne.
Despite a league-worst 4-15 record, Washington has the league’s second-best average home secondary price and $129.47, just behind the Sky in 2024 and almost $60 more than the team’s price in 2023.
The Mystics may have been buoyed by the W’s best ticket promotion: the “Brunch and Basketball” campaign where for $105, fans were able to enjoy bottomless mimosas, chicken and waffles and more brunch staples. Tickets for all four games against Seattle, Dallas, Las Vegas and Atlanta promptly sold out.
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