Bethany Donaphin is clear about all the ways the WNBA differs from other professional sports leagues. There’s its age certainly (the WNBA is just a youngster at 29 years old), but there’s also the players themselves: elite athletes and moms, plus a significant number who are entrepreneurs with advanced degrees. That includes Donaphin herself, a former forward for New York Liberty with an MBA from The Wharton School.
Donaphin’s expertise is evident as she works to develop — and redevelop — the WNBA’s public brand. There’s an emphasis on being “player first,” she says, which translates even down to ad spots crafted for the female gaze, and an upcoming expansion team, the Golden State Valkyries — the first in 17 years.
Also critical is expanding the WNBA’s global presence, which includes the Toronto Tempo team, scheduled to start playing in 2026. Donaphin herself spent time playing outside of the U.S. (after playing for Stanford University during college), for both Italy’s Famila Schio and Turkey’s Fenerbahçe Istanbul. About one-fifth of WNBA players come from overseas, she said during Signal ’25 in September. That translates into International interest, such as the “astounding” reception players received during a recent tour in Asia. To Donaphin, these are all signs that fans worldwide are hungry — and ready — for more.
“There’s something about palpable, about a group of people rooting for female athletes — there just hasn’t been a lot of opportunity to do that,” says Donaphin.
You can hear more from this fantastic conversation from Signal ’25 between Donaphin and Signal’s John Battelle in our video below, or read our lightly edited transcript.
TRANSCRIPT
John Battelle
Our next guest, I’ve been excited about this ever since I heard she was coming, Comes from the world of high stakes and exciting professional sports. So please welcome Bethany, Donaphin SVP and head of league operations is WNBA. Bethany, you can sit right here. Thanks for coming.
Bethany Donaphin
Thanks for having me.
The WNBA has been a pretty extraordinary story. You’re a player.
I was.
Now you run league operations. I’m curious, from the moment you join the League as a player to now, when you’re experiencing an extraordinary amount of growth, what do you think are the most marked changes between when you join the League as a player.
There are so many, it’s actually really hard to point to one, but I think it’s a very different player experience. When I played, we flew commercial and coach, and we shared hotel rooms with our teammates, and we we practiced in shared college and recreational facilities, and now our players fly charter, and they say five star hotels, and they have state of the art facilities and arenas. And I think the intention around walking with them through the continuum of their experience as players in the league, it’s that’s something that’s really different, from the time they transition into the league as rookies to when they are preparing for their next chapters after they stop playing. We’re with them along the way.
I think there’s a big difference in the product quality, both from the sense of the actual encore play to even how our fans can engage with our digital products, and how what it looks like to come to a website, the fact that there is an app we didn’t have that back when I was playing over 20 years ago. And you know, I think the another major shift has been just in how visible and accessible they are because of social media. And I think that’s probably the most principal change, is that you don’t have to go to an arena to engage and build a relationship with our players. You can do it online. And I think because of who our players are and because of how they engage and use their platforms, there’s just, I think, this growing coolness and impact on society and this this cultural relevance that I don’t think players had that a very long time ago.
Why don’t we see a little bit of that? I think you brought a sizzle reel that sort of encapsulates the current WNBA. Can we can we roll that?
[Video plays]
It’s really got an extraordinary vibe, the WNBA, and you’re right in the thick of it. The playoffs start Sunday?
Sunday.
And you’ve got what six teams already in, or is five teams already in the playoffs.
Seven that have already, two more vying for the last spot.
It’s an exciting time now. Maybe this is not a fair question, but I’m curious, do you compare yourself to other professional sports leagues? And if so, how do you compare? Do you have any metrics, or, you know, ways of saying, you know, we are on par, below or above par to other leagues.
I will say, I think it’s natural for us to be compared to other professional sports leagues, but we’re really different in a few different ways. One in our age alone, you think the NFL, MLB, NHL, all over 100 years old.
So the NBA is 79 years old. We’re 29 and for us to be on par, from a social engagement standpoint, from a viewership standpoint, for us to have the social traction that we have in the sport zeitgeist, it’s pretty incredible. And we try not to compare ourselves too much. I think it’s natural, particularly because of the relationship with the NBA. But our athletes are also really different. They have a lot of dimension. They’re moms, they’re they’re entrepreneurs, they’re they hold master’s degrees, and so when you get to, you know, to the point I was, I raised earlier, about engagement with them, it’s it. It’s a really compelling experience because of who they are, and they’re interesting people that are starting to get the recognition, not just for who they are off the court, but because of the elite athletes that they are as well.
Our theme, it’s right here behind you of integrating and executing to win in your business role at the WNBA. Can you tell us how the team there had has prepared for the kind of explosive growth you’ve seen over the last few years? Because it really was almost a tip, right, in terms of all of a sudden, this hockey stick growth?
Yeah, it was a hockey stick growth.
What did you do to prepare for that and to be ready?
I think there were a series of decisions that were made five or six years ago where that led to us building the foundation that allowed this growth to happen, for us to actually enjoy it and not be crippled by it. We had in 2019 we did some work with a brand agency, and one of the key takeaways was that the WNBA was a brand in crisis. So Jennifer raised a point around action and awareness and the difference between them. You know, I think a lot of people knew what the WNBA is, but they weren’t engaging with it. They weren’t taking an action against that awareness. It was also one of the key insights we also got, was that it was a lonely and difficult experience to be a WNBA fan, and so like not knowing where the games are going to be, what network they would be on, what day, what time of day, and not having the ability to connect with other people, that when sports is so much about community.
We did a complete overhaul of the brand. We brought the players into the process the design of logo woman, if it was really intentional, if you look at her. Our players were changing in the way that they were playing, in terms of the ability to stretch the floor and play multiple positions bigs going out to the perimeter, so that players are longer and more agile, and that’s reflected in the brand and the way that she’s shaped. And they even weighed in on things like her hair and what moves she should be making. So it was a really collaborative process to even unveil the branding. And we thought about the first ad spots that we did, wanting to have a female gaze on the female athlete and depict them as they feel that they could be most authentically depicted.
Those little things that that happened in terms of how we brought the refresh of the brand to life in 2019 so by the fast forward, Commissioner [Cathy] Engelbert comes on, first commissioner in the history of the WNBA, first female CEO of Deloitte comes in. We go through this business transformation. Really founded in being player first, driving value for our stakeholders and engaging fans. And how do we just always keep those three pillars as our North Star. That led to us a pivotal moment for us, an inflection point for the league, was having the 2020, season. We were in the middle of doubt. I was very much in doubt. We’re making that decision to play after Adam Silver had already shut down the sports world essentially, and ending and pausing the NBA season at that point, and going into what we call the Wubble, the WNBA bubble season in Florida.
Making that happen with all of the uncertainty that we had felt like a really big risk at that time, and but it meant being out of the sports landscape for 20 months. Had we not done that, and because we did that, and because the players wanted to use that platform to address the racial reckoning that was happening. At the same time, there was just this incredible attention, and people were home, and we had games on every other night. And so the ratings, you started to see the ratings go up, and then every year, we started to build on that. I think one last kind of foundational pivotal piece was doing a capital raise in 2022 that allowed us to actually generate some capital to invest in the business. And that allowed us to, Satya was talking about building capabilities for where you want to be. That was one of the things that we really need to needed to do.
We didn’t have an in house marketing function. We didn’t have an in-house sales function. So we hired our first CMO, we hired our first chief growth officer. We overhauled our entire digital platform and all the infrastructure behind that to be able to have those numbers that you see there in terms of engagement with our app and people wanting to come to the WNBA and watch games on League pass, and really starting to be able to appeal to digital, native consumers who want to engage in the WNBA, but want to do it the way that they need to do it. Those things, I think, allowed us. Then you get to 2024, and it’s this confluence of this name, image and likeness, and rulings that allow college athletes to have sponsorships while they’re in college and they’re coming. So you’ve got that. You’ve got this growing interest in women’s sports generally, not just women’s basketball, and then you have this transformational draft class with Caitlin Clark, and all those things converge to create that hockey stick moment that you just talked about, right?
I think it’s interesting, you’ve got players coming from college who already have sponsors. You know, attached to them. You mentioned fans first. How do you do that? Because it strikes me as very similar to what we’re hearing all afternoon about focusing on consumers and consumer insights, doing the ethnographies, you know, understanding what people want by going into their homes and their workplaces. How did you think about doing that, in terms of putting those fans first.
I would think it’s understanding that who our fans are. We have this really, I think, unique quality in that we have a really diverse fan base. We have kind of traditional sports watchers who, you know, want to sit down and you look at our ESPN viewership, it’s still largely white and largely male. But then you also have Gen Z-ers and young millennials who want to be connected to brands that share values with them and then you have families and young girls. And then, young athletes who are playing sports, both girls and boys. Understanding the breadth of the consumer segments that we actually have and understand, understanding, how do they want to engage with the league? How do they do they want to come to a game? Do they want to just engage in social? How do you move them from wanting to engage just on social to actually coming into an arena and buying merch and becoming a season ticket holder?
I think understanding how those segments behave and what they’re coming to the league for. Some people are coming just to see incredible team basketball and in what many call and what I call the purest form of basketball, some are coming for that. But some are coming for the experience of being around people that they share values with. And how do we create what they need in the various places where we show up, whether that’s in arena or online or on television.
It also strikes me that what you’ve done at the WNBA feels like a category growth story. You’re not stealing share, you’re building new relationships and growing the whole category. Was that a intentional goal, or did you realize you were doing it and then double down?
There are people we had that understood what women’s basketball is, and may be familiar with the WNBA, but I think we felt it was so untapped. There was there’s so many people that understand what the WNBA is, where they don’t know how to integrate it into their life. One of the things that’s so impactful about the work that you all do and the brands that P&G has is like they’re intrinsic to the way that you go about your day. We didn’t have that, and we were something we’re still working toward. I think that understanding, what would it take to grow the people that are just interested, they just want to check us out. I think that’s the intentional work that our chief marketing officer is doing. I think the perfect kind of category growth story is the Valkyries. We have our first expansion team in 17 years, playing in San Francisco now, and they’ve been incredible. When I think about question to you, I’m curious, if people know this,
how many season what percentage of Warriors season ticket holders? Do you think are also Valkyries season ticket holders?
20%.
It’s less than 5%.
Wow. So that’s category growth.
If you go to and it’s something that the Valkyries have been masterful at, is understanding their market. If you go to a Warriors game and you go to a Valkyries game, they’re both really great sports experience, but they’re very different. I think that that’s part of what we’re hoping to do is we continue to-
Can you unpack that a little bit? It’s both extraordinary athleticism and great basketball. But what’s the difference?
There’s something about palpable, about a group of people rooting for female athletes that there just hasn’t been a lot of opportunity to do that. They you go into the arena. I went to a game last week, the Valkyries won by like 30, and every fan was still in the seat at the end of the game. You’re used to seeing people file out by the beginning of the fourth quarter, when the game is like that. And the energy around their mascot unveiling a couple of weeks ago, where they put the Valkyries.
There’s an incredible story about kind of Norse warriors. And they have unveiled a mascot and put a an egg in the plaza in front of Chase Center, and they sat it there for three days, and everybody’s, ‘What is this? What’s happening?’ And it hatches and becomes a raven that is now their mascot, Violet, who is really interconnected with this Norse mythology, story and narrative behind the Valkyries brand. It’s like those kinds of things that they have that shows the fans that they’re really thinking about this in a way that is interesting and intentional. They’ve tapped into the fact that that market is full of women’s basketball fans. I’m biased about Stanford having played there, but there’s an incredible history in Stanford women’s basketball, this incredible history in Cal women’s basketball. Joe Lacob owned an ABL team in the league that preceded the WNBA in San Jose. They’ve tapped into that and grown the category.
As a former Bay Area person, I’m very happy that that’s where you went for your first expansion. But there is more coming, right? How do you decide where to go? How? How many to do? I think, how many are coming?
Three, two more coming next year, and three more in 28/29/30.
So it’s five new expansion teams.
Five new expansion teams.
Great. How do you prepare for something like that?
It’s funny. These are marks. Next year we’ll have the Portland Fire and the Toronto Tempo. We dipped our toe in the Canadian market, and we knew there was an interest there. There’s actually a rich women’s basketball history in Canada. And our first game outside of the US. We did it in Toronto. We did another one at Edmondson. We just had our first regular season game in Vancouver a few weeks ago, and so we had done enough market research to understand that there was something there. We went, and then you could just see the explosion, that something palpable when you’re there and you can engage with fans. And our Commissioner had people coming up to her, ‘You’ve made my dream come true. I’ve always wanted to be able to go to a professional women’s basketball game in Canada.’ So the market was ready, and now they’re going to have a team.
Portland’s an interesting story in that we had a WNBA team there. That with an ownership change, they decided not to keep the WNBA team. But there’s an incredible women’s sports story in Portland. You look at the Thorns, the NWSL team that’s there, leading that league in attendance, and the Sports Bra, which is the first sports bar dedicated to solely watching women’s sports. So we could tell there was enough there. And so the market was ready. In both cases, you see, like the preliminary deposits on for first season ticket holders are already from Portland and around 10,000 so similar to what the Valkyries did. We’ll take a pause for a year. Thankfully, operationally, I’m thankful for that at least. And then we’ll get into to Cleveland, Detroit and Philly.
The global market has always been sort of you. We’ve had executives from the NFL here from women’s soccer, and they talk about the global market a lot. Is this something that you’re thinking about outside, you know, beyond Canada.
Definitely, and I were only now being able to really sit down, and there’s been so much growth, and there’s been so much that’s changed so rapidly to really flesh out what our global strategy is going to be. But it will involve going and testing and seeing in smaller executions. What does it look like when we bring our players to Asia. We just did a tour in Asia, and the response was astounding. We know that there’s interest. It’s just what do we do to capitalize on it and venture into markets in the right way. How do we make our games available in more languages? How do we think about bringing global games? So that’s a full fledged operation and complex, and we want to do it in the right timing, in the right way. But it’s complex, it’s a fifth of our league is international. The number two pick in the draft this year is a French player. She’s like, six seven, and she can dunk, and she’s agile and nobody’s seen anybody like her before, and she’s and she’s 19. And soI think there’s talent you look at. I mean, to continue to reference the Valkyries, half of their roster is international. We think about growing the number of roster spots that we are going to grow like we have to tap into new talent pools. International is going to be a really big piece of that, because we know there’s great talent in in all over the world, and how do we make them want to come to the WNBA and make it a compelling experience for them.
And the fans and the players are your ambassadors to your growth.
Absolutely.
I want to thank you for coming and sharing your insights with us and wish you a great playoff season.
Thank you.
And thank you for coming to Signal.
