What happens in Vegas…

The GIST: The WNBA is in its growth era, including its teams and athletes. However, with growth comes growing pains, like this weekend’s news that the Las Vegas Aces are under investigation by the league after every player on the roster signed a $100K local tourism deal. What happens in Vegas…

The deal: The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority — the official marketing organization for the region — announced a two-year, $100K sponsorship of all 12 Aces players last Friday. The City of Las Vegas also shared a video of its leadership offering the athletes the opportunity, and explained why the city approached the team.

• Tourism authority president and CEO Steve Hill said "the offer's really simple: We want you to just play, we want you to keep repping Las Vegas, and if you get a three-peat, that'd be icing on the cake.”

• When players signed their respective deals, they agreed to make appearances on the city’s behalf while repping gear to promote Las Vegas.

The investigation: The WNBA hasn’t publicly explained why it’s investigating the Aces, but the league is reportedly determining whether or not the deal "violates the spirit of the [salary] cap rules.” Similar to the league’s argument against NY Liberty charter flights, the additional compensation could be perceived as an unfair advantage.

• In the Aces’ case, the tourism authority negotiated directly with individual players and team brass was reportedly not involved. An endorsement deal like this is unprecedented in the WNBA, with Aces head coach Becky Hammon explaining that “most sponsorship people go after the top two people.”

The pushback: Aces players like A’ja Wilson criticized the W for claiming to want to grow the game while potentially limiting opportunities for players to earn sponsorship dollars. It doesn’t look great to some when the league just went on a campaign detailing how much Caitlin Clark earns from endorsements.

Lingering questions: The salary cap exists to maintain financial parity between WNBA teams, as is standard practice across pro sports. And though individual endorsement deals are encouraged by the league, how does it differ when a deal is done with an entire roster? Time to figure things out, and fast.

The GIST: Last Thursday, Parity — a sponsorship platform that connects brands with women athletes — released a study in partnership with SurveyMonkey. The results contain the “most robust” data on women’s sports fans globally, Parity CEO Leela Srinivasan told The GIST.

• Gathering data from over 14K respondents across seven countries, the study offers key insights and new findings on how women’s sports fans engage with the game and its players. Let’s dive in.

📈 Sports fans are watching more women’s sports than ever, especially men. Around 30% of women’s sports fans are watching more women’s sports this year compared to last, which may be tied to its increase in accessibility.

• The data also dispels the myth that only women care about women’s sports. In fact, more men (23%) watch women’s sports daily or weekly compared to women (15%), and 30% of men are watching more women’s sports in 2024 than they did in 2023.

📺 The desire to watch women’s sports is universal, but the reason varies across countries. Srinivasan noted that fans in most countries want to support women athletes, but in Germany, the top reason sports fans tuned in was the quality of play, while Spanish fans largely cited increased media coverage. If you build it…

📱 Women athletes are the ultimate influencers. The majority of respondents (88%) believe professional women athletes are impactful role models for young women, and women’s sports fans are especially primed to be swayed by these influencers, which Srinivasan said she has seen anecdotally through her work with brands.

• Respondents were 2.8x more likely to purchase a product backed by a woman athlete compared to another type of influencer, while those who watch women’s sports daily or weekly were even more likely.

• Instagram is the top platform for engaging with women athletes, followed by Facebook and YouTube. Australians, Americans, Canadians, and Brits were the most likely to follow women’s sports and female athletes on social media.

💰 The global majority want to see more brand investment in women athletes. Over half of all people surveyed believe brands aren’t investing enough in women’s sports compared to men’s, with respondents from France believing this at a higher degree (66%) than any other surveyed country. Liberté, égalité, sororité.