According to a January 2025 survey, **** percent of WNBA fans in the United States were female. Meanwhile, the same survey revealed that the largest ethnic group among the WNBA's fanbase was *********.

In a survey conducted in January 2025 in the United States, it was found that **** percent of individuals who watch or attend WNBA games were Caucasian. Meanwhile, **** percent were African American. Additionally, when it came to the WNBA fans by gender, the WNBA was found to be more popular among males than females.

The 2024 Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) regular season games were watched by an average of ******* viewers across media platforms in the United States. This was a significant increase from the previous year and made the **** season the league’s highest-viewed regular season in the last 24 years.

In 2025, the TV audience for the Women's National Basketball Association's (WNBA) Draft stood at **** million viewers. Shown on ESPN for the sixth year running, the 2025 Draft had a viewership nearly **** the size of the previous year's broadcast, with interest in the No.1 overall pick Caitlin Clark proving a massive draw that year. First held in 1997, the WNBA Draft is an annual pre-season event through which teams in the league select new recruits from a pool of college and professional women's basketball players.

Founded in 1996, the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) is a professional basketball league composed of 12 teams from the United States. The Golden State Valkyries registered the highest average home attendance across the 2025 season with 18,064. This was an impressive turnout for the Valkyries', with 2025 being the team's inaugural season in the WNBA, validating the league's decision to expand the league in the San Francisco Bay Area. Player salaries in the WNBA Kelsey Mitchell of the Indiana Fever was the highest earner in the WNBA in the 2025 season, with an annual salary of approximately 249,000 U.S. dollars. Meanwhile, looking at the average annual salaries in the WNBA vs. the NBA, the average WNBA player took home around 114,000 U.S. dollars in 2025, which was nearly 100 times lower than the average NBA player salary in the 2024/25 season. WNBA league records Since the opening season in 1997, former and current WNBA players have been setting high standards and surpassing old ones. Sue Bird was the career games leader of the WNBA, having played a remarkable 580 professional games before her retirement in 2022. Meanwhile, the WNBA's all-time scoring leader was Diana Taurasi as of September 2025, who began her career with the Phoenix Mercury in 2004. Recent years have seen high-profile college basketball players also enter the league, such as Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, and Paige Bueckers, all of whom have helped in varying degrees in raising the league's viewership.

During the 2025 regular season, the average attendance at Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) games rose to ******. This was an all-time high for competition, with the previous record having stood since 1998.

College women's basketball in the United States is seen as the final step up before the WNBA. The college basketball season culminates in the NCAA Division I Women's Basketball Tournament held every March, also known as March Madness. In a survey conducted in March 2025 in the United States, around **** percent of male respondents stated that college women's basketball was one of their top interests.

During the 2025 season, Kelsey Mitchell of the Indiana Fever had the highest salary among players in the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) with ******* U.S. dollars. In second place was Arike Ogunbowale with ******* U.S. dollars. How much do WNBA rookies earn? In the lead up to the 2025 WNBA season, one of the most pressing issues surrounding the league was the pay structure. The previous year had seen college basketball superstar Caitlin Clark enter the league as the overall number one pick. Despite being a major draw for the WNBA, Clark's rookie salary stood at under ****** U.S. dollars. In 2025, this increased marginally for the number one pick Paige Bueckers to ****** U.S. dollars. How much are men’s National Basketball Association (NBA) players paid? Compared to the top earners in the women’s league, the picture in the men's league is a little different. Some of the highest-paid male professional basketball players take home eye-watering amounts each year. Steph Curry of the Golden State Warrior sat at the top of the pile in 2024/25 season, earning ** million U.S. dollars for his appearances in the NBA, on top of a further *** million U.S. dollars' worth of endorsements. Overall, average annual salaries in the NBA are much higher than in the WNBA. On average, NBA players took home more than ** million U.S. dollars in 2024/25, while WNBA players earned roughly ******* U.S. dollars in 2025.

The NBA and WNBA are the two top leagues for basketball in the United States for men and women, respectively. In the NBA, players took home an average annual salary of over ** million U.S. dollars for the 2024/25 season, with the league's minimum salary set at **** million U.S. dollars that year. In comparison, players in the WNBA received an average annual pay of ******* U.S. dollars in the 2025 season, with the highest-earning players in the WNBA receiving around ******* U.S. dollars annually.

The National Basketball Association has one of the highest percentages of African American players from the big four professional sports leagues in North America. In 2023, approximately **** percent of NBA players were African American. Meanwhile, ethnically white players constituted a **** percent share of all NBA players that year. After the WNBA and NBA, the National Football League had the largest share of African Americans in a professional sports league in North America. How do other roles in the NBA compare? When it comes to African American representation in the NBA, no other role in the NBA is as well represented by African Americans as players. Meanwhile, on the opposite end of the scale, less than **** percent of team governors in the NBA were African American in 2023. During the 2022/23 season, the role with the second-highest share of African Americans was head coach, with a share of ** percent. That season, the number of African American head coaches in the NBA exceeded the number of white head coaches for the first time. African Americans in the NFL In 2022, the greatest share of players by ethnicity in the NFL were African American, with more than half of all NFL players falling within this group. The representation of African Americans in American Football extended beyond the playing field, with **** percent of NFL assistant coaches being African American in 2022 as well. However, positions such as vice presidents and head coaches were less representative of the African American population, as less than ** percent of the individuals fulfilling these roles in 2022 were African American.