WNBA kicks off 30th season with a campaign for the GOATs

Three decades ago, you might have been kicking back with a bottle of Orbitz soda, playing games on your N64, and getting ready to watch the inaugural season of the WNBA. Fast-forward to today, and only one of those things is still around.

This year, the WNBA is celebrating its 30th season—and naturally, the league’s marketing team set out to commemorate the occasion in a big way.

“There’s an opportunity to celebrate,” WNBA CMO Phil Cook told Marketing Brew. “We knew we had to step outside and do something distinctive and unique…As a marketer, you’re looking for, ‘What is going to give us an opportunity to ground the brand and align everyone around what we stand for, and where we’ve been, and where we’re going?’”

The milestone marks a major one for any league, nevermind a women’s professional league. Founded in 1996, the W is one of the oldest pro women’s sports orgs in the country, alongside the WTA, the LPGA, and the Women’s Professional Rodeo Association.

And as anyone who has planned a 30th birthday party knows, it’s a big task, so the league is rolling out a multi-part campaign spanning tentpole moments from the draft to the postseason. The ultimate goal is to highlight its legacy while simultaneously cementing new fans and icons of the game, Cook said.

The GOATs

“Not all kids become goats,” is the opening line of the W’s new 30-second ad, delivered by basketball icon and three-time MVP Sheryl Swoopes, who Cook said is often considered “the inaugural GOAT of the WNBA.”

Titled “Raising GOATs,” the spot features Swoopes narrating while surrounded by a herd of actual goats, interspersed with shots of today’s WNBA greats including Angel Reese, Sabrina Ionescu, Brittney Griner, Caitlin Clark, Courtney Williams, and A’ja Wilson.

The campaign is set to hit broadcast, social media, and other paid media platforms starting today, less than a week out from the draft. The ads are also dropping exactly two weeks after the WNBA Board of Governors ratified the league’s new CBA, following months of negotiations between the league and its players’ association.

“We were ready for this moment,” Cook said.

Moving forward through the rest of the season, the campaign will ultimately include three different short films, with 30, 15, and 6-second cuts of each, Cook said. The second is set to drop around All-Star Weekend, and the third will roll out around the time of the playoffs, he told us. Lisa Leslie, another early-era WNBA superstar, will make an appearance, Cook added.

The unifying theme of the films is the legacy of the league, but Cook said he wanted the campaign to be more than a “greatest-hits list.” The second film will similarly highlight legacy athletes alongside current and future talent, and the third has a slightly different twist, as it will focus on the “importance and relevance” of playoff moments in sports, he said.

Origin story

In addition to the ad content, the W’s 30th season campaign features experiential components. One, a program called “Court Origins,” spotlights the three “matriarch teams” in the league, Cook said: the New York Liberty, Phoenix Mercury, and Los Angeles Sparks, all of which have been around since the inaugural 1997 season. They’ll each get special uniforms created in partnership with Nike, Cook said.

The other program, “Legacy Trail,” will see the league collaborate with a variety of partners on merch collections, which will be rolled out on the 30th day of each month into the end of the season.

“The intent is to create some anticipation for what the next drop might be…and ensure that our fans are participating,” Cook said.

Some of Cook’s goals for the campaign are slightly intangible, like continuing to build a brand identity for the W and “inspiring and exciting our fanbase,” he said. While those things are admittedly hard to measure, he’s also hoping the campaign will contribute to viewership growth, which is easier to track: Last season was the league’s most-watched regular season and postseason on ABC, ESPN, and ESPN2, according to Nielsen data cited by ESPN. Regular-season games on the networks averaged 1.3 million viewers, up 6% YoY, and postseason games averaged 1.2 million viewers, up 5% YoY, per ESPN.

As viewership climbs, linear TV ad spend has been on the rise as well, up 232% from 2023 to 2025, when spend on nationally televised live games reached an estimated $42.8 million, according to data from iSpot. Total WNBA sponsorship spend reached an estimated $105 million last year, up about 45% from $72.5 million in 2024, per SponsorUnited.

During the 2026 season, which tips off May 8, “I want to get as many people watching the WNBA and engaging with the WNBA as I can,” Cook said.