How Dallas’ WNBA team is spreading its sponsorship wings this season

In many pro sports leagues, missing out on the postseason comes with at least one perk: a high draft pick for the next season.

The WNBA’s Dallas Wings have capitalized on that opportunity. Although the team finished last in the standings in 2025 and was second-to-last the year before, it turned back-to-back No. 1 draft picks into an increasingly impressive roster on the court—as well as a growing roster of sponsors.

“Having star players helps your business,” CEO Greg Bibb told Marketing Brew. “There’s very few, maybe a handful, of women professional athletes that truly can help move your business forward in a meaningful way, and we have two of them now.”

Those players—2025 Rookie of the Year Paige Bueckers and 2026 No. 1 draft pick Azzi Fudd, who previously played together at UConn—have already contributed to the growth of the team’s partnership revenue, Bibb said. In the past month alone, the Wings inked sponsorships with CVS and Kroger, both Fortune 500 companies, as well as Geico, helping drive what Bibb expects to be three straight years of nearly doubling partnership revenue.

But star power isn’t the only reason for the change in trajectory, he said. It’s also thanks to—and indicative of—the continued maturation of the W and women’s sports across the board.

Filling the bucket

The Wings have Fudd to thank, at least in part, for opening the door to one of their new sponsors. Geico tapped the then-UConn guard for its March Madness campaign this year, and at the time, CMO Arianna Orpello told us she intended to keep the relationship going at least until Fudd was drafted. The deal between Geico and the Wings came together in “barely a week,” Bibb said, with both organizations eager to announce close to draft day.

The timelines for inking the Kroger and CVS deals were a bit more typical, but all three partnerships have some sort of community engagement element to them, as community impact is a major pillar for the Wings, Bibb said. Geico is the presenting partner of the team’s youth basketball summer camps, and CVS is the presenting partner of the Junior Wings development program.

CVS is also the team’s marquee jersey-patch partner, with its logo placed prominently on the center of the uniforms.

Stars like Fudd and Bueckers are just one of several reasons for the increased brand interest in the Wings, which Bibb said started in earnest around 2024. The team doubled its partnership revenue in 2025, and expects to be close to that again this year, he said.

The audience boom happened first, though. “The partnership piece is the tail of the growth,” said Bibb, a WNBA veteran who’s been with the Wings for more than a decade, having previously served as COO of the Washington Mystics from 2007 to 2012.

Two weeks after the draft, the Wings had added over 27,000 followers on TikTok and over 38,000 on Instagram, which amounted to “basically 10% growth” for the latter, according to Bibb. Broadcast viewership is also on par with many of the men’s pro teams in North Texas, he added, which all translates to more brand attention. Deloitte projects that the global women’s pro sports market will be worth at least $3 billion this year, up 340% since 2022.

“For a long time, the message was, ‘Be the early adapter, be the early investor, be the early mover,’” Bibb said. “I think those days are probably gone. Now, as we talk to prospective partners, it’s, ‘Don’t get left behind.’”

Spread your wings

The 2026 season is still a week away from tipoff, but Bibb is already thinking about marketing and sponsorship moves for 2027, when the Wings are set to relocate from College Park Center in Arlington, Texas, to the renovated Dallas Memorial Auditorium in Dallas.

The team is also building a new practice facility for which it’s seeking a naming rights sponsor. Between that and the arena switch, there’s a “tremendous amount of opportunity” opening up for even more sponsors, Bibb said.

Given the smallish size of the Wings’ current arena, he said advertising ticket sales for the vast majority of their games isn’t necessary. The team is playing three games this season at the much larger American Airlines Center, home of the Mavericks and the Stars, so most of its ad spend will be focused on promoting those matchups, he said.

“Last year for our largest gate, which was an Indiana [Fever] game at American Airlines Center, we basically did a multiple of 10 of what we generate in gate [sales] at College Park Center,” Bibb told us. “It benefits us greatly to lean into the advertising around those games.”

Bibb said internal discussions are already underway to quadruple ad spend next year to promote the team’s move to Dallas, which would be made possible in part due to growing revenue.