Greetings from the sports desk located somewhere below decks of the Good Pirate Ship RedState. Sammy the Shark is currently teasing Karl the Kraken over how yours truly spotted San José Sharks 2024 first-round draft pick and #1 player picked overall Macklin Celebrini’s father, Rick Celebrini, the Golden State Warriors’ VP of Player Health and Performance, and Rick’s daughter (i.e., Macklin’s younger sister) coming into my workplace the other day to get some soccer shoes for the sister. Small world.
What tipped me off that Rick Celebrini and offspring were in the house was, in addition to the father looking familiar, the Golden State Valkyries t-shirt Rick was wearing. For the uninitiated, the Valkyries are the latest addition to the WNBA. The Flying Vs will commence playing in the 2025 season, assuming we all survive the upcoming election. Oh, and the assorted earthquakes rumbling lately throughout Southern California not migrating up north in one massive outburst.
It's no surprise that the Valkyries, based in such a prime location, sell tickets at a rate many NBA teams would envy.
EXCLUSIVE: @wnbagoldenstate, one of the WNBA’s two new expansion teams, has taken more than 15,000 season ticket deposits, the most for a U.S. women’s sports franchise before its first season
— Sportico (@Sportico) July 25, 2024
Story: https://t.co/IdxmcPOaHc pic.twitter.com/jmSOqYTtbd
Equally unsurprisingly, the Valkyries’ success before blinging a single drib is being seized on as a surefire sign women’s professional sports in general, and the WNBA in particular, are the Next Big Thing to sweep the land.
Joining the league at a transformative time for women’s sports, the Valkyries are stepping in during a period of exceptional growth. WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert has announced plans to expand the regular season to 44 games for the 2025 season, underscoring the league's impressive progress. This expansion follows a 2024 season with the highest attendance in 26 years and record-setting national TV viewership.
The WNBA has secured an 11-year renewal of its partnerships with The Walt Disney Company and Amazon Prime Video, along with a new agreement with NBCUniversal (NBCU). These landmark deals are set to bring the league $200 million annually, a dramatic increase from its revenue just one year ago.
This explains why the entire league took the entirety of the Paris Olympics off, and no one noticed they weren’t playing. It also explains why the combined salaries of the top-four earning NBA players is higher than the amount the entire WNBA is earning from its new TV deal. Follow the money, folks.
No matter how it or its media lackeys try spinning the emperor’s new clothes into the shape of a basketball, there is one reason and one reason only for the WNBA receiving more credence from the general sports fan populace: Catlin Clark and her twin gifts of three-point shooting and precision passes to teammates. Period. It is not the sulky moody mean girls act that has permeated the WNBA since Clark’s arrival.
At some point, the WNBA has to face the fact that regardless of the home team, when Caitlin Clark is in town, it can fill an arena. When she’s not? It can’t fill a phone booth. The Golden State Valkyries will be an outlier when they start playing next year, courtesy of their location. Still, they are in no fashion emblematic of a general surge in interest. This will be evident even at Chase Center, the San Francisco home of the Valkyries and Golden State Warriors, where as soon as the newness wears off, plenty of good sections will be available the next time the Connecticut Sun roll into town.
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