Angel Reese Signs with New Basketball League: More WNBA Stars to Follow?
If you want to see more of the other WNBA rookie sensation not named Caitlin Clark — that is, Angel Reese — far be it from her to disappoint you.
According to the New York Post, the Chicago Sky forward, who’s currently a distant second in the betting odds for the WNBA’s Rookie of the Year honors to Clark, will also be playing in Unrivaled, an off-season three-on-three women’s basketball league.
She becomes the 10th player to sign to the league, which was started by Minnesota Lynx forward Napheesa Collier and reigning WNBA MVP Breanna Stewart of the New York Liberty.
The 30-player league, which will feature six teams and play its games in Miami, will start play in January of 2025.
Reese announced her participation on X with typical understatement.
“305 BARBIEEEE [crown emoji] SEE YALL IN THE YAMSSSSSSS [smiling, hand-over-mouth emoji],” she wrote Wednesday.
She also quote-posted an Unrivaled post saying “THE BARBIE IS UNRIVALED [crown emoji] 10/30 [check mark emoji] TAG WHO’S NEXT [eyes emoji].”
305 BARBIEEEEE👑 SEE YALL IN THE YAMSSSSSSS🤭 https://t.co/tFmlwdlsZN
— Angel Reese (@Reese10Angel) July 24, 2024
To translate: Reese, whose nickname is “Bayou Barbie” because she played for Louisiana State University, is now “305 Barbie” because Miami-Dade County’s area code is 305. She is the queen of being 305 Barbie. She will see you in Miami, which she refers to as “THE YAMSSSSSSS.” She is also yawning.
As for Unrivaled’s post, she is the 10th player out of the 30 the league hopes to sign.
“So far, 10 women — Reese, Stewart, Collier, Kelsey Plum, Rhyne Howard, Chelsea Gray, Arike Ogunbowale, Jewell Loyd, Jackie Young and Kahleah Copper — have confirmed their involvement, with 20 spots remaining,” the Post noted.
However, Reese and Stewart are easily the biggest names, especially given that Reese has been one of two factors juicing the league’s popularity this season.
“The WNBA All-Star game, which took place this past weekend in Phoenix, drew a record number of viewers with 3.44 million people watching the U.S. Olympic team face the squad of All-Stars, which featured Clark and Reese — the first two rookies to receive All-Star honors since 2014,” the Post reported.
“The match, which saw Team WNBA defeat Team USA 117-109, easily surpassed the 1.44 million viewers from the 2003 contest.”
Unrivaled is unlikely to, well, rival this. (Sorry for the pun.) A three-on-three offseason league is a fun diversion and a way for players to earn extra money without playing overseas.
Part of the reason why the Clark/Reese explosion in popularity for the WNBA is so important is that the whole enterprise has never really been a money-making operation. At best, it could be considered a loss-leader, getting female fans and young girls who play basketball into the much more lucrative NBA-watching racket.
When Brittney Griner was being held in Russia on drug charges as she tried to leave the country shortly after the Ukraine invasion, for instance, many liberal pundits lamented that women players had to go abroad to earn money in the WNBA offseason from teams often owned by oligarchs who were more concerned about bragging rights than profit
Thus, these teams have tended to spend more for top-level talent than the market value would dictate if, say, one were pay Griner based on the income she was generating.
Even with Clark and Reese, along with other stars seeing elevated profiles, the WNBA isn’t going to be close to the big four American leagues anytime soon in terms of the amount of money it generates.
Heck, it’s not even close to Major League Soccer, which had an estimated $2 billion in revenue in 2023, according to Sportico. The WNBA’s revenue last season, according to World Sports Network, was roughly $200 million.
It still has one team — the Washington Mystics — which has a home arena that seats only 4,200 people. Another team, the Connecticut Sun, play at a casino on a Native American reservation roughly 45 minutes from the two nearest major metropolitan areas: Hartford, Connecticut and Providence, Rhode Island.
Given that going abroad is a bit more dangerous way to earn extra money than something like Unrivaled, yes, this is a positive development. But, players like Reese will still have to play in leagues like this if they hope to make the big bucks, at least for a long, long while. While the WNBA is indeed undergoing a renaissance, this is yet another reminder it has a long way to go before it’s raking in the kind of money women’s basketball boosters hope that it will.
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