Clark isn’t the only draw across the league, rookie or otherwise. Fans are coming out to see the Chicago Sky, which drafted fellow rookie and double-double machine Angel Reese and her former SEC rival Kamilla Cardoso. The Sky are second in average road ticket secondary price at $115.72 and lead the WNBA in average home ticket resale price at $129.93. The Sky’s home price so far this season is nearly three times greater than the team’s resale value in 2023 at $46.04. In other words, much to the chagrin to her detractors, Reese was right when she said that Clark is not the only rookie the fans want to see.
Beyond the rookie draws are the two teams that dueled throughout 2023 for league supremacy, the defending back-to-back league champion Las Vegas Aces and the team they beat for last year’s title, the New York Liberty. Though the Fever and Sky are far ahead of the pack for road resales, the Aces ($89.59) and Liberty ($76.23) are third and fourth among Logitix’s rankings of the 12 WNBA franchises as of Monday night. New York has the third priciest home tickets on the secondary market at $103.96, which is $32 more than a season ago. Contrast that with the Aces, whose secondary tickets for home games have averaged $72.60, only ahead of Phoenix and Minnesota.
Logitix monitors ticket sales for teams across the four major North American male leagues as well as the NCAA and WNBA. The company uses the data to help their client teams develop pricing strategies to sell more tickets. As it relates to the WNBA, Logitix claims that in addition to the increase in average price, the volume of resale transactions has already tripled that of 2023.
Clark and the Fever account for nine of the top 10 games by average price so far this season, including the highest priced resale ticket of $280.43 for the second meeting with the Sky back on June 23. Just one of those contests was at home, when the Fever hosted the Sky nearly three weeks earlier on June 1. That game, where the average ticket resale value was $146.52, included the infamous foul by Chicago’s Chennedy Carter that sent the media into a nearly two-week tizzy over how Clark has been treated by competitors in her nascent career.
Second on the list is this past Sunday’s tilt between the Fever and Phoenix Mercury in which Clark squared up against WNBA legend Diana Taurasi. Resale tickets went for $194.26.
The only non-Fever game in the top 10 was the Sky against the Washington Mystics on June 14. Despite a league-worst 4-15 record, Washington has the league’s second-best average home secondary price at $129.47, just behind the Sky in 2024 and almost $60 more than the team’s price in 2023.
The Mystics also may have been buoyed by the W’s best ticket promotion: the “Brunch and Basketball” campaign where for $105, fans were able to enjoy bottomless mimosas, chicken and waffles and more brunch staples. Tickets for all four games against Seattle, Dallas, Las Vegas and Atlanta promptly sold out.
