The 2021 WNBA season is now in the books, and overall, it was a good one for the books. Sportsbooks, that is. WNBA betting action saw some growth this year as part of an overall environment that is trending upward.
However, some measurements reveal that legal sportsbooks in the United States are largely still treating the WNBA as a novelty for bettors. Although the current stats act as motivation, that facet of the overall landscape invokes a familiar narrative.
What sportsbooks had to say about WNBA betting in 2021
Licensed sportsbook brands in several US jurisdictions saw increased activity on WNBA markets as compared to the same in 2020.
“The WNBA has steadily gained popularity over the past few years, and we’ve seen a similar trend in terms of betting interest, with both handle and bets more than doubling this past season compared to 2020,” stated Rush Street Interactive COO Mattias Stetz. “[The] WNBA was especially popular in our Midwest states. It, therefore, wasn’t surprising that the [Chicago] Sky were our biggest futures liability, so it was good to see bettors rewarded after they won their first title.”
Rush Street Interactive runs the BetRivers Sportsbook and SugarHouse Sportsbook brands in several US states. BetMGM Sportsbook also reported increased action on the WNBA overall. However, the Phoenix Mercury were a larger liability for BetMGM than the Sky were, as BetMGM operates in Arizona but is not yet in Illinois.
PointsBet Sportsbook joined the chorus of those that reported increased action on WNBA markets.
“Along with the rest of the business, our WNBA overall action increased year to year,” commented Mike Korn, Sports Analyst for PointsBet. “With us expanding into more states, it has allowed us to continue to grow. We expect the trend to continue and believe next year will be even bigger than this year.”
Korn shared that handle from 2021 WNBA markets ranked just below UFC action for the year and higher than boxing. He said that the high volume of games in comparison to other sports helps the WNBA in that regard.
Just as how WNBA action grew along with sports betting in the US in general over the course of 2021, WNBA bettors behaved pretty predictably. That lead to a winning season for sportsbooks.
Top jurisdictions, bettors’ trends from 2021
For all the books that are active in IL and New Jersey, those are their best-performing states across the board. That was the case for WNBA betting in 2021 as well. Both Korn and DraftKings Sportsbook Director of Race and Sportsbook Operations Johnny Avello confirmed that for their respective operations.
That drove which teams saw the most action in 2021. Korn says that Chicago and the New York Liberty were among PointsBet’s top three most-bet teams. The other was the Connecticut Sun. Korn shared that bettors loved backing Connecticut at home especially.
Both Avello and Korn also confirmed that when it came to the standard markets; moneylines, point spreads, and point totals, bettors on the WNBA didn’t act differently than bettors on other basketball products for the most part. Bettors loved the Over on totals and favorites on the moneylines and spreads.
Korn said that helped PointsBet “squeak out a slight win overall” in 2021 WNBA betting. Avello said DraftKings made money on the WNBA as well. However, there might have been room for them to make even more.
A case study of sportsbooks’ behavior around the WNBA’s premier event
The WNBA Finals are undoubtedly the league’s most-hyped event each season. The schedule for that event is set months in advance, with only the locations of games to be determined. Social media is one way that sportsbooks engage with both active and potential customers.
BetHer.com staff tracked the activity across Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter from Oct. 10 to Oct. 17 for multiple sportsbooks with licenses to operate in multiple jurisdictions. Oct. 10 was the day of the first game of the Finals series between Chicago and Phoenix. Oct. 17 was the day of Game 4 of that series, the last game of the set. The tracked books include:
- Bally Bet
- BetMGM
- BetRivers
- Caesars Sportsbook
- DraftKings
- FanDuel Sportsbook
- PointsBet
Across the entirety of the three social platforms, those seven books’ accounts posted a total of 2,459 times during the sample period. Of those posts, a mere 30 contained content specifically about the ongoing WNBA Finals. That amounts to a mere 1.2% of such activity.
In fact, the league’s two partners for this exact product, sports betting, didn’t really stand out from the pack in this way. BetMGM never mentioned the WNBA Finals on its Facebook or Instagram accounts and only did so once on Twitter.
PointsBet was more active on this front, tweeting about the Finals seven times but never mentioning it on Facebook or Instagram. Both brands are far more active on Twitter than Facebook or Instagram as a rule.
The best of the brands we sampled was Bally Bet. The official sports betting partner of the Mercury released a total of 45 social media posts during the Finals across the mediums. 16 of them, or over a third, dealt specifically with the Finals. It’s important to put these numbers in context. Avello helps anyone looking at the industry do that.
Sportsbooks’ viewpoint of WNBA action
Avello says that for DraftKings, WNBA action did experience year-over-year growth but also stood pat in terms of how it compared to other sports so far this year. For that book and most others, the massive cash cow remains college football and the NFL.
Thus, the WNBA Finals compete for not only sports fans’ interest but sportsbooks’ resources with those products due to the timing. Avello points toward how WNBA wagers performed in 2020 as a sign of the effect of the timing of the event.
“The WNBA was one of the few things going last year,” Avello commented. “That was getting a lot of attention because there wasn’t a lot else to wager on. …It can’t be in the same breath as football or the NBA or Major League Baseball. It could be more in the area of college hockey for us. It’s down there with NASCAR and those types of sports. It does well, it’s just that the others do so much more handle.”
It’s natural for any business to devote most of its marketing to its most popular products. At the same time, it’s fair to assess whether sportsbooks are leaving money on the table due to their relative lack of promotion of their own product. The leadership of one of the books thinks that is the case.
Bally Bet sees WNBA as ideal vehicle to deliver new content
Soo Kim, Chairman of the Bally’s Corporation, thinks now is the time for sportsbooks to go all-in on the WNBA. Bally Bet is a big part of that, along with the Bally-branded regional sports networks operated by Sinclair.
Bally Bet currently operates in Colorado and Iowa with a launch in AZ pending. The Sinclair networks have operated under the Bally name since late 2020. That gives Bally a platform to create content-focused betting markets and deliver them directly to consumers.
Kim sees it as a product with broader appeal, especially to younger audiences. He also thinks the WNBA is a great candidate to prove his point.
“Younger generations are looking for engaging and live content,” Kim stated. “They aren’t turning on their cable TVs. They are watching a ton of IG Live, Tik Tok, Twitch, and YouTube. However, most sports are still watched on cable TV.”
Pairing the products together to create what he calls an “integrated experience,” Kim says Bally plans to deliver its content incentivizing in-game wagers around WNBA events first. From WNBA betting interests, Kim explained that Bally will expand the product to other leagues and sports. If he’s right, the WNBA could be an integral part of the evolution of sports betting.
Where WNBA betting is headed in 2022 and beyond
If Bally Bet and its competition start creating content to push live betting, and that content proves effective, the variety and volume of in-game markets for WNBA games could expand greatly. Currently, those are usually limited to moneylines, point spreads, and point totals along both game and team lines for quarters and halves.
The biggest room for growth there is in terms of game and player props. Markets like which player will score the game’s first 3-point basket and totals for assists for individual players could become commonplace.
Don’t expect the WNBA to hesitate on the product moving forward, either. The league continues to embrace sports betting as a promotional tool. In fact, in terms of selecting markets for future expansion clubs, sports betting will play a part in those decisions.
Much of the rate at which the WNBA grows as a betting product will depend on the amount of resources that sportsbooks put into the product, however. If sportsbooks continue to largely decline to promote the content on social channels, produce relatively few promos around the league, and mostly punt on player props, they’ll likely continue to see activity typical of a fringe product.
The only way to change the self-fulfilling prophecy narrative around WNBA betting is to break the cycle with investment. The future is bright beyond 2021 if stakeholders simply act in their own best interest in this regard.
