The WNBA has taken the spotlight for all the wrong reasons this season, but that nonstop attention may have a silver lining. From 11 Republican lawmakers pressing commissioner Cathy Engelbert over on-court physicality and officiating to scrutiny around Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese and Paige Bueckers’ social media gambling blunder, and Sophie Cunningham’s viral comments, it’s been controversial to say the least.

That constant buzz has made the WNBA as popular as ever. Now, the payoff is showing up beyond the court, with merchandise sales providing a major silver lining to all the noise.

According to Sports Business Journal, the WNBA leads the way among all women’s sports leagues in merchandise sales, with 34% of adults in the U.S most likely to buy its merchandise.

This is higher than the NWSL, WPBL, and WTA. This comes from a survey with 966 Responses from July 22, 2026, to July 30, 2026, rebased excluding “I don’t plan to buy any women’s sports merchandise”.

Apart from the usual jersey sales, several sources said sales of their more fashion-forward pieces skewed heavily toward women. For example, the Indiana Fever sell denim shorts, while the Golden State Valkyries have jean jackets and bedazzled shirts.

This change in the format of selling sports merchandise can be heavily linked to social media influencers and their creative methods of styling jerseys in different combinations.

“Women’s sports fans go beyond,” said Andrea Fernandes, Valkyries VP of marketing. “They’re going to grab the jersey, but they’re also going to grab a lifestyle item.”

Such a marketing strategy, along with the ever-growing demand, will obviously double sales while increasing originality and adding more depth to catalogues.

Thanks to such high interest levels, collaborations were bound to happen. As much as the women’s sports properties love to work with giants like Nike, New Era, and Lululemon, they are seeing unique demand in collections and collaborations with emerging brands like The Wild Collective, 9 Commons, Playa Society, Peace Collective, Round21, and Peau de Loup.

“A lot of people look at us as an apparel company, a merch brand,” Esther Wallace said.

She founded Playa Society in 2018 when she couldn’t find merchandise she wanted to wear, focusing her hand-drawn designs (which can take anywhere from 12 to 26 hours to create) on the WNBA’s iconic players.

“We’re a storytelling business, and that’s my favorite thing. That’s what gets me excited every day is storytelling.”

Playa Society became a league licensee in 2021, and there was no turning back from there on. Wallace’s company has seen its revenue at least double year over year for each year since 2022, and its apparel is now sold at Dick’s Sporting Goods, along with featuring merchandise from some NCAA programs as well as U.S. women’s national soccer team players.

The strategy that Valkyries’ VP talked about is also being used by collaborative brands, which have noted that women’s sports fans tend to buy staples like a jersey or T-shirt, then add lifestyle products and keep coming back as new merch drops.

Moreover, Round21’s Maietta has noticed that apart from buying for herself, women’s sports fans also get merch for their family members, keeping the average order high.

“There’s a market reality around women wanting to have more pieces in her closet that help her continue to have that trend-forward aesthetic. And men are simply more satisfied by products that I think are more endemic to sports fandom,” said Round21’s Maietta.

Similarly, but even more exponentially, Fanatics’ partnership with the WNBA has seen it rank among its highest-growth leagues in recent years, according to Fanatics executive Officer Sam Archibald.

Thanks to the WNBA’s immense success, the company is focusing on products across all women’s sports leagues.

“The women’s business across all of our pro leagues is growing, and it just needs to be served in a better way by the whole industry,” he said. “Historically, the industry has been very focused on, ‘Hey, this is the business that has existed.’ So they’ve had a hard time thinking about what can be and how large the women’s segment has to be. You will see the offering grow on the women’s side over time.”

The WNBA itself is not to be left behind in all the hype, as it took great advantage of its 30th year and, to celebrate, launched the Court Origin program.

It featured a throwback 1997-era branding of retro Nike uniforms for the league’s founding three franchises, the New York Liberty, Los Angeles Sparks, and Phoenix Mercury. To add to the hype, all three teams’ games were nationally televised.

While the WNBA’s surge in popularity has been a collective effort, with the help of the occasional controversy, one name stands above the rest and started the hype train in the first place: Caitlin Clark.

Caitlin Clark really is in a league of her own

Clark took the league by storm when she entered the WNBA as the No. 1 overall pick in the draft. It was as if the whole world took a pause to watch her produce one of the greatest rookie seasons in recent memory.

While Clark’s hype dried down in her sophomore year as she got hit with a season-ending injury, she has once again shown the doubters why she is the face of the league in her third year.

While we all know her exceptional numbers and clutch moments that have landed her as an MVP candidate this season, Clark’s merchandise sales are the stuff of legend.

How popular is Clark exactly? Well, the three-time WNBA All-Star reportedly has more jersey sales in the U.S. than all but one NBA player.

“Per multiple reports, the Indiana Fever superstar has officially surpassed LeBron James on the jersey sales list over the last two years,” USA Today’s Meghan L. Hall reported back in May. “Clark now sits in second place on the leaderboard, just behind Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry.”

Having more jersey sales than James, Luka Doncic, and Victor Wembanyama is insane to even grasp for a WNBA player, but this is why Clark is built different.

A crazier fact is that her Indiana Fever jersey sold out in under an hour upon being drafted in 2024, initially setting an all-time Fanatics record for peak draft-night merchandise sales across any sport.

Coming to shoes, the Nike CC1 is expected to break a few records of its own when it officially releases in October.

Apart from the usual merchandise, Clark has not left the ever-growing card hobby alone as well. The Fever star’s card market is the most active and valuable sector in women’s sports history.

Her rookie cards from 2024 still sell like hot cakes, the biggest one being the 2024 Panini Flawless Logowoman 1/1 signed rookie card, fetching $660,000, the all-time record for a female athlete’s card.

Having such an everlasting impact on the league already, one can only wonder why the WNBA is always under scrutiny for not using Clark in a better manner. Regardless, Clark is the WNBA’s anchorwoman and the biggest reason the league has reached such immense heights over the last two years.