The WNBA season resumes Thursday after a month-long break. But for WNBA executives, the month off was spent working, as the league looks to carry over momentum from the first half of a game-changing season. 

Dan Gadd, SVP for growth with the Atlanta Dream, tells Front Office Sports that his staff clocked in to ensure a successful second half of the season—and also focus on 2025. Gadd, who has worked with three NFL teams in the past, says the WNBA’s unprecedented growth this year has altered data and changed forecasting methods for business decisions like ticket prices and sponsorships.

“I’ve never seen a year-over-year change in sports like this, and how to handle that’s been one of the biggest questions. It’s been phenomenal,” Gadd says.

The league’s growth is driven by the arrival of the 2024 rookie class that features Caitlin Clark (above) and Angel Reese. The WNBA has 16 games with at least one million viewers this season—including the All-Star Game—14 of them featuring Clark, and the top two most-watched games between the Indiana Fever and Reese’s Chicago Sky. Not a single game breached the one-million-viewer mark last year, including the Finals.

The Dream, whose home arena, Gateway Center, holds just 3,500 people, moved two home games against the Fever to the State Farm Arena, the home of the NBA’s Hawks, which can seat around 19,000 fans.

“From the minute that they declared for the draft, our website went crazy, and the number of leads coming in was fantastic,” Gadd says.

Bridging the Gap

There is some risk for the WNBA in maintaining its viewers coming from this break. Clark and Reese were not included on the gold-medal-winning USA team, and have been away from the spotlight for the last month. The NFL and college football are also set to return and their games will coincide with the WNBA playoffs.

But Gadd says he’s not worried about a lapse in fan interest, citing the visibility of WNBA stars in the Olympics and pointing out that the Dream are “close” to selling out all 20 home games for the first time.

“I’m not losing any sleep over that,” Gadd says. “The women’s team won gold, the women’s 3×3 team with our Rhyne Howard won bronze. It’s not like we’ve just become irrelevant overnight.”

Team USA’s one-point victory in the Olympic final over France on Sunday averaged 7.8 million viewers—including 10.9 million in the second half.

A Media-Rights Win

Near the start of the break, the WNBA—together with the NBA—agreed on a media-rights deal with ESPN, NBCU, and Amazon worth $2.2 billion over 11 years.

Gadd says it was a “strong deal” for the WNBA, and pointed at two specific reasons. First, the deal significantly raised the value of the league since it more than tripled the estimated $60 million per year the league currently receives from media deals. He also says the ability of the league to reevaluate the price in 2028 gives it “flexibility” to increase its value.

“It allows us to both raise the bar right now and continue to grow over time, and that’s all you can ask,” Gadd says.

Men’s professional golf remains a fractured sport for now, but the world’s top players continue to compete for more money than ever before.

As LIV Golf members play for a $25 million purse in the league’s West Virginia event this weekend, the PGA Tour’s FedExCup Playoffs are teeing off in Memphis on Thursday, with two $20 million tournament prize pots and a record $100 million in bonus money up for grabs over the next three weeks. 

The 70 PGA Tour players who qualified for the postseason will be whittled down to 50 for next week’s tournament in Colorado, and eventually 30 for the season-ending Tour Championship in Atlanta. 

• The winner of that final event will take home $25 million as this year’s FedExCup champion, up from the $18 million that Viktor Hovland won last year. 
• Second place will receive $12.5 million. 
• The top 10 finishers in the FedExCup collectively will take home $68.25 million.

Mark Your Calendars

The PGA Tour released its 2025 season schedule Wednesday, which likely means negotiations with LIV’s financial backers, the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, are not far enough along to expect a reunion of top players on a singular circuit next year. “I think that’s fair,” PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said when asked about that proposition ahead of the FedEx St. Jude Championship.

Monahan stuck to his previous stance of not sharing specific details of talks with the PIF, but he acknowledged he has taken part in a lot of meetings on the subject. “We continue to be in regular dialogue,” he said. “I’m encouraged by that.”

LIV will finish its season next month, but it has not released a schedule for 2025. Last year, LIV formally announced its 2024 calendar in November, about a month after its 2023 season finished in October.

The growing trend of U.S. celebrities buying stakes in European soccer teams received a major boost this week from two of the biggest names in sports and entertainment.

Fresh off his Olympic gold-medal performance with Team USA, Suns superstar Kevin Durant (above) purchased a stake in French powerhouse Paris Saint-Germain, and rap phenom Drake became an investor in Venezia FC, which was just promoted to Italy’s top division. Both celebrities invested in their respective teams through private equity firms that already have stakes in the clubs.

Durant and Drake join a long list of other athletes, entertainers, and actors who have ownership stakes in soccer clubs across the pond, including household names like LeBron James (Liverpool owner Fenway Sports Group), Tom Brady (Birmingham City), and, of course, Wrexham owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney.

French Connection

Durant’s company, Boardroom Sports Holdings, bought an undisclosed portion of the 12.5% stake in PSG that Arctos Partners acquired in December. That transaction valued the soccer club at roughly $4.6 billion at the time. Arctos also has stakes in franchises across the NBA, NHL, and MLB. 

This is Durant’s third minority ownership stake of a soccer team, following previous investments in the Philadelphia Union (MLS) and NJ/NY Gotham FC (NWSL). He’s also a co-owner of a Major League Pickleball club.

The PSG deal puts Durant in business with club majority owner Qatar Sports Investments—the entity controlled by the Middle Eastern country’s sovereign wealth fund, the Qatar Investment Authority. That last year, QIA paid $200 million for a 5% stake in Monumental Sports & Entertainment, the parent company of the Washington Wizards and Capitals.

Musical Chairs

Drake acquired his stake in Venezia by joining Apex Capital, which purchased a minority stake in the club last month. In addition to the investment, the rapper’s apparel company Nocta, which is a sub-brand of Nike, is becoming Venezia’s uniform provider. Apex also has investments in the Alpine Formula 1 team and the Tiger Woods–back TGL golf league.

Meanwhile, Drake’s chief brand officer, Matte Babel, told GQ Italia that before the investment was made, the rapper and his team helped Venezia raise more than $40 million to avoid bankruptcy before earning promotion to Serie A. 

Drake and James are also passive investors in AC Milan through their partner fund, Main Street Advisors, which has a minority stake in the Italian soccer giant owned by RedBird Capital Partners.

Editors’ note: RedBird IMI, of which RedBird Capital Partners is a joint venture partner, is an investor in Front Office Sports.