Are any WNBA teams profitable? Probably yes, but only a few, and the league does not publish team-level financials so no one outside the front offices can name them with certainty. Reporting from analysts tracking the league suggests a small number of franchises in strong local markets — the New York Liberty and the Las Vegas Aces are the names most often cited — have turned cash-flow positive, while most teams still post low seven-figure losses. The league and its teams were expected to lose a combined $50 million in 2024 even as viewership and attendance broke records.
Which Teams Are Likely Making Money
The WNBA has never been consistently profitable across all franchises. NBA commissioner Adam Silver said in 2018 that the league had lost an average of more than $10 million per year since its 1996 founding. That average hides real variation. Teams with packed arenas, deep sponsorship rosters, and established local followings can clear their operating costs; teams still building an audience generally can’t.
Because the WNBA doesn’t release team-by-team income statements, any list of profitable franchises is inference rather than confirmation. What we know is which teams sit at the top of Forbes’ valuation table (the Liberty at $400 million, the Indiana Fever at $370 million, against a league average of $272 million in 2025), which teams routinely sell out, and which have landed the largest sponsorship deals. Those markers correlate with profitability, but they aren’t proof of it.
Why the Reported Losses Overstate the Damage
Before treating any loss figure as real, it helps to understand a tax provision that distorts profitability reporting across every professional sports league. When someone buys a franchise, they can amortize nearly the entire purchase price as a tax deduction spread over 15 years, roughly 6.67% per year. It applies to the NFL, NBA, MLB, and the WNBA alike.
Run the math on a WNBA expansion team bought for $125 million. The owners can deduct about $8.3 million a year for 15 years. A team that actually breaks even on cash flow still reports an $8.3 million loss on paper. A team pulling in $3 million of real profit shows a $5.3 million loss for tax purposes. The franchise isn’t losing value — WNBA valuations are climbing sharply — but the tax code treats the purchase price as a depreciating asset regardless.
This is why owners can sound contradictory when they talk about finances. The LA Clippers reported $700 million in tax losses during a stretch when audited financials showed the business was often profitable. The same dynamic almost certainly applies to WNBA teams, which means the league’s headline losses overstate the cash actually going out the door.
What Is About to Change the Answer
The biggest variable is the new media rights portfolio: an 11-year package worth roughly $3.1 billion, or about $281 million per year, more than six times what the league earned under its previous television contract. It begins with the 2025–26 cycle.
Split across 15 teams in 2026 and eventually 18, even a straight equal division would put somewhere around $15 to $18 million per team in media revenue before a single ticket is sold. For franchises whose annual losses run in the low seven figures, that alone can flip the math. It doesn’t guarantee every team turns profitable — arena costs, travel, and rising player salaries still cut into margins — but it closes the structural revenue gap that made profitability nearly impossible for most of the league’s first three decades.
The demand side is cooperating. 2024 games averaged 1.32 million viewers across ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, and CBS, nearly tripling the prior season’s 462,000. More than half of games sold out, arenas ran at 94% capacity, and 2025 became the first season to clear 3 million total regular-season attendees, with average attendance of 10,954 topping a record that had stood since 1998. Team sponsorship revenue reached $76 million league-wide, a 52% jump. Merchandise sales across the Fanatics retail network rose more than 500% during the 2024 season, with player-specific items up roughly 1,000%.1Fanatics Inc. WNBA Garners Record Sales Across Fanatics Network
Why Owners Are Making Money Even When Teams Aren’t
Operating profit is one measure. Franchise value is another, and by that measure, WNBA owners are doing extraordinarily well.
Expansion fees make the point plainly. The Golden State Valkyries paid roughly $50 million to enter the league for the 2025 season. A year later, the Toronto Tempo paid $115 million and the Portland Fire paid $125 million to begin play in 2026.2WNBA. 2026 WNBA Schedule Release – Key Dates and What to Know The league then announced three more expansion franchises — Cleveland in 2028, Detroit in 2029, and Philadelphia in 2030 — each at a reported $250 million fee.3WNBA. WNBA Announces Expansion to Historic 18 Teams With Cleveland, Detroit, and Philadelphia That is a fivefold jump in expansion price in about two years.
Every original franchise was worth far less than today’s $272 million average when its current owners bought in. Even the teams still losing money on operations are producing large unrealized gains for the people who own them.
What Pushes Back Against Profitability
Rising player pay is the counterweight. The WNBA and the players’ union reached a tentative deal on a new collective bargaining agreement for the 2026 season.4WNBA. WNBA and WNBPA Reach Tentative Deal on Historic Collective Bargaining Agreement The team salary cap rises to $7 million, with a supermax individual salary of $1.4 million and a standard maximum of $1.19 million, meaningful increases over the prior CBA.
During negotiations, the union proposed players receive 27.5% of gross revenue while the league countered with 70% of net revenue. Those numbers sound wildly different, but the gap narrows depending on how “net” is defined and which expenses are deducted. The final split isn’t fully public. Whatever it is, higher player costs directly extend the timeline for team-level profitability.
The NBA remains a backstop. Its 42% ownership stake in the WNBA has come with cash to cover shortfalls between what teams generate and what they need to operate. Several franchises would likely have folded without it. As media revenue and expansion fees grow, the WNBA’s dependence on those subsidies should shrink.
When Does Most of the League Get to Profitable?
A realistic read of the pieces on the board: a majority of WNBA teams could be cash-flow positive within the next two to four seasons as media money arrives and attendance holds. True league-wide profitability — every team, every year, after all operating costs — sits further out, in part because the league is absorbing six new expansion franchises between 2025 and 2030, and new teams typically lose money in their early years as they build local revenue.
The direction, though, is settled. When ownership stakes cost a quarter of a billion dollars and rise fivefold in two years, the question is no longer whether the league survives. It’s how quickly the operating numbers catch up to what the market already believes the franchises are worth.