Price Went Up
The Townies are getting rich off our Sky-Fever tickets—but we're a little anxious about it
If you’re joining us for the first time, hello! We are the Sky Townies, three hoopers who love to analyze the Chicago Sky and therapize ourselves through the lens of basketball.
We mostly write about the Sky, but this year we will also write about broader women’s basketball topics, such as the insane price of Caitlin Clark tickets.
If you want to get to know the Townies better, follow us on Instagram and Twitter (@sky_townies)!
Price Went Up
The Townies just cashed in on Caitlin Clark’s stardom and the WNBA draft hype.
We sold our tickets to the Sky-Fever game for eight-hundred dollars a pop because…why? Seriously: why did someone just pay us almost two grand to watch a WNBA game?
Look—we love Caitlin Clark. We just wrote an ode to her last week.
But is she Beyonce? Is she Muhammad Ali?
Have people lost their minds?
Though we Townies are pleased to be able to fund the cost of our season tickets with a single sale, we aren’t used to this level of hype invading women’s basketball, and it’s making us a little anxious.
A few weeks ago I came back from Cleveland gushing about how the Women’s Final Four reached the lit-ness level of a men’s sporting event. The game is finally getting the recognition it deserves!
And yet: for true fans, there are advantages to the WNBA flying under the radar.
You can sit up close for cheap. There’s a special type of camaraderie in WNBA stadiums, because everyone is really there to watch the game, root for the players, and/or inspire their daughters. Very few people attend because they think it’s the “place to be in the city that night.”
It’s an intimate, down-to-earth experience.
NBA games are a completely different animal. Yes, going to the United Center is lit, but even upper bowl tickets are outrageously expensive, and to the real basketball fans in the stands, it can feel like we’ve strayed from the point. There are acrobats cycling around the court during every time-out, there’s a virtual reality room where you can bet on other games rather than watching the game you are attending, and after the game, you’re herded into a parking lot free-for-all, where you must engage in urgent sign-language negotiations to keep your car from getting smashed by the merge/stampede.
All of this happens even in years where the Bulls are mediocre, because the NBA is a thing, a scene, a spectacle. The quality of the basketball matters somewhat, but most people go to Bulls games to eat and drink; to post themselves on Instagram, and yes, to experience the collective effervescence of cheering alongside twenty-thousand other humans.
Chicago Sky games at Wintrust Arena are probably not at risk of succumbing to this type of environment right away. Your average Thursday night game against Dallas will probably feel the same as it did in the pre-hype years.
But what about the Fever games? The Aces games?
How soon will the acrobats be cycling around the court during Theresa Weatherspoon’s TO’s?
How long before the Townies have to charge for this newsletter just to keep up with the cost of our season tickets?
Is the age of affordability in the WNBA coming to an end?
*
In the last couple of weeks, media coverage of the WNBA has zeroed in on the fact that the top WNBA draft picks get paid less than 1% of their NBA counterparts. This discrepancy reflects 1) smaller WNBA revenues compared to the NBA and 2) a revenue sharing agreement between WNBA players and owners that is less favorable to the players.
A more hyped environment will help WNBA players close this gap. They can go to their next collective bargaining session and say: look at ticket sales, look at TV ratings, I heard the Townies are making three percent of Caitlin Clark’s salary in one day by flipping Fever tickets…give us more money!
Which is making the Townies wonder.
Are there really only two options for the future of WNBA basketball: 1) a cozy, basketball purist environment that prevents the players from making a lot of money or 2) an over-priced circus that’s going to make the players rich?
Maybe a third path would look something like this.
Women’s basketball goes through a few years of slightly nonsensical hype that brings in a larger audience. Some ridiculous situations ensue, like Sky-Fever tickets selling for eight-hundred dollars.
But the increase in viewership brings about some meaningful and long-overdue changes: the WNBA figures out how to better market their stars, negotiates a more lucrative TV contract, and makes their merch offerings swaggier.
Then the hype settles.
The fans who were just looking to be swept up in or speculate on “the current thing” move on, but the people who were genuinely curious about women’s basketball stick around.
Revenues for the league are up enough to double the players’ salaries, but not so much that ticket prices hit Bulls-game level insanity.
Caitlin Clark is happy, the Townies are happy, Holly Rowe is happy, and the world of women’s basketball lives happily ever after.
One encouraging sign that we may be able to thread this needle? This year, amidst the hype, the Las Vegas Aces sold a good chunk of their season ticket memberships at a price of $10 per game.
Final Thoughts
A few days after the Townies sold our Sky-Fever tickets for nearly two grand (“Suckers!”) I started to wonder: “Are we actually the suckers?”
What if we miss, like, Caitlin dunking on Angel Reese or something?
Did we just put a price tag on something priceless?
I was thinking about this when a childhood friend texted me about buying Sky-Fever tickets, probably not realizing they’re way out of her price range now. We’ve been going games at Wintrust together for years and she wants to take her boyfriend to see the league’s new stars.
So I told her: let’s go to Indianapolis. The Wintrust tickets are history, but in Indiana, tickets in the upper level are still selling for like fifteen bucks. We’ll make a road trip out of it. Explore a new stadium, see how Caitlin Clark and Aliyah Boston play with each other.
This is what it’s all about, folks. Gathering together around the game in a sensible, price-conscious manner.
What We’ve Been Reading
Scenes from a very grown-up 2024 draft: Apparently the WNBA draft use to feel like “someone’s high school” graduation—now they’re an elegant trendy gala.
this graphic is so fun
awesome write up
also really looking forward to your takes on the sky draft!! 😀