For the first time in league history, a WNBA team has sold out all of its regular-season home games.
The Las Vegas Aces announced its sell-out status Friday.
The team’s feat follows a blockbuster season for the WNBA, which has seen generation-high attendance this year. The season’s first month drew the league’s highest attendance since its second season 26 years ago and generated the best television ratings in its history.
The Aces’ sold-out season comes on the heels of back-to-back Vegas championships in 2022 and 2023.
And their roster is full of star power: Four of the team’s players — A’ja Wilson, Chelsea Gray, Kelsey Plum and Jackie Young — will be competing for Team USA in the Olympics in July.
Wilson, a two-time league MVP, is leading the fan vote for the WNBA All-Star game. Closely behind her: rookie sensation Caitlin Clark of the Indiana Fever.
While WNBA viewership has been climbing in recent years, big-name rookies like Clark get some of the credit for skyrocketing attendance this season. Clark, along with Chicago’s Angel Reese and Los Angeles’ Cameron Brink, helped popularize the league in the mainstream after drawing record-breaking crowds to their college teams.
“I do think that the growth is just the beginning,” Aces Chief Operating and Chief Financial Officer Matt Delsen said Friday. “And I think that, you know, the viewership can and is going to continue to grow because these athletes are the best in the world at what they do.”
Delsen attributed the sold-out season to the connection that the city of Las Vegas has with the players.
“Our fans relate to our players,” he said. “I think they see all these accolades and see them winning, but they also have seen who they are as people.”
He also noted that after Mark Davis, who also owns the Las Vegas Raiders football team, acquired the team, the Aces restructured prices to become more affordable.
“We wanted to make sure that the average person could come and see a game, and we wanted to make sure that we were not making our product, which is our basketball team, price prohibitive,” Delsen said.
The team’s historic accomplishment in the league, however, comes amid a turbulent time between the two entities. Following a May announcement by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority that it planned to sponsor each Aces player for $100,000, the WNBA opened an investigation into the bonuses.
Delsen declined to comment on the investigation. The WNBA and the Convention and Visitors Authority did not respond to requests for comment Friday.
The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority made the deals directly with the Aces players and not in connection with the team. Nonetheless, they have drawn scrutiny from the league as they may violate the “spirit” of the rule, as the team could be gaining an indirect advantage that other teams can’t offer.
This investigation follows a similar one in 2023, which looked into whether the team had circumvented the salary cap. The league concluded that the Aces violated league rules for impermissible benefits and workplace policies, and subsequently suspended coach Becky Hammon for two games and took away the team’s first-round draft pick.
