Last week, the Boston Celtics won the championship again after 16 years, announcing the official end of the 2023-24 NBA season, and the WNBA, which has just started the 2024 season, is still not discussed much in China. But in fact, in the past few years, women’s basketball games, including the WNBA and NCAA women’s basketball, have reached new heights in audience numbers and cultural status. As of the end of last month, the WNBA’s ratings this season have increased by 21%, and the attendance rate has also hit a 13-year high.
The continued rise of women’s basketball has also been reflected in the basketball shoe market. Since the start of the WNBA season in early May, the interest in the entire women’s high-performance footwear category has increased significantly, and the scale of retail sales and secondary market transactions has soared in an unprecedented way. Sales of Nike Sabrina 1 alone increased by more than 200% in 2024 compared to last year, and several other WNBA signature shoes also achieved good results.
Getty Images
Since the WNBA sharpshooter Sabrina Ionescu’s personal signature shoe, Nike Sabrina 1, debuted in the second half of last year, it has become the favorite of many basketball players with its design that takes responsiveness as the key to the performance of the shoe. According to statistics from the shoe website kixstats, the shoe was worn 893 times in the last NBA season, ranking fourth on the “Most Popular Shoes List”. It even appeared on the Hollywood red carpet, showing its potential as a fashion shoe in addition to actual combat shoes.
Nike
The Nike Sabrina 2, which will be officially released on June 28, is designed with agility in mind and is 28 grams lighter than its predecessor. It is not difficult to foresee that the hype about the Sabrina signature shoe will continue to heat up. Of course, the growing trend of women’s basketball shoes is not limited to Nike Sabrina. This time, Hypebeast will analyze the rise of women’s basketball shoes in the field of sneakers, the reasons and the deeper meaning behind it.
Major brands are scrambling to enter the WNBA
Jordan Brand
Nike has been making frequent moves in the field of women’s basketball shoes recently. In addition to Sabrina, in April this year, it signed an 8-year contract with WNBA’s new No. 1 female pick Caitlin Clark, with a total contract value of $28 million, which includes the launch of her signature sneakers. A’ja Wilson, who led the Las Vegas Aces to win the championship last season and won the title of Finals MVP, will also have her first pair of signature sneakers in cooperation with Nike in 2025. Previously, she only had exclusive PE color shoes.
Puma
Nike is not the only one that has noticed the potential of women’s basketball and followed suit. Faced with a relatively open field, adidas announced last month the appointment of recently retired WNBA legend Candace Parker as the brand’s president of women’s basketball; PUMA Hoops teamed up with Breanna Stewart in April to bring the latter’s third signature shoe, Stewie 3; Chicago Sky rookie Angel Reese revealed that she will cooperate with Reebok to launch a signature shoe series; in addition, New Balance signed the first female basketball player Cameron Brink last year, and it is not difficult to see its ambition to enter the women’s basketball shoe market.
Including the signature shoes that have not yet been launched, only 13 WNBA players in history have been lucky enough to have their own signature shoes, and 5 of them have occurred after 2022. Currently, there are only 3 active WNBA players on the market with signature shoes, Breanna Stewart, Elena Delle Donne and Sabrina Ionescu, and more than 30 NBA players. Obviously, in the face of the increasing attention and yet over-competitive women’s basketball events, it is a wise move to quickly associate the brand image with the superstars of the event.
Tailor-made, women’s basketball shoes are no longer small-sized men’s
Adidas
For a long time, most female basketball players have worn men’s basketball shoes. “Compared to the men’s shoe business, the women’s high-performance basketball shoe business is very small, partly because these brands fundamentally refuse to produce women’s basketball shoes,” sports shoe industry analyst Matt Powell told Fast Company. He estimated that less than 5% of basketball shoes are designed specifically for women. Sabrina Ionescu also said that when she was studying at the University of Oregon, she realized that there were no basketball shoes suitable for young girls on the market.
Although the first pair of basketball shoes designed specifically for women appeared in 1995, Sheryl Swoopes’ signature shoe Nike Air Swoopes, because women’s basketball has not received the attention it deserves and has not formed a systematic commercial market for many years, apart from signature shoes, few brands are willing to take the risk of creating women’s basketball shoes from scratch that are destined to have poor sales. Basically, they just modify existing shoes according to women’s characteristics, or directly narrow the shoe last, reduce the size, and provide more feminine colors.
New York Post
Natalie White, who was a manager and player of the women’s basketball team at Boston College, was dissatisfied with the above situation and founded the women’s basketball shoe brand Moolah Kicks in 2020. It became the first and only sports brand designed by female basketball players and designed for female basketball players at that time. It is currently led by Jon Morris, who designed basketball shoes for Shaquille O’Neal at Reebok. WNBA players including Courtney Williams have chosen to wear Moolah Kicks products on the court.
Sneaker brand giants seem to have noticed this and have begun to provide tailor-made equipment support for female athletes. Last year, adidas launched Exhibit Select, a new basketball shoe designed specifically for women. This top women’s basketball performance shoe was designed with reference to insights and data from top female athletes and real female testing teams. NCAA basketball superstar Hailey Van Lith was also invited to appear in the advertising blockbuster.
Beyond sneakers, the extraordinary significance of sneaker contracts for female players
Nike/Getty Images
As the No. 1 pick in the WNBA this year, Caitlin Clark’s rookie contract caused widespread discussion after it was announced in April. The total value of the four-year rookie contract is $338,056, and the salary in 2024 is only $76,535. For comparison, the four-year contract of Victor Wembanyama, the No. 1 pick in the NBA in 2023, is worth $55,200,000. As we all know, the average base salary of WNBA players in 2023 is only $113,295, which is far lower than the salary of NBA players, and most of the time it is only a fraction of the latter.
There are many reasons behind this. Due to differences in visibility and accessibility between leagues, the sharing of league revenue with players, and issues such as gender discrimination and racial discrimination, the reality is far more complicated than we imagined. But in any case, leaving aside signature shoes, sneakers and endorsement contracts from sports brands undoubtedly play an irreplaceable supplementary role in the salaries of WNBA players. It can be said that it is an important pillar to support them to continue their careers, and even an important factor in motivating more women to engage in this sport.
Skims
Undoubtedly, brands have unique resources to expand players’ influence off the court through various marketing activities, shaping them into fashion icons, while also enriching the narrative of the sport and its surroundings, advocating for increased media exposure and opportunities for female athletes, challenging outdated narratives, and promoting more inclusive and diverse sports performance. This is also true outside of sneakers. As the official underwear sponsor of the WNBA, Kim Kardashian’s SKIMS kicked off a new campaign before the start of this year’s WNBA new season, starring some of the league’s most watched stars.
Getty Images
The rise of the women’s basketball shoe market is not only a recognition of the long-term efforts of women basketball players, but also an experience that the market and brands are gradually recognizing the potential of female athletes. As more and more brands join in the design and promotion of women’s basketball shoes, the women’s basketball shoe market is ushering in unprecedented development opportunities. From the hot sales of the Nike Sabrina series to major brands signing rookie players to launch signature shoes, women’s high-performance basketball shoes are changing the landscape of the traditional basketball shoe market.
In the future, we have reason to expect more innovative designs and brand collaborations to further enhance the influence and commercial value of women’s basketball. This is a commercial success and a great encouragement and support for female athletes, allowing them to continue to shine on the global stage. The rise of the women’s basketball shoe market may also be an important sign of the rise of women’s sports. While narrowing the gender gap, it also provides more diverse choices and possibilities for all basketball players and fans.
2024-06-24 14:43:51
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