‘You just feel like you’re a part of something’: How fan-powered communities are helping to grow the WNBA audience

For many, fandom goes beyond a team or city. It’s an opportunity to build a community and find their people, often spilling into real life. And WNBA fans might be organizing exactly what the league needs to grow its audience.

Lorri Gyenes — aka Sky Mayor Redhead Lorri — has been a WNBA fan since the league’s inception and is popular among the Wintrust Arena faithful. She’s a Chicago Sky season ticket holder who has been backing them since Day 1, following the team from what used to be UIC Pavilion to Allstate Arena to its current home in the South Loop. In the beginning, Gyenes and her fellow “Sky Riders” used message boards to connect and plan tailgating activities, but they since have moved on to what’s known as #WNBATwitter.

“On WNBA Twitter, I feel like I made friends,” she told the Tribune. “I met a guy several years ago. He was from Sweden, and he flew from Sweden to come watch the WNBA and then we met at the game.”

“You just feel like you’re a part of something. I’m a former psychologist. … A lot of the people who come to these games are actually kind of introverted people, but they feel like they belong, and that’s important too. So it’s not just the sport, you know? There’s more to it than that.”

That same sentiment of belonging is shared by Alliya Pinckney, a member of the PWRFWD (power forward) women’s basketball fan community.

“I don’t actually have an interest in the NBA,” said Pinckney, a former player and coach at St. Thomas University in Miami. “The women’s game is all that I really have ever been super, super into because of the fundamentals, because of the attention to detail and things of that nature.

“When I stepped away from playing and coaching, I didn’t have people that had the same interest as me. It was always about the men’s game. So when I found PWRFWD, it was literally the best thing ever because it was the community that I never knew that I needed.”

Originally focused on being a platform that would allow athletes to take control of their personal brand, PWRFWD shifted to an online community of fans with more than 1,000 members.

“We were kind of accidentally building a community bigger than, like, anything, any product”, co-founder and CEO Luke Bonner said. “So we eventually realized we were in a unique spot. It was really like being a bridge between athletes, fans, agents, sports executives, so on and so forth.”

PWRFWD has members from all over the world, and they congregate on the group’s Discord app, discussing WNBA games and vying for a chance at its courtside seats. They have two courtside tickets for every WNBA market, and members nominate people to win “the experience of a lifetime,” said Nadia Eke, PWRFWD’s head of community.

“People make a plea to the communities that nominate them,” Eke said. “The reason why we did it that way is because we wanted people to have the opportunity to get to know each other. I think a lot of times when people are building communities of this scale, there’s that element of interpersonal warmth that’s missing. We really wanted to bring that back into the space that we were creating.

“What was really important to our community members is to be connected to other people that are so passionate about what they do and what better way to connect them than to make them get to know each other.”

Though not strictly a WNBA fan group, participation skews heavily toward women’s professional basketball as fans are desperately searching for places to connect.

In addition to their usual seats, PWRFWD had a suite Tuesday at Wintrust Arena for the Commissioner’s Cup final between the Sky and the Las Vegas Aces. PWRFWD invited its Discord members to experience the game. Pinckney, a Chicago-area native who lives in the Bay Area, flew to Chicago to join the group, and two other fans drove from Minnesota. Morgan Park graduate Subria Whitaker also was in attendance.

Whitaker and her friend Aaliyah Granger, a Mississippi native, created Grow the Game, a group of fans that meets across the country for WNBA games. Unlike PWRFWD, there are no season tickets, but it’s grassroots fandom in its truest form.

After Whitaker noticed interest piquing on her social media accounts, she started inviting people to games.

“In the years that I’ve been a WNBA fan, I’ve always been very vocal about it,” Whitaker said. “But there was something from last year where more people started to notice, especially on Twitter. People would say, ‘Oh, you’re always at these WNBA games and you’re always talking about it and it looks fun, and I want to go.’ ”

Grow the Game has organized so many fan gatherings that it has been recognized by the Sky and given its own ticket link. A portion of the proceeds goes back to Grow the Game to help organize more meetups and bring in new fans. Since Whitaker and Granger began, they estimate they’ve helped more than 250 people go to WNBA games.

A common refrain from detractors of women’s sports is, “They don’t have any fans.” But the avid following the league has inspired believes otherwise. Complaints are frequent about the game’s accessibility with there being so few teams, so few games and no consistent television schedule.

When the 3-point and skills competitions during All-Star Weekend were closed to fans, the WNBA was shutting out some of its most fervent supporters and overlooking the keys to its current and future success. Despite that, the All-Star Game drew 9,572 fans. The Sky are averaging 7,008 fans this season, up from 3,187 in 2021. Online fan communities are showing up and helping bridge the gaps created by the league’s missteps.

“I love sports,” Gyenes said. “Part of it is supporting women, but part of it is feeling like I belong somewhere, like I can come out of my shell.”