NEW YORK, Nov. 6, 2019 – The WNBA yesterday recognized outstanding achievement in team marketing and business operations for the 2019 season when the league presented its WNBA Team Business Awards during its annual Sales and Marketing Summit.
The Los Angeles Sparks received three of the league’s top awards, including the Franchise of the Year, Ticket Sales Performance of the Year, and Marketing Performance of the Year, while the Dallas Wings secured the Partnership Performance of the Year Award.
All 12 teams that competed during the 2019 season were eligible for the honors. This year’s awards spotlighted teams that excelled in bringing fans in arena, building the team’s partnership portfolio and growing the team’s brand. A quantitative, points-based system was used throughout the season to track key metrics within tickets sales, partnerships and marketing to help determine the winner.
“The WNBA introduced these awards to recognize value and innovation in sales and marketing,” said WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert. “Through the dedication of teams like the Los Angeles Sparks and the Dallas Wings, the WNBA continues to build momentum at an important moment in women’s sports.”
Los Angeles Sparks
The Sparks were named Franchise of the Year for achieving excellence across ticket sales, marketing and partnerships, after receiving two of the top business performance awards – Ticket Sales Performance of the Year and Marketing Performance of the Year. Los Angeles earned the Ticket Sales Performance of the Year Award after a successful, multi-faceted ticket sales campaign that led to increases for group ticket sales, full-season ticket memberships and gate receipts, resulting in the team leading the league in attendance with close to 200,000 fans attending home games, a six percent increase over the 2018 season.
The team also secured the Marketing Performance of the Year Award through a highly-engaging social responsibility effort that led to increases in individual tickets sales and digital engagement. Through their critically acclaimed “Spark the True You” campaign, the team helped to promote mental health awareness and care for current and former female members of the military as #SparkTheTrueYou received over 430,000 views on Instagram and over 95,000 video views on the social media platform.
Dallas Wings
The Wings were honored with the Partnership Performance of the Year for distinguished performance across partnership retention and revenue growth. The team retained all its partners from the 2018 season and focused on health and wellness companies leading to a 40 percent growth in partnership revenue.