The tip-off to the 2025 WNBA season is less than a month away. However, there’s already a buzz building for the upcoming season, especially since the league’s 13 teams conducted their player draft last week, and fans seeking summer hoops action at North Carolina sportsbooks can jump in.
Many in North Carolina are pushing for a resurgence of the Charlotte Sting, which folded after the 2006 season. Using market potential and betting behavior, BetCarolina.com has developed estimated figures for the hypothetical handle, revenue and taxes the state could rake in if a Carolina-based WNBA expansion team was announced.
How Much WNBA Wagering Is NC Missing?
Handle Estimate | Revenue Estimate | Tax Estimate |
$133M | $13.3M | $2.394M |
WNBA Betting Up In 2024
America’s major professional women’s basketball league made great strides last season thanks to the arrival of former college superstars such as Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese. Viewership more than doubled from 2023 as ESPN averaged an audience of 1.2 million for regular season contests.
That enthusiasm carried over to betting as well. ESPN BET said wagering on the league jumped 150% from 2023 to 2024. BetMGM, which operators the BetMGM NC Sportsbook, also said it had a triple-figure year-to-year bump in betting traffic.
At BetCarolina.com, we expect wagering to continue to increase over the 2025 regular season, which begins May 16 with three games. That includes the debut of the Golden State Valkyries, the latest expansion franchise, who will host the Los Angeles Sparks.
With 13 teams now in the league, the WNBA will also extend the regular season from 40 games last year to 44 this year. That means there will be 286 contests from May to September. Those additional games, along with the arrival of college superstar Paige Bueckers, will likely spur another increase in WNBA betting for the 2025 season. How much WNBA wagering will there be at North Carolina sports betting apps without a team in the region?
How Much Will Be Bet On The WNBA In 2025
The exact figure wagered for WNBA games is hard to pinpoint. Licensed sportsbooks do not release that level of data, and only a few states report handles by sport. However, even those are more general in nature and not by league.
Last year, the American Gaming Association forecasted that U.S. bettors would wager $35 billion on NFL games during the 2024 season. That worked out to be slightly less than 25% of the $150 billion wagered in the 38 states, plus the District of Columbia, where sports betting has been legalized.
While the WNBA is growing tremendously in popularity, the league is still capturing a fraction of the audience that the NFL and the NBA attract. ESPN’s Monday Night Football games last season averaged roughly 15 million people per game, a more than 10-fold difference from the network’s record-setting WNBA broadcast figures.
There might not be a direct correlation between watching games and betting on them, but we feel it’s a safe assumption to make. Many fans who wager on games will watch, if only part of the game, to see if their bet wins. Plus the rise of in-game betting, with operators offering top North Carolina sports betting promos, will spur viewers to make wagers on such markets as the next player to score.
How We Arrived At Our Estimate
Using the AGA’s NFL forecast and state sports betting data, we determined wagering on America’s biggest sporting league represented about 23% of the annual handle and nearly half of all bets placed during the peak NFL months of September through January.
BetCarolina then made its 2025 WNBA forecast based on looking at the difference between that league’s viewership and the NFL’s. We also took into consideration the additional games that will be played due to expansion, as well as an expected increase in interest due to players like Clark, Reese and Bueckers.
If North Carolina had a WNBA team of its own again, we estimate that it would draw $133 million in handle – and a tax boost of nearly $2.4 million based on a 10% hold (for revenue of about $13.3 million) and the state’s 18% tax rate.
Who Are The 2025 WNBA Betting Favorites?
Last season, the New York Liberty defeated the Las Vegas Aces to win the WNBA title, the first for one of the league’s eight original franchises. At Fanatics North Carolina Sportsbook, oddsmakers have installed the Liberty as the favorite to win again it this season.
New York’s odds of repeating are +200, while the Aces are the second choice at +250.
Aces center A’ja Wilson won her third league MVP title this season, and bet365 NC Sportsbook has listed her as the favorite to win it again in 2025. Her odds are +200. Clark, last year’s rookie of the year with the Indiana Fever, is the second pick at +240.
USA Today photo by Kirby Lee
