Of course she has a shoe. That was the message that Nike needed fans of WNBA star A’ja Wilson to see.
Back in April, news broke that the swoosh had signed newly-minted WNBA rookie Caitlin Clark to a reported multi-year, $28 million signature shoe deal, and Wilson fans rightly wondered where the two-time champ and MVP’s shoe was. There were media headlines and social media debates, all asking why a WNBA rookie had a signature shoe before an established star. It was also the kind of debate typically reserved for men’s basketball, now swirling around female athletes.
A few weeks after the initial controversy, Wilson walked into South Carolina Gamecocks Arena ahead of a Las Vegas Aces exhibition game against Puerto Rico wearing a hoodie that featured a web address: ofcourseihaveashoe.com. Turns out, Wilson had been working with Nike on her own shoe and signature collection all along.
“We’re seeing this shift in women’s basketball,” Wilson told me earlier this month. “And I feel like this is the perfect moment to be a signature athlete.”
The popularity of women’s college basketball and the WNBA has skyrocketed over the past few years, and made the women’s game a more significant part of basketball culture. This year’s women’s Final Four had more viewers than the men’s for the first time ever. WNBA viewership, so far this season, is up 21% and attendance is at a 13-year high.
Brands, as well, have a reason to be excited about the women’s game. A 2023 study by RBC and Wasserman found that fans of women’s sports are 54% more aware of women’s sports sponsors—and 45% more likely to consider to purchasing from sponsor brands—than fans of men’s sports.
Companies are now racing to develop and market products aimed at women’s basketball fans and built around female players. Nowhere is this more evident than in sneakers, where women’s hoops is the next frontier in the battle to be your favorite shoe brand.
Nike has long dominated the men’s side of sport’s shoe game, thanks in large part to its signing of Michael Jordan 1984. In FY2023, which ended in May 2023, its basketball-focused Jordan brand alone did $6.6 billion in sales. But women’s basketball is still a relatively open field, so brands are racing in to lay claim to the best players and develop an identity around the this side of the sport.
In addition to its deals with Clark and Wilson, Nike works with WNBA star Sabrina Ionescu and is dropping her second signature model, the Sabrina 2, on June 25th. In May, Puma launched the Stewie 3, the third model from New York Liberty star Breanna Stewart. LA Sparks rookie Cameron Brinks recently starred in a New Balance commercial alongside NBA stars Jamal Murray, Tyrese Maxey, and Zach LaVine. Chicago Sky rookie Angel Reese revealed she’ll have a signature line with Reebok. And Adidas signed newly-retired WNBA legend Candace Parker as its president of women’s basketball—a bold move that illustrates the significance of this moment in women’s basketball to sneaker brands.
Sneaker resale platform StockX recently reported a huge spike in popularity for female athletes’ performance sneakers. It said sales of Ioncescu’s Nike Sabrina 1 have skyrocketed more than 200% in 2024 over last year, and both the Sabrina 1 and Puma’s Stewie 3 rank among the Top 15 signature shoes overall.
Not female stars, basketball stars
When Reebok signed then-LSU star Angel Reese back in 2023, she wasn’t just the brand’s first women’s basketball signing, she was its first basketball signing period. Reebok CEO Todd Krinsky says that after appointing NBA legends Shaquille O’Neal and Allen Iverson as president and VP, respectively, of basketball last year, the conversation quickly turned to finding players who embody the brand’s goal of disruption and irreverence.
“It wasn’t about specifically looking at a women’s player because this is a hot category right now. It was, who are the most provocative, disruptive, great hardcore players that we feel emulate what we’re trying to do?” Krinsky explains. “The list was men and women, and Angel was at the top of that list.”
Shaq says he knew from the jump that Reese was the first call he wanted to make. “Not only is she a strong leader and great player, but she’s fiercely herself and very into fashion,” says O’Neal. “We talk almost every day and she’s providing ideas on products and marketing in a big way.”
Puma’s global head of basketball Max Steiger says he sees the sport from a similarly holistic viewpoint. “Basketball culture is, at its core, not defined by gender,” he says. “This was the mindset we had right at the start with sponsorships across both the men’s and women’s side of the game.”
Steiger says that the key to that mindset is seeing athletes as three-dimensional people, not just as basketball stars. “That comes from a deep belief that today’s basketball player is so connected to fans across generations because they are so much more than just a player: They are a fashion icon, a gamer, an artist, a musician, a Mom, a Dad, and a role model in their community,” he says. “And we, as a brand, need to focus on telling all aspects of that story through the lens of basketball.”
In a brand post for the Stewie 3, Stewart breaks down how the design details of five flowers tell her story. A carnation, the national flower of Spain, represents her wife Marta Xargay. Blooming seeds represent helping the next generation of basketball players come up. New York’s state flower, the rose, nods to her hometown of Syracuse, while the Japanese cherry blossom and Golden Trumpet Tree, to represent her time in Japan and Brazil, respectively.
To tell these athlete stories, brands sometimes need to evolve. Tanya Hvizdak, Nike’s VP of global women’s sports marketing, says the boost in popularity of both women’s basketball and its players has pushed the company in new directions. “Our women athletes are redefining what it means to be a Nike athlete and are challenging us to think more creatively about how we can support them holistically, as competitors, as style icons, and more,” she says. “We’ve evolved what it means to be a Nike athlete, moving towards partnership over sponsorship.”
Its partnership with A’ja Wilson goes beyond a signature shoe, and into a full collection designed closely with Wilson to embody her style and personality. “We’ve been working on this for a little over a year, just making sure that everything is being where it needs to be,” says Wilson. “We wanted to make sure that it had my personality to it, my vibe to it, but was also a shoe for everybody, a collection for everybody.”
Since launching its basketball product line in 2018, New Balance has made a conscious decision to keep its roster of sponsored ballers small. Last summer, Brinks, who was then at Stanford, became the brand’s first women’s basketball signing. “What we saw in Cam was an attitude that reflects our brand, being fiercely independent,” says New Balance’s head of global sports marketing Naveen Lokesh. “She took the conscious choice to join us as our first female athlete, which is a little bit of a leap of faith, but that was intriguing to her. She saw that as an opportunity, not a barrier.”
Candace Parker stunned the basketball world when she announced her surprise retirement this spring, and a few weeks later took a new role leading women’s hoops at Adidas. That new role, she insists, is more than just a face for the brand. As Parker told Fast Company at the time, “I said to [Adidas], ‘I don’t want to be a mascot. I really want to be in the meetings, and I want to be a part of making decisions.’”
Eric Wise, general manager of global basketball at Adidas, says there is a palpable momentum behind women’s hoops right now, and the brand sees its newest hire as a significant step in building on it. “One of the biggest hurdles is navigating the complex landscape of gender biases and stereotypes that still persist in sports,” he says. “And now we have Candace Parker to really help spearhead how to tackle these challenges.”
Design debate
One of the biggest questions that all of these brands have to wrestle with: What does it mean to design a basketball shoe for a woman?
Some critics insists that most companies aren’t even making shoes specifically for women’s feet. They’re simply sizing down men’s shoes. “The women’s performance basketball shoe business is tiny in comparison to the men’s business, and it’s partly because the brands simply are refusing to make women’s-specific basketball shoes,” Matt Powell, a longtime sneaker industry analyst and senior advisor with BCE Consulting, told my colleague AJ Hess last month. He estimates that less than 5% of basketball shoes are designed with women in mind.
But for Deepa Ramprasad, Nike’s director of basketball footwear design, it’s less about gender. She says the brand’s basketball shoes are designed with different playing styles and demands in mind.
Nike launched Sabrina Ionescu’s first signature shoe last fall, which quickly gained popularity among both men and women players. NBA legend Carmelo Anthony called it one of the best Nike’s on the market. For the Sabrina 2, which launches later this month, Ramprasad says she and her team continued to work with Ionescu on it for her specific playing style and needs, just like the brand works with players LeBron, Kevin Durant, and others.
“One size doesn’t fit an entire gender,” says Ramprasad. “How could it, right? And so, it’s about being really focused on that solution, that sensation that we’re looking to provide with her specifically.” She says that Ionescu was looking for the ultimate combination of speed and comfort. Ionescu tested all her favorite Nike and non-Nike shoes, and provided Ramprasad’s team with the features and aspects that she was looking for.
Ramprasad says that between her team, the Nike Sports Research Lab, and the brand’s testing athletes, they’ve found that female athletes are often some of the most discerning in terms of articulating what they need out of their shoe—and being able to sense the fine-tuned, precise differences built into the shoes.
“We found that a great basketball shoe is a great basketball shoe, and in leading Sabrina’s call to action, her insights, her voice, we were able to create a platform that arguably has taken over across genders,” says Ramprasad. “The research and development showed that it actually worked, not just for female athletes, but for all who love the game of basketball.”
New commercial culture
Brands are coy about calling women’s basketball the next major battleground in the sneaker wars. (Their actions speak louder than words.) But they do acknowledge the growing impact the women’s game and female athletes are having on the sport’s overall culture.
Adidas’ Wise says brands have a unique opportunity to expand the game—and narratives around it—though their marketing. “Our role involves not only creating compelling campaigns and partnerships, but also advocating for increased media visibility and opportunities for female athletes, challenging outdated narratives, and promoting a more inclusive and diverse representation of athleticism,” he says. This is a sport, after all, that’s still fighting for better broadcasting deals and sponsorship dollars, while its players actively fight for better contracts.
For brands that get it right, the opportunity is immense. Reebok’s Krinsky says that given the global culture of basketball, and its seamless connection to pop culture, fashion, social media, and more, we now live in a world where a WNBA star can have a bigger following than many NBA players. “It’s up to the brands to be creative, to really get a pulse of the culture of what’s happening, to understand what’s moving the consumer,” says Krinsky. “The entire landscape of basketball has completely changed.”