The WNBA’s been having a good year. Ratings are up, more people are attending games than ever before, and merch is flying off the shelves. Expansion is on the horizon with new teams joining the roster, and the league just signed a $2.2 billion media rights deal. Casual onlookers might be tempted to attribute this explosive success to the “Caitlin Clark effect;” the natural outcome of a sport gaining a generational talent. But can the long-term success of a sport franchise really hinge on a single player? After last weekend’s All-Star match and its blow-up on social media, the future of the WNBA has come into focus — and the possibilities span well beyond a three-point maverick.
At the center of it all is Twitch.
The All-Star game is a yearly event where the best players in the league come together to have some fun. There’s a skills challenge where players show off their dribbling, passing, and shooting skills, alongside a dedicated three-point contest. The main event is a game where two teams duke it out, and the players involved are picked through a combination of fan votes, league decisions, and media suggestions. This year saw two teams compete: one headed by Minnesota Lynx’s Napheesa Collier, and the other by the Indiana Fever’s Caitlin Clark. Clark, however, was down for the count with an injury, so she didn’t get to actually play.
But even if she did, it’s unlikely that Clark would have been the star of the show. For one thing, she’s been having a rough patch lately, between different injuries and a public shift in her perception. There’s been a growing sense that, even if they don’t always win, the Indiana Fever seem to play better without Clark in the mix. Ardent fans who started watching the WNBA because of Clark aren’t convinced of this theory, but ultimately, the point here is that the narrative that the entire league hinges on Clark has begun to erode. Despite her visibility and name power, statistically, Caitlin Clark isn’t even in the top 20 players for the league. As for her signature three-pointer, other teams have recently gotten much better at shutting it down entirely — leaving Clark fumbling to figure out other ways to play. Worse, Clark’s turnovers in particular are hitting league records.
Even if none of these things were true, it’s unlikely that anything that transpired during the All-Star weekend would’ve been much different. Here, it was a duo who have dubbed themselves the “Stud Budz” who absolutely stole the show — and they did it with a 72-hour livestream on Twitch. Through the weekend, hot pink-haired Lynx players Courtney Williams and Natisha Hiedeman took audiences behind the scenes in ways that professional sports rarely, if ever, do. The world saw players getting ready, hanging out, chatting, and partying up close as Williams and Hiedeman cracked jokes and provided commentary the entire way through.
Clips of the livestream and its wild hijinks have gone viral with millions of aggregate views across hundreds of social media posts. Beyond the fact the Stud Budz are stupendous hosts who liven up any room they walk into, many of the things captured on film were hard to believe. At one point, soccer star Megan Rapinoe asks the Stud Budz if they’ve really never been strapped sexually before. In another highlight, the Stud Budz go up to famous DJ Diplo to demand that he stop playing EDM during a party. Nearly every player was caught on camera being visibly drunk and uninhibited, seemingly too busy having fun to care that they were recorded dancing wildly. Another memorable moment saw the Stud Budz and other players, including Caitlin Clark, attempting to cut a line at a club only to be turned away. The Stud Budz also flirted endlessly with other players like Angel Reese.
Through it all, the actual livestream on Twitch was reaching up to 20,000 live viewers, all screaming and cheering things on from the sidelines. There was an undeniable sense of spectacle that is altogether absent on social media as young people become increasingly anxious about looking cringe and celebrities cast an iron grip on their public image. If you get to peek into these worlds, it’s through a curated lens. You’ll never see Taylor Swift partying live, but you might get a few photos after the fact, and only after they’ve been vetted carefully. The era of seeing famous people having a good time without a manager on standby mostly exists on old photographs from the ’80s and ’90s.
Perhaps nothing captures the shifting tides in who the WNBA superstars truly are more than Caitlin Clark herself. “I was streaming [Stud Budz] all last night,” gushed Clark as she spoke to the Stud Budz on camera at one point during the stream. “I had it on my TV downstairs. I was commenting.” Later on, Clark could be seen tagging along with Williams and Hiedeman during the livestream — less like the main attraction, and more like a supporting actor.
If the weekend proved one thing, it’s that the WNBA’s cultural takeover is only beginning and its stars are still being crowned. Clark has undoubtedly been instrumental to this push, but as time goes on, it’s players like Paige Bueckers, Angel Reese, and the Stud Budz who are defining the WNBA’s public image and drawing entirely new audiences who might’ve otherwise not been interested in the sport.
The league’s growth will be helped by things like skilled players, exciting games, and savvy marketing, sure. But what people are truly hungry for right now is raw, unfiltered authenticity, and the WNBA seems to be the only professional sports league willing to provide it. And as social media repeatedly proves, the spotlight that follows strong parasocial relationships easily outshines the type of fame whose ascent is calculated through carefully worded press releases. Tomorrow’s sport star doesn’t (just) need good stats or an impressive shot: They need a lively chat.
On some level, the WNBA seems to understand that the key to growing a fandom is through tools like Twitch, which give viewers unfettered access to their favorite players. During a livestream of some players leaving the All-Star event on a private jet, the Stud Budz honed in on Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve.
“Tell the people how much you love the Stud Budz, cause you know what’s a common misconception?” Williams asks Reeve from beyond the frame. “Everybody always be like, Cheryl’s gonna shut down the Stud Budz,” Williams says. Reeve jokes that she will shut them down if they don’t win their next game.
“We was lit all weekend, we turnt the party up all weekend,” Williams says later on. “Shoutout to that boy Diplo,” she adds, before bursting into laughter and admitting she had no idea who he was during the party.
In a press conference over the weekend, Reeve reiterated her support of the livestream by saying that the league has worked for years to tell the stories of its players.
“I remember a time in our league where that would not have been OK,” Reeve said.
Will things ultimately pan out this way, though? Right now, while it’s still growing, and the average person may not recognize even Caitlin Clark, the danger of ruffling the wrong feathers seems minimal. But the bigger the WNBA gets, the more pressure it might face in presenting a brand-friendly image. Advertisers might also prove to be a problem, as evidenced by livestream shutdowns during professional golf tournaments from companies who believed they had purchased all the broadcasting rights for the events. The Stud Budz stream might continue, and it might even be a more official attraction next year. But will it be tamed?
Perhaps the league is still trying to make up its mind about that. Before the 72-hour livestream began, the Stud Budz joked on stream that the league commissioner had urged them to behave. But later on during the stream, everyone watched in awe as the Stud Budz got the commissioner to twerk on camera.
