Basketball HOFer Sue Bird has navigated a successful post-playing career including serving as a studio analyst for NBC’s coverage of the WNBA (The WNBA Finals begin this Saturday with coverage of Game 1 at 3:30pm ET on NBC and Peacock). Bird is also the managing director for the USA women’s national team for the 2028 Olympic cycle as well as the host of the WNBA podcast, “Bird’s Eye View with Sue Bird.” She has a diverse portfolio of business ventures as well as a sports ownership role with the Storm.
Bird is an excellent person to ask about the growing number of WNBA players who are building their own content brands while playing in the league. That’s what SBJ did during a conference call on Wednesday, and Bird expanded on how the financial marketplace now values WNBA players.
“I think those of us that have been in the women’s basketball space, whether it’s someone like myself who’s been in it for a long time or maybe a player who’s in their second, third, fourth year of their career, we know the value,” Bird said. “We’ve always understood it. We’ve always seen it, and we’ve just been waiting for people to catch up to that. So that 1792072276 exists. We don’t like being compared to the NBA, but we definitely can learn from them. And we’ve seen those players kind of take control of their own brands, and potentially for some, take control of their own narrative. In some ways we’ve been able to learn from the success and maybe some of the failures and kind of use that as a little bit of a blueprint.”
“Circling back on the first point, we knew the value and since we knew other people didn’t see it, we actually had to get very creative in how we created opportunities for ourselves,” Bird continued. “I think a lot of young players are just really good at being on social media and really good at connecting with fans in a really authentic way. Sadly, it’s because they had to. But the nice byproduct of that is they’re excellent at it.
“We live in a time where, let’s call it this new generation, they’re just able to showcase their personalities in ways that I think has taken our game to another level. The storytelling aspect is what connects fans to the players, and the players know that. So they lean into it.
“A long time ago we were discouraged. We were kind of trying to be something that maybe we weren’t to get fans. Now if you’re just yourself and you lean into that personality, it allows players to build an even larger business for the league and for themselves. I think a lot of players now have a different ambition in a really wonderful way and they see opportunities, and they’re seizing them.”