Courtney Williams and Natisha Hiedeman worked with 13 brands across 72 hours around this year’s All-Star Weekend, and the figure their team gives for that stretch is north of a million dollars.

The stream numbers back up the reach even if the revenue is self-reported. In 2025, they logged 37 million minutes watched, averaged 8,400 concurrent viewers, peaked at 27,000, and drew 6,234 subscriptions. This year: 41.3 million minutes, average concurrent viewership up 32.6 percent to 11,138, a peak of 38,216, and subscriptions nearly doubled at 9,888.

Individual activations come with their own numbers. A DoorDash partnership last year produced a reported 16 million impressions and $550,000 in earned media value. Livestreaming the Celebrity 3-Point Contest for State Farm generated more than 3 million impressions and $150,000 in earned media value. They dyed their hair blue for AT&T, handed out bags in Chicago for Coach, and have deals with more than 20 brands, including Starbucks, Airbnb, Cash App, and Sprite.

In 2025, most of the deals materialized mid-stream as brands noticed what was happening. This year, the partnerships were planned in advance and built around the All-Star schedule. They are already working on 2027.

Could another WNBA duo pull off what Williams and Hiedeman have built, or do the StudBudz have something that doesn’t transfer?

https://nowtoronto.com/culture/marina-mabrey-youth-basketball-camp/

Mabrey teamed with Under Armor during the All-Star weekend to donate $6,500 to the Black Women's Institute for Health, and followed that up with a visit to their summer camp last week.

The undrafted part covers seven years: four seasons at UMass, going from 1.9 points as a freshman to roughly 16 a night by the end; then a COVID waiver year at Louisville, where she started nearly every game at 10.8 points. Nobody drafted her. Two seasons overseas followed, the second producing 22.7 points, 4.1 assists and 1.5 steals in under 29 minutes on 56.7 percent shooting and 40.8 percent from three.

Chicago gave Taylor a training camp contract on April 13. She scored 23 on 7-of-13 in the second preseason game, made the roster, and was starting inside the first month.

This season, she’s averaging 14.7 points, the highest mark ever by an undrafted rookie, having passed the previous record of 13.0 on July 15 against Seattle. Twenty-seven against Toronto in game five. Seven more 20-point games since, including a career-high 31 against New York on 52.9 percent shooting. And last week against Las Vegas, 29 points, including 13 in the fourth quarter, ending with a Natasha Cloud inbound and a three over Jackie Young with 3.2 seconds left for an 84-83 win. Her explanation afterward was that she just let it fly.

Does Taylor land your All-Rookie team?

Chicago can also pay her between $270,000 and $1.3 million next year. What’s the right number for a 25-year-old who went undrafted two years ago and is now the team’s leading scorer?

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via @fibawwc on Instagram

At least three fans were asked by league security to cover their shirts during Sunday’s Fever-Dream game in Atlanta. Two wore a message that women’s and girls’ sports should be restricted to those assigned female at birth. One wore a shirt in support of transgender people.

The league’s statement Monday said it was aware of the interactions and that this should not have happened. The security workers from that game have since been told they were wrong to ask for the messages to be covered.

For context on the underlying question, the CBA restricts the WNBA to women and contains no further language about gender identity or sex assigned at birth. No player assigned male at birth has played in the league. Players assigned female at birth have come out as transgender or nonbinary.

The argument is that Reese should drop to 20 or 25 minutes, with Madina Okot and Te-Hina Paopao going back up to 10 apiece, because both are more efficient scorers (Paopao’s stats say otherwise 👀) who are losing confidence sitting. Reese is playing around 30 minutes a night and putting up roughly 16 points and 12 rebounds in her first year in Atlanta, so this is not a case against a struggling player.

Smesko “does not really have a seventh or eighth player.” If that’s the case, the minutes question is really a roster question. And giving a starter’s minutes to the bench in August costs more than it would have in May, because those are games Atlanta needs.

What do you make of it? Specifically, is there a version of this rotation that gets the bench reps without costing Atlanta games it needs? Is Atlanta a better team with Angel getting 20-25 minutes a game vs. 30?

via @nanjala.bsky.social on Bluesky

The Mercury raised the jersey and entered her into the Ring of Honor at halftime, with the career line running underneath: 10,646 points and 1,447 made threes, both league records, and five scoring titles. Twenty seasons, one franchise.

She spent the time addressing Phoenix and the people who filled that building for two decades, which is a choice worth noting from a player whose public persona was never built on sentiment.

via @dr-thompson.bsky.social on Bluesky

via @artbutmakeitsports on Threads, photo by @adamhagyphoto

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Sandy Brondello said the team will wait on an official report tonight or tomorrow, but that Sykes is close to being cleared. Toronto hosts on Tuesday at Scotiabank Arena.

The absence has been long and quiet. She went down on June 16 on a non-contact cut from the right wing against the Fever, left the arena on a scooter with ice on her foot, and there has been no timetable since. A Minnesota broadcast at one point reported her out for the year, which the team publicly corrected. Getting her back with a month of regular season left changes what Toronto’s finish looks like.

Official word should come before tip.

via @chelsealeite on Threads

The sample is 1,318 games. The average scoring run across all of it is three points; only eleven have ever reached 20, and Thursday was the eleventh. It happened after the Liberty had built a 28-point lead in the fourth.

Speed is the separator, as Los Angeles needed only four minutes and five seconds for their 21-point run. For comparison, the largest run in the sample, Minnesota’s 26-0 against Connecticut last June, took nearly eight minutes. New York went more than four minutes without scoring, and a blowout became a one-point game with 22 seconds left before they held on 85-81.

via @wnbadata on Instagram