Thanks in large part to the arrival of rookie Caitlin Clark, the WNBA has soared in popularity during the 2024 season. Television ratings and attendance records are all hitting record highs, and the top vote-getters for the All-Star game saw their vote totals multiply 5 to 8 times over last year’s amount.
The WNBA is enjoying historic success for the league, and all this added attention likely means sports bettors are going to place more WNBA bets than ever this summer when the options for live sports are down this time of year.
This is a WNBA crowd on a Tuesday night in Las Vegas pic.twitter.com/Uo3OjfcjDH
— Las Vegas Locally 🌴 (@LasVegasLocally) July 3, 2024
This could provide some good value for dedicated, daily bettors who are looking for value in a sea of more casual bettors taking their chances at top-rated sportsbooks on the various WNBA markets.
The good news is you’ll find many of the same betting markets for the WNBA as you would the NBA, including moneyline, totals, spreads, quarter props, halves props, and player prop picks for points, rebounds, assists, 3-point field goals, and the 1st basket scorer in a game. They also have futures bets for this year’s WNBA champion and player awards such as MVP and Rookie of the Year.
At the end of the day, the WNBA is still just basketball, so some of the same caveats apply to betting on it as you would college basketball or the NBA. Scores can change in a hurry, so don’t think you’ll ever be immune from bad beats on the spread and total.
We have prepared a guide to get you started in betting the WNBA right now as the teams are about halfway through their 40-game regular season.
Comparing WNBA Betting to NBA Betting
For those who have bet on the NBA before, there are some definite strategies you should continue to follow for WNBA bets:
- Keep up to date with the injuries to star players and learn who their replacements are.
- A game where a star player is out could be extra difficult for their moneyline bet, but you could find value in betting them ATS as some underdogs will rally around each other in those situations.
- Take notice of which teams have outlier records (great and terrible) for ATS and O/U picks this season as that can be advantageous unless regression to the mean catches up.
- For example, the Washington Mystics are only 5-15 SU, one of the worst records in the league, but they are 13-6-1 ATS, one of the best spread records as they rarely get blown out.
- On the flip side, the New York Liberty is a league-best 17-3 SU, but they are only 8-12 ATS. The Minnesota Lynx are 14-5 SU but also 13-6 ATS, so they usually can cover better than the Liberty have so far.
- Some teams will meet each other 4 times this season, which is 10% of their schedule, so you can put more weight on past games when predicting the next matchup.
You also have to pay attention to team strength. Caitlin Clark plays for the Indiana Fever, a team that’s won 25% of its games from 2016-2023, by far the worst in the league. They have lousy defensive stats, but their games have been entertaining this year and the over has gone 14-7, the best hit rate in the WNBA this year.
With only 12 WNBA teams compared to 30 NBA teams, it is easier to figure out the relative team strengths of all the teams in the WNBA.
Where the WNBA and NBA Differ the Most
We wanted to highlight some key areas where the WNBA and NBA are different, which can lead you to adjust your mindset for how to approach your WNBA bets.
The biggest difference is the length of the game. Both play 4 quarters, but a WNBA quarter is only 10 minutes, so their total game time is 40 minutes compared to 48 minutes for the NBA.
This is why scoring is lower in the WNBA, so you see much lower totals in the range of 150 to 170 points compared to the NBA where it’s usually 200 and higher. The average WNBA team scores about 81.0 points per game while the NBA has exceeded 114.0 points per game on average the last 2 seasons.
With fewer minutes to play, you have to adjust your ideas for prop picks and the kinds of milestones players reach in games. With 8 fewer minutes of action, it is harder for WNBA players to reach benchmarks like 25 points, 10 rebounds, 10 assists, 5 3-point field goals, etc.
Today’s WNBA May Be More Driven by Offensive Success Than Today’s NBA
Similar to the NBA’s explosion of 3-point shots in the last decade, scoring has gone up in the WNBA, surpassing over 80.0 points per game in 8-of-9 seasons since 2016.
While the WNBA has a reputation for being offensively challenged and more hardnosed than their male counterparts, the truth is success in the league is largely defined by prowess on the offensive end of the court. That’s what separates the haves and the have-nots the most right now in the WNBA.
Surprisingly, a comparison of correlations between key advanced stats and a team’s winning percentage since 2016 has shown the WNBA is more dependent on winning teams having efficient offensive success:
- Offensive Rating (ORtg)’s correlation to win%: 0.790 in WNBA, 0.619 in NBA
- Defensive Rating (DRtg)’s correlation to win%: -0.746 in WNBA, -0.517 in NBA
- True Shooting Percentage (TS%)’s correlation to win%: 0.711 in WNBA, 0.601 in NBA
This is not to say that turnovers (correlation about -0.300 for both), defensive rebounds (about 0.300 to 0.400), and free throw rate (about 0.10) are not important to winning basketball games in either league. But they don’t move the needle or explain as much of the variation in team records as being a good shooting offense does.
#WNBA
Li Yueru is showing great command and comfort in the offense, not just scoring in the post but making key reads now encouraging signs. #Thenewclassic pic.twitter.com/jYHuFPwkgK— Global Utopia Sports (@GL8BAL_SPORTS) June 22, 2024
This makes sense as offense is about more repeatable skills such as shooting and passing abilities to run designed plays, and you are stuck with the same core players in each game. WNBA rosters are also smaller (12 players) compared to the NBA (15 players). If you have bad shooters, it’s going to be hard to work around that in a season.
Variability of Defense and Team Strength Indicators
Meanwhile, defense can still be largely reactionary, harder to replicate over the long haul, and statistically, you are the mercy of how good your opponent’s shooting is that night in a game where everyone runs hot and cold. You can be the best defense in the league and still fall victim to a ridiculous shooting game from the opponent where everything goes in.
So, if you are measuring team strength, stats like Offensive Rating and TS% are still some of the strongest indicators you’ll find for sorting out the top teams.
Not surprisingly, we see this break down neatly in the 2024 WNBA season as it nears the halfway mark. The only 5 teams with double-digit wins all rank in the top 5 in Offensive Rating right now, and the top team, the 17-3 Liberty, are No. 1 in Offensive Rating, TS%, eFG%, and take the most 3-point shots in the league. The other 7 teams all have losing records at the moment.
Favorites Rule in the WNBA – Just Not ATS
We just said this season has been largely carried by the 5 teams with winning records in the New York Liberty (17-3), Connecticut Sun (15-4), Minnesota Lynx (14-5), Seattle Storm (13-6), and Las Vegas Aces (11-6).
The Aces are seeking a 3-peat of championships behind 2-time MVP A’ja Wilson, who is favored to win MVP again this season. Think of her as the Patrick Mahomes of the WNBA right now.
Betting Trends
Favorites in the WNBA have won just under 74% of their games this season. That’s a higher rate than the 2023-24 NBA season where favorites won 69.0% of all games.
But just because those teams keep winning and have built a gap between the rest of the WNBA, it doesn’t mean they are great bets for the spread this year. In fact, the Liberty (8-12 ATS), Sun (8-11), and Aces (7-10) all have losing records ATS this year.
WNBA favorites are just 57-57-1 ATS this season – a literal coin toss. That’s hard to find an edge when the numbers are that on the money. The totals are almost just as great with the over going 58-56, or just over a coin flip again.
That’s why our best advice right now is to look at the teams that have the best and worst records ATS and for the totals, and either continue riding those trends, or start hedging on regression to the mean hit to get those records closer to .500.
However, favorites on the road have done the best at 26-21 ATS (55.3%), which leads us to our last WNBA betting tip.
Homecourt Advantage Not What It Used to Be
Basketball fans are used to homecourt advantage being so important even if it’s hard to explain why this is the case.
- At least with baseball, the dimensions of the parks can be different, making it easier or harder to hit deep shots and homeruns.
- In football, weather can play a significant factor for the home team whether it’s the cold in Buffalo, the extreme heat in Miami, or the perfect conditions for a dome team.
- In hockey, the home team gets the last line change as an advantage.
In basketball, the courts are built to the same specifications, the arenas are all indoors, and there’s no “home team gets last substitution” advantage like in the NHL.
So, why did we frequently see WNBA and NBA teams win over 60% of their home games for decades, a better rate than these other leagues?
Maybe it’s psychological with the fans being the closest to the court, sometimes within earshot of the players, and that fuels the runs that are so pivotal in a basketball game. How often do you see a team go on a quick 9-0 run with the crowd exploding for each made basket and the players feeding off that momentum?
We also know there are studies showing that while stars play about the same regardless of venue, a team’s role players usually shoot better at home than they do on the road.
Impact of Increased 3-Point Shooting
But we are seeing an interesting shift in the NBA and WNBA in the last decade as scoring has increased thanks to the widespread increased usage of the 3-point shot.
It has lessened the impact of homecourt advantage:
- In the NBA from 2003-2004 to 2012-13, home teams won 60.2% of their games.
- Since 2013-14, NBA teams playing at home won 57.0% of their games and it has come down to 54.31%, 58.05%, 54.39%, and 54.35% in the last 4 seasons.
- In the WNBA from 1997-2015, home teams won 60.7% of their games.
- Since 2016, WNBA teams playing at home win 55.8% of their games with the 2023 season producing the lowest home win percentage ever at 52.1%.
So far this season, WNBA teams are 66-48 (.580) at home. With record-setting attendance in the league, we’ll see if this number creeps back up above 60% in the coming years or if this is just the way things are now.
But for basketball as a whole with the explosion of the 3-point shot, it doesn’t look as favorable as it once did to back the home favorite ATS. This season, the road teams are covering just over 54% of the time.
Don’t be afraid to back a road team or underdog (ATS) in the WNBA in 2024.
