WNBA All-Star Weekend Takes Over Chicago: Inside the 30th Season, a Broken Attendance Record, and the Fastest-Growing Betting Market in America

WNBA All-Star Weekend is in Chicago right now. The Kia Skills Challenge and State Farm 3-Point Contest run Friday, July 24 at 8 p.m. ET from Wintrust Arena, and the AT&T WNBA All-Star Game tips Saturday, July 25 at 8:30 p.m. ET from the United Center on ABC. The league marked its 30th season by scrapping the traditional captains format entirely: legends Cynthia Cooper and Teresa Weatherspoon served as general managers and drafted the two rosters — Team Coop and Team Spoon — from the full All-Star pool, ignoring conference and position. Cooper won the coin flip and took Dallas guard Paige Bueckers, who led all players with 1,045,051 fan votes. The weekend arrives with the WNBA having already broken its single-season regular-season attendance record with a month still left on the calendar, and with sportsbook handle on the league running roughly four times what it did a year ago.

The Best Bet on Sports has watched betting markets mature for more than two decades, and there is a specific pattern that shows up when a league crosses from novelty into a real market: the liquidity arrives before the lines get sharp. That gap is where the WNBA sits in the summer of 2026. This is what is actually happening in Chicago this weekend, why the league's growth curve looks the way it does, and what it means for anyone paying attention to basketball betting.

What Is the Format of the 2026 WNBA All-Star Game?

The 30th-season format is the biggest structural change the All-Star Game has seen in years. There are no player-captains picking teams on a broadcast set. Instead, the league handed roster construction to two of its foundational figures — Cynthia Cooper, the four-time Finals MVP who defined the league's first era, and Teresa Weatherspoon, the point guard who did the same in New York — and let them run a straight draft.

Cooper and Weatherspoon selected from a pool of 10 starters and 12 reserves. Starters were chosen by a weighted combination of fan, media, and current-player voting. Reserves were picked by the league's 15 head coaches. Neither GM was bound by conference affiliation or listed position, which is why the two rosters look nothing like the East-versus-West split fans got used to.

| | Team Coop | Team Spoon | |---|---|---| | General Manager | Cynthia Cooper | Teresa Weatherspoon | | Head Coach | Becky Hammon (Las Vegas) | Cheryl Reeve (Minnesota) | | Starting guards | Paige Bueckers (DAL), Kelsey Mitchell (IND) | Caitlin Clark (IND), Olivia Miles (MIN) | | Starting forwards | Gabby Williams (GSV), Natasha Howard (MIN), Breanna Stewart (NY) | Jessica Shepard (MIN), Aliyah Boston (IND), A'ja Wilson (LV) | | Reserve guards | Kahleah Copper (PHX, replacing Kelsey Plum), Jackie Young (LV), Sonia Citron (WAS), Marina Mabrey (TOR) | Rhyne Howard (ATL), Allisha Gray (ATL), Courtney Williams (MIN) | | Reserve forwards | Angel Reese (ATL), Dominique Malonga (SEA) | Nneka Ogwumike (LA), Jonquel Jones (NY), Kiki Iriafen (WAS) |

The headline matchup writes itself: Bueckers on one side, Clark on the other, on national broadcast television in a building that seats more than 20,000. That is not a coincidence of the draft. It is the outcome the format was designed to produce, and the league is not pretending otherwise.

Worth noting for anyone tracking rosters closely: Kelsey Plum was drafted to Team Coop but is out, with Phoenix's Kahleah Copper taking the roster spot. Injury replacements are routine at All-Star weekends and they matter more for prop markets than for anything else — a name swapped in the week of the game rarely gets priced with the same care as one that was penciled in for a month.

Friday Night First: The Skills Challenge and 3-Point Contest

Before the game, Wintrust Arena hosts the two skills events on Friday at 8 p.m. ET. The 3-Point Contest is the one drawing actual betting interest, and the board tells you something about how the market reads shooting.

Dallas rookie Azzi Fudd opened as the favorite at around +280, with Toronto's Marina Mabrey close behind near +310 and Golden State's Janelle Salaün available in the +450 range at some books and considerably longer at others — one shop had her out past +650. Salaün is converting at a 39.4 percent clip on the season, which is the kind of number that suggests the price gap between books is about name recognition, not shooting.

| Contestant | Team | Approximate price | Note | |---|---|---|---| | Azzi Fudd | Dallas Wings | +280 | Rookie, market favorite | | Marina Mabrey | Toronto Tempo | +310 | Also on Team Coop roster | | Janelle Salaün | Golden State Valkyries | +450 to +669 | 39.4% from three; widest price spread on the board |

That spread — the same player available at +450 at one book and +669 at another — is the single most instructive thing on this entire weekend's board. In a mature market like the NFL, a gap that wide on a binary outcome closes in minutes. In WNBA novelty markets it can sit there all day, because the books are not devoting the same modeling resources to a shooting contest that they devote to a Sunday afternoon point spread. Whether that inefficiency is worth acting on is a separate question from whether it exists.

The Season Behind the Weekend: Records That Actually Broke

All-Star weekends generate noise every year. What makes 2026 different is that the underlying numbers moved before the party did.

The league expanded from 13 teams to 15 this season, adding the Portland Fire and the Toronto Tempo. Both expansion clubs immediately did something the league had not seen. Portland's home opener against the Chicago Sky drew a sellout of 19,335 at the Lloyd District arena — the largest crowd for a WNBA expansion team's debut in league history. Toronto went further: on July 10, the Tempo drew 20,996 to Montreal's Bell Centre for a game against the Dallas Wings, setting the all-time WNBA regular-season attendance record.

Those are not isolated spikes. The WNBA broke its single-season regular-season attendance record with roughly a month still remaining on the schedule.

| Metric | 2026 status | |---|---| | Teams | 15 (up from 13; added Portland Fire, Toronto Tempo) | | Single-game regular-season attendance record | 20,996 — Tempo vs. Wings, Bell Centre, July 10 | | Expansion-debut attendance record | 19,335 — Fire vs. Sky, Portland home opener | | Season attendance record | Broken with a month left in the schedule | | Nationally televised games | 216, a league record | | Cable viewership high | 1.00 million — Tempo-Fever on USA, up 134% vs. 2025 cable average | | Broadcast viewership high | 2.49 million — Wings-Fever opening weekend on ABC | | Total watch hours (2025 baseline) | 220 million, up 16% year over year | | Estimated U.S. fans reached (2025 baseline) | 46.9 million, up 31% over two years |

The broadcast number is the one that compounds. A record 216 nationally televised games means the league is no longer asking fans to seek it out. Distribution at that volume is how a sport goes from something people follow to something people stumble into, and stumbling into it is how audiences actually get built.

Why the Betting Market Is Growing Faster Than the League

Handle on WNBA games at major sportsbooks is running roughly four times what it was a year ago, and FanDuel has identified the WNBA as its fastest-growing major league. That is a bigger jump than attendance, viewership, or franchise count — betting volume is outrunning every other growth metric the league has.

There is a structural reason for that, and it is worth being precise about it rather than romantic. Summer is the thinnest stretch on the American sports calendar. Football has not started. Basketball is out of season. Baseball is in the middle of a 162-game grind where most individual games carry little narrative weight. The WNBA plays into a vacuum, and betting volume flows toward whatever is on.

The second reason is that the WNBA's audience skews younger and more digitally native than the audience for legacy leagues, which is precisely the demographic sportsbooks spend the most to acquire. When a league's growth story and a sportsbook's customer-acquisition target overlap that cleanly, promotional spend follows, and promotional spend drives handle.

What that means practically: WNBA markets carry lower limits and less modeling attention per game than NFL or NBA markets, which cuts in both directions. Lines can be softer. They can also be slower to correct and harder to get real money down on. Anyone treating the league as an obvious edge because it is "less efficient" should first check what the maximum bet actually is.

What This Weekend Actually Signals

The 30th season was always going to be a milestone year. What the league did with it is more interesting than the milestone. It expanded into two new markets and both of them set attendance records on arrival. It restructured its marquee exhibition around two of its own legends rather than around the two most-voted players. It put the game in Chicago's United Center on a Saturday night on ABC, opposite nothing.

And it did all of this in the same summer that the sport's betting handle quadrupled — a signal that the audience is not just watching but engaging financially, which is historically the last thing to arrive and the hardest to fake.

None of that makes the WNBA a solved betting market. It makes it a growing one, which is a different thing. Growing markets reward patience and punish the assumption that inefficiency equals easy money. The most useful thing to do this weekend is watch, and note which numbers move and which ones sit.

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Frequently Asked Questions

When is the 2026 WNBA All-Star Game and where can I watch it?

The AT&T WNBA All-Star Game is Saturday, July 25, 2026, at the United Center in Chicago, with tip-off at 8:30 p.m. ET on ABC. The Kia WNBA Skills Challenge and State Farm WNBA 3-Point Contest are the night before, Friday, July 24, at 8 p.m. ET from Wintrust Arena, also in Chicago. Holding the skills events at a smaller venue and the game at the United Center is a deliberate split — it lets the league fill both buildings rather than half-fill one across two nights.

Why doesn't the 2026 WNBA All-Star Game have captains?

The league replaced the player-captain format for its 30th season. Instead of the two leading vote-getters drafting teams, WNBA legends Cynthia Cooper and Teresa Weatherspoon served as general managers and selected the rosters, giving the milestone season a link back to the league's founding era. Cooper won the coin flip for the first pick and selected Paige Bueckers, who led all players with 1,045,051 fan votes. Caitlin Clark landed on Weatherspoon's Team Spoon, so the marquee matchup survived the format change intact.

Who are the favorites in the 2026 WNBA 3-Point Contest?

Dallas rookie Azzi Fudd opened as the market favorite around +280, with Toronto's Marina Mabrey next near +310. Golden State's Janelle Salaün, shooting 39.4 percent from three on the season, is the most interesting name on the board — she is priced around +450 at some books and as long as +669 at others. That kind of spread on a single contestant is unusual and reflects how little modeling attention books devote to novelty events compared to game markets.

Is the WNBA really the fastest-growing betting market?

By growth rate, yes. Handle at major sportsbooks is running roughly four times year-over-year, and FanDuel has publicly identified the WNBA as its fastest-growing major league. That is a percentage story, not an absolute one — WNBA handle is still a fraction of NFL handle, and the base it grew from was small. But the direction and the slope are real, and they are steeper than attendance or viewership growth.

Are WNBA betting lines softer than NFL or NBA lines?

Often, but the practical edge is smaller than it sounds. Sportsbooks assign less modeling attention and lower limits to WNBA markets, so numbers can be slower to sharpen and slower to correct. The tradeoff is that maximum bet sizes are frequently a fraction of what you can get down on an NFL side, so an edge that looks meaningful in percentage terms may be capped before it means anything in dollars. Check the limit before you assume the inefficiency is exploitable.

How has WNBA attendance changed in 2026?

The league broke its single-season regular-season attendance record with about a month still left on the schedule. Two expansion teams drove much of it: the Portland Fire drew a sellout of 19,335 for their home debut against the Chicago Sky, the largest expansion-debut crowd in league history, and the Toronto Tempo drew 20,996 to Montreal's Bell Centre against the Dallas Wings on July 10 for the all-time WNBA regular-season attendance record.

Should I bet the All-Star Game itself?

Exhibition games are among the hardest events on any board to handicap, and All-Star games are the extreme version. Effort is discretionary, rotations are ceremonial, defense is largely optional, and totals routinely land far from anything the season data would predict. Player props are even more volatile because minutes distribution is decided by feel rather than by rotation logic. We treat All-Star weekends as viewing, not as a betting card, and we would rather deploy capital on games where the participants are trying to win.