June is widely recognized as LGBTQ+ Pride Month, a period of celebration for the advancements of the community, but also an important time for protest and activism. But as with everything in society, the commercialization of Pride has seeped into sports culture, with teams and brands joining in on the “rainbow-ification” of their branding. “Pride Nights” in sports, usually a designated game where the home team does activations in celebration of the LGBTQ+ community, have become the norm.
Yet, before these nights became a checklist item to avoid public backlash, the WNBA was the leader in blending the LGBTQ+ and sports communities.
That history is why it’s been incredibly frustrating to see some of the recent reactions to the announcements of WNBA Pride activations. Particularly, many of the comments under the Indiana Fever’s Pride Night advertisement seemed to imply these nights were something the WNBA was introducing to appear “woke,” when in reality, they pioneered the practice in professional sports in the first place.
While other leagues — particularly men’s sports leagues — have inserted and then removed themselves from celebrating Pride over the years whenever it was convenient for them, the WNBA has been a constant supporter of these celebrations, no matter the reactions.
Because even though some fans may have been outraged that their team is celebrating Pride, such reactions are just the latest instance of these new “fans” storming into a community that has been a safe space for LGBTQ+ athletes, staff and fans for decades.
The WNBA as Pioneers for Pride in Sports
To rewind a bit, the WNBA has not always been as open and accepting of its natural place in LGBTQ+ culture. Back in the 2000s, the feminization of athletes and the pressure for them to appeal to the male gaze was obvious. Players like Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi have talked about how they felt they needed to carefully conceal that part of their lives to appease their teams and the league, especially when it came to marketing.
This was a widely accepted stance at the time, with Bill Simmons writing on ESPN in a now-infamous 2006 article that “the vast majority of WNBA players lack crossover sex appeal. That’s just the way it is,” continuing to say that he would rather watch Sue Bird at the ESPYs in a cocktail dress than running a pick and roll with Lauren Jackson as reasoning for why the WNBA isn’t marketable. He’s since seemed to have changed his standpoint, as noted in a 2025 article on SB Nation about the perception of WNBA stars, but the fact that he was able to write as much at the time on the biggest sports network in the world shows how openly women’s professional basketball players were expected to conform to heteronormative standards.
In a 2022 ESPN article by Mechelle Voepel, Bird was quoted as saying, “Earlier, I think we fell into a trap with this idea that only a certain kind of femininity and sexual orientation sells. We’ve learned that it’s authenticity that draws people in.” Voepel’s article details how the WNBA tried to avoid embracing its LGBTQ+ affiliations because the idea at the time was that they would have trouble marketing the league to a wide audience if they did.
“Nobody ever said it to me directly, but I understood,” Bird said in the same article. “If you wanted endorsements, you had to look and present yourself a certain way.”
Despite such prevailing opinions, the WNBA was the first professional sports league to acknowledge Pride at games, starting with the first Pride night in professional sports history in 2001 at a Los Angeles Sparks game. Even so, it took a long time for the league and players to be fully open in their celebrations of Pride.
Sue Wicks was the first WNBA player to publicly come out in 2002, and one of the league’s superstars, Sheryl Swoopes, did so in 2005. Yet, many factors kept players from following in their teammates’ footsteps, including the fact that most of them spent their offseasons playing in places like Russia and Turkey. When WNBA star Brittney Griner was wrongfully detained in Russia while playing overseas in 2022, she was further attacked being gay in a homophobic society.
Griner was another prominent player to open doors for the LGBTQ+ community when she entered the league in 2013, fully embracing her identity while also being a star of the league. In 2014, the WNBA officially took on LGBTQ+ Pride as a league-wide initiative. They were the first professional sports league to create a campaign specifically for the LGBTQ+ community. Fast forward over a decade, and it feels like society has gone through an entire lifecycle of pushback, support, and then a regression back into scrutiny over the WNBA’s acknowledgement of Pride.
The Protest Aspect of Pride Aligns with the WNBA’s Values
What has grown into a celebration of rainbows, parades, and other events started as a protest. In the 1960s, LGBTQ+ bars and spaces in New York were being raided by police, and until 1966, it was illegal in the state to sell alcohol to a gay person. In 1969, police were still finding reasons to raid these bars, which led to the raid at the Stonewall Inn on June 28. By the next day, protesters gathered at the site, and the rioting and fighting between them and the police lasted for days.
A year later, the community rallied together to commemorate the Stonewall Riots, creating what was the first Pride March. The movement and tradition quickly spread worldwide, morphing into what we know it as today. At its core, Pride remains a protest, especially in current times when the rights of LGBTQ+ people, especially Trans people, are being ripped away. The current administration in the United States has worked to pass anti-Trans bills that would restrict medical care and accessibility for Trans people, as well as things like rules for trans people in sports. There are currently over 730 bills active in the US government involving Trans people.
That aspect of protest and activism aligns greatly with the values of WNBA players, who are outspoken about human rights in many capacities. In 2020, after George Floyd was murdered by police, the WNBA dedicated their entire season (shortened and solely located in Florida due to the COVID pandemic) to advocating for social justice. Their efforts were impactful, even leading to the election of Raphael Warnock as a U.S. Senator, beating out co-owner (at the time) of the Atlanta Dream, Kelly Loeffler, who was the Republican candidate for the seat.
Many WNBA players still strive to be changemakers. On top of advocating for the LGBTQ+ community, players such as Natasha Cloud of the New York Liberty have been outspoken about their support for the victims of the war in Gaza. The league as a whole also supports communities through the Commissioner’s Cup, as teams each pick an organization in their market to support through the tournament. Players also have their causes that are personal to them, such as Griner supporting wrongfully detained international prisoners after her own experiences in Russia.
In an era where being outspoken gets you more online scrutiny than ever, the WNBA is still a leader in standing up for human rights.
Backlash to Pride Nights in Sports
The backlash the Indiana Fever received after announcing their Pride Night isn’t surprising given the current political climate in North America. Since the WNBA led the charge in celebrating Pride at sports events, many other leagues have also tried to adopt the same celebrations.
Many teams in the NBA regularly hold Pride Nights, and in recent years, the NHL tiptoed into the waters of LGBTQ+ activations at games, a foray that displayed why Pride nights are still necessary when backlash to it came directly from professional hockey locker rooms. Players refused to participate in team-wide support efforts such as Pride warm-up gear and taping their sticks with rainbow tape, citing religious reasons. This escalated with social media, and led to the NHL banning colored tape on players’ sticks — a common way players publicly showed support for various causes on the ice. They later reversed that ban after backlash from fans, teams and the league’s players’ union.
The WNBA is unlikely to even attempt to enforce any kind of protesting ban on its players. The league has been mostly supportive — or at least neutral towards — player activism in the past, and even if that stance changed, the WNBPA, their players’ union, would be quick to fight back against that. Especially as they are currently undergoing negotiations for a new Collective Bargaining Agreement, expected to be a groundbreaking contract for women’s sports.
Change of Culture in the WNBA
The WNBA has experienced a boom in fan engagement, viewership, and popularity over the past few years. The rise of stars like Caitlin Clark, Paige Bueckers, Angel Reese and more has led to new fans discovering the league, and with that has come a subsection of new fans who have contributed to the rise of toxicity in online WNBA discourse. While the conversations around women’s sports — and to some degree, all sports — online have always been sprinkled with negativity, it has reached new heights over the past few years.
Somehow, things like Pride Nights are suddenly scrutinized by people online who know nothing about the league’s deep history in social justice and activism. The WNBA isn’t trying to be “woke,” they have been this way before it was normalized in society. Pride Nights in the WNBA are more than just performative diversity checkmarks for these teams that are run like companies; they are an actual reflection of both the fans as well as the players on the court. They are a celebration of the inclusivity the WNBA has worked nearly three decades to foster.
It took a while for the WNBA to be an open and accepting place for any player regardless of their identity. Maybe society has regressed enough that players don’t feel as comfortable being themselves to the public, but on a purely team/organization level, the WNBA has come a long way in terms of acceptance and celebration of all identities. People don’t gravitate towards women’s sports because they identify as LGBTQ+, but instead can be more open about their identity because they know that no matter who they are, they will be welcomed in women’s sports.
These women’s sports leagues are a reflection of how life can be when people are accepting, instead of the culture of men’s leagues, where many players still feel the need to be secretive about their sexuality for fear of their teammates and fans’ reactions.
So, before you criticize a team’s celebration of Pride this month, take a moment to reflect on the history of the WNBA’s participation. While those outraged feel like the WNBA is intruding on their peace by openly celebrating Pride, it’s actually their toxicity that is intruding on the WNBA’s established reputation of being a welcoming community.
At the end of the day, Pride continues to be a protest. The more backlash the WNBA gets about celebrating it, the more important it is for them to continue to do so.
