The Seattle Storm Made Marketing Its No. 2 WNBA Draft Pick Top Priority

The Seattle Storm has proven throughout its 25-year history that a lottery pick is something to celebrate. This year, it’s also a selling point. The Storm first landed among the Top 4 picks in the draft in 2001, picking Australian champion power forward and future Basketball Hall of Famer Lauren Jackson at No. 1 overall. The next year, with the No. 1 pick in hand once again, the Storm selected the University of Connecticut’s Sue Bird. The team built around Bird and Jackson to win WNBA titles in 2004 and 2010. When lulls followed, the Storm took Shekinna Stricklen second overall in 2012 and traded her for a No. 3 pick in 2015, when it took Notre Dame’s Jewell Loyd first overall and Shekinna Stricklen and UConn’s Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis third. The next year, it took UConn star Breanna Stewart at No. 1 and laid the groundwork for league Storm WNBA titles in 2018 and 2020. “Anytime you're in a top-four pick, the quality of talent coming out of college is so high, and the quality of talent outside the U.S. is so high [that] you are invariably looking at someone who can change the direction of your franchise or amplify the direction of your franchise,” said Lisa Brummel, co-owner of the Seattle Storm along with Dawn Trudeau and Ginny Gilder. With Bird joining the Storm’s ownership team in 2024 and being inducted into the Hall of Fame this year, a trade for Loyd in January finds the team with a lottery pick for the first time since 2016—this time choosing No. 2. Shortly after the trade, it became clear that Storm stars including WNBA Champion and nine-time All-Star Nneka Ogwumike, six-time All-Star Skylar Diggins-Smith, WNBA Champion and All-Star Ezi Magbegor, and 2024 European Player of the Year and Olympic silver medalist Gabby Williams would all return in 2025. That put the team in a mood to celebrate, While the pick is being made at The Shed at Hudson Yards on April 14, the Storm has invited fans out to Queen Anne Beer Hall just about eight blocks from the team’s home at Seattle’s climate pledge arena to watch the selection live. As he has for the NFL’s Seahawks, baseball’s Mariners, and soccer’s Sounders, DJ Blast is providing the hip-hop and Afrobeat soundtrack, while new Storm in-game host Angelica Salem (who pulls similar duties for the NHL’s Kraken and women’s soccer’s Reign) reintroduces herself to fans. Skylar Diggins-Smith was one of several veterans who returned this year after the trade for the No. 2 pic. It’s an opportunity for Storm faithful to grab merch, get selfies with team mascot Doppler or assistant coach Pokey Chatman, or look into tickets for this season, but it’s also an opportunity for the team to extend its calendar and give its new draft pick, sponsors, fan base, and the city’s sports ecosystem a chance to familiarize themselves with this year’s team. “We really want to make sure that whoever we bring in [with the No. 2 pick] is welcomed and showcased in the city of Seattle, and that begins well before the draft happens,” said Seattle Storm CMO Will Gulley. “When it comes to our partners, our other sports teams in the market, they're going to come around us and support us just as we would.” Pregame action Who they’ll be supporting is something of a mystery. While still a robust draft beyond the Dallas Wings’ consensus No. 1 pick Paige Bueckers from UConn, this year’s lineup was shaken up by star players who opted to stay—with Bueckers’ UConn teammate Azzi Fudd staying in Connecticut, LSU guard Flau’jae Johnson remaining in school for another year and Notre Dame guard Olivia Miles opting to transfer to TCU. That left fans and press speculating: Will the storm take French phenom Dominique Malonga? Will they forgo potential player development for immediate results from Notre Dame’s Sonia Citron or USC’s Kiki Iriafen? Can (or will) they trade up for Bueckers? Storm marketers heard it all and opted to feed the beast: Posting only a ticking-clock countdown on their social media and letting fans speculate in the comments. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Seattle Storm (@seattlestorm) “This didn't use to be the case, where fans were trying to project who was going to be drafted and have all these conversations about who's the right one… that’s amazing to look back at where we came from and it’s an amazing place to be in now,” Gulley said. “We can be playful and allow the fans to continue the conversation.” Home-court advantage There are also more voices willing to take part in that conversation. Last year, the Storm drew an average of 11,184 fans per game, their highest average attendance since moving to Climate Pledge Arena in 2022 and fourth-highest in the league behind only the New York Liberty, Las Vegas Aces, and Indiana Fever. The site of their draft party is part of a bar league of pubs committed to showing Storm games, including the pioneering Rough & Tumble women’s sports bar in Ballard. So when the Storm decide to host a draft event, the overlap of resources with the city’s other major sports teams isn’t accidental. The NHL’s Kraken shares a building with the Storm, with Gulley noting that they work closely on marketing initiatives. The facility surrounding Climate Pledge Arena—the Seattle Center that once hosted the 1969 World’s Fair—brought Magbegor, Ogwumike, and Ogwumike’s sister and fellow WNBA star Chiney Ogwumike out to DJ Blast’s Blastfest last year. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Nneka Ogwumike (@nneka) The Seattle Mariners, whose svp of marketing Gregg Greene was Gulley’s graduate school professor at the University of Washington, have been known to make appearances at Storm games. The Seahawks, meanwhile, celebrated their first Super Bowl win by acknowledging the Storm’s titles and showed up to throw T-shirts when the Storm beat Caitlin Clark and the Fever in Seattle last year. Our friends @Seahawks are tossing t-shirts 🏈 pic.twitter.com/dDUSFdHFXj— Seattle Storm (@seattlestorm) May 23, 2024 That support has been part of the formula that’s helped the Seattle Storm convince partners of what fans in the city already knew: Women’s sports are top-tier sports. When Sue Bird walked off the Climate Pledge arena court for the final time as a player in 2022, 18,100 fans saw her go. When the Storm inhospitably welcomed Clark’s Indiana team with an 85-83 win last year, 18,343 packed the building. When they built a $64 million Center for Basketball Excellence training facility and got Starbucks and the Providence Swedish medical group to sign on as sponsors, the Storm sat back and watched WNBA teams in Chicago, New York, Portland, Phoenix, Dallas, D.C., Toronto, and Indianapolis invest in similar facilities of their own. In that context, building celebrations and campaigns around the No. 2 pick in the WNBA Draft doesn’t just score easy points in the short term—it anticipates the next play in the game ahead. “In the world going forward, you're going to have to have everything to offer players,” Brummel said. “Think about the way they're coming out of college with their NIL deals and the quality of facilities at the high-level programs where we're getting our players from. You can't have them step down when they become a pro, you have to have them have the opportunity to step up and excel at their next level.”

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The Seattle Storm Made Marketing Its No. 2 WNBA Draft Pick Top Priority

The basketball team's selection party strategy puts social media, pro sports partnerships, and women's sports investment at center court

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Jason Notte

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