WNBA, Delta Extend Partnership for Charter Flights, Sponsorships
On Monday, the WNBA announced a multiyear partnership with Delta Air Lines, making Delta the league’s official airline. This comes as the league is making a push toward the playoffs after resuming play after the Olympic break.
Back in May, Delta was tapped as the primary operator of league-wide charter flights for the 2024 and 2025 seasons after a lengthy campaign by players to bring their travel experience on par with other professional sports leagues. Though some bus travel still exists for routes where competing teams are in relatively short driving distances—New York and Connecticut, Chicago and Indiana—players and team staff have been able to fly to game destinations on non-commercial flights all season.
Through this agreement, Delta will be the carrier for all 12 WNBA teams through the regular season and playoffs, including the WNBA Finals in October. Notably, several franchises play in Delta’s hub cities: New York, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Atlanta and Seattle. Delta is already the travel partner of the NWSL.
“As an airline partner of the WNBA,” commissioner Cathy Engelbert said in a statement, “this partnership not only elevates the travel experience for the players, but also underscores Delta and the WNBA’s shared dedication to enhancing the growth and visibility of women’s sports.”
When traveling by air, players had primarily flown commercial, with the exception of last year’s playoffs, when the competing teams were allowed charter flights. However, the pressure for charter flights grew upon Brittney Griner’s return to the U.S. after the Phoenix Mercury’s release from a Russia prison in late 2022. After being harassed by a social media provocateur while waiting for a commercial flight at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport, Griner was given the option to fly charter for the remainder of the Mercury’s road games in 2023.
For Delta, the agreement is a bit of a PR win in a challenging summer. The airliner was hit the hardest by last month’s CrowdStrike outage. Over five days in July, Delta canceled over 7,000 flights and lost upward of $500 million. The anger boiled over when Ed Bastion, the company’s CEO, traveled to Paris for the Summer Olympics just days after 1.3 million customers found themselves tangled up in the network issues. (Delta sponsors Team USA.)
The airliner also remains affiliated with the NBA through the Utah Jazz, which reprised the company’s naming rights for Delta Center ahead of the 2023-23 NBA season. The arena had used the name from its opening in 1991 through 2006, when EnergySolutions purchased those rights. Security company Vivint became the naming sponsor in 2015. Delta has been the charter airliner for most NBA teams, including the Jazz.
The NBA has its own new airline partner, as Emirates signed on to be the league’s “Global Airline.” The Dubai-based airliner is also the naming sponsor for the NBA Cup in-season tournament.
