WNBA Fever: Bettors Back Team to Win Finals After Offseason Moves

Bettors backing Fever, Clark to win WNBA Finals after huge offseason

After an offseason full of significant moves, bettors are backing the Indiana Fever to win the WNBA Finals ahead of the 2025 season.

Ever since she burst onto the WNBA scene in 2024 after her paradigm-shifting college career, Caitlin Clark has been the center of the professional women's basketball world, attracting massive viewership and putting the league into the mainstream sports spotlight. She also garnered lots of betting attention for the Indiana Fever last season, even if the team was not ready to compete for the WNBA Finals yet.

But 2025 could be different. During a free agency full of headline-grabbing transactions, the Fever made some of the biggest splashes of the offseason, acquiring DeWanna Bonner, Natasha Howard and Sophie Cunningham, among others. Combined with the last two Rookies of the Year in Clark (2024) and Aliyah Boston (2023), Indiana suddenly has a very formidable squad and the betting odds reflect that. The Fever are +350 to win the WNBA Finals at ESPN BET, tied for second with the Las Vegas Aces and trailing only the reigning champion New York Liberty (+230).

The hype has bettors backing the Fever en masse and sportsbooks sweating massive liability. ESPN BET, BetMGM and DraftKings all report huge handle on Indiana to win the Finals, with the latter reporting the highest money-share at an astounding 86%. FanDuel senior vice president and general manager Karol Corcoran told ESPN over email that the Fever have "more than seven times the number of bets to win this year's championship compared to the next team."

The big free agency swings and massive action moved Indiana from +1000 at open to +350 by early April at ESPN BET.

"The Fever have been immensely popular since we posted futures markets, and are our biggest liability by a wide margin," the sportsbook's North American sports trading director Adrian Horton said over email. "Bettors seem to have high expectations ahead of Caitlin Clark's second year."

Of course, Indiana didn't even sniff the Finals last season and will have to bypass perennial contenders like the Liberty, Aces and Minnesota Lynx to get there in 2025. Those teams have seen their odds fluctuate wildly from open by virtue of the Fever's action.

"The Liberty, Aces and Lynx didn't do a whole lot to help themselves, but they still have the key players," DraftKings sportsbook director Johnny Avello told ESPN. "When you're making these odds as an oddsmaker, you have to make sure you balance out your whole percentage."

Specifically, New York and Minnesota made no big transactions in free agency and, thus, saw their championship odds lengthen from +200 to +230 and +350 to +400, respectively, at ESPN BET.

Las Vegas, on the other hand, made one of the biggest moves of the offseason, exchanging Kelsey Plum for Jewell Loyd in a three-team trade. Bookmakers likely saw this as a positive, as the Aces shortened from +400 to +280 following the move, but then went back up to +350 as a result of Indiana action.

Those teams are still seeing their fair share of bets, attracting a combined 54% of all WNBA Finals wagers at DraftKings. In general, the odds and activity near the top would seem to indicate more parity in the upcoming season.

"The overall landscape of the 2025 WNBA title race is expected to be more competitive than it has been in the past," said Horton, who added that the combined implied probability of the top two teams winning the title in 2025 is much lower than it was in 2024.

There was other significant future line movement (or lack thereof) based on free agency moves outside of the top contenders, too.

The Los Angeles Sparks acquired Plum in the three-team deal and are expecting 2024 No. 2 pick Cameron Brink back from an ACL injury at some point this season, two developments that shot them from 100-1 at open to +4000. The Atlanta Dream, meanwhile, signed perennial All-Stars Brittney Griner and Brionna Jones, yet saw their odds remain a stagnant +5000 from open.

With WNBA popularity on the upswing, bookmakers are increasingly concentrating on the league and its offseason, and will be eagerly adjusting after the WNBA Draft and once the season tips off in May.

"This does take a lot of action and this is on the radar of a lot of bettors, so we certainly put more time into this now than we ever had before," said Avello. "We start learning about teams that are better than we thought, teams that are worse than we thought. So for us it's a constant adjustment."