Despite a lot of roster shakeup during the offseason, the Dallas Wings had a rough 2025 season. For much of the year, they hovered near or at the bottom of the standings. The team’s inconsistency, inefficiency, injuries, and lack of cohesion gave them a 10-34 finish and a missed playoff berth. They, however, still got a silver lining, thanks to Paige Bueckers!

When she joined the team as the No. 1 overall pick in the WNBA draft, the team ranked among the lower end of the W in social media presence. But her eclectic playing style, which even earned her the ROTY title, and her laid-back personality acted as a catalyst for the Wings’ growth. And now, it’s just starting to show up!

According to Blinkfire, the Dallas Wings led all major pro sports teams in engagement per follower this season. Even with just five full-time social media staff, the Wings achieved this milestone while growing their audience to 850,000 across X, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube, a gain of 400,000 followers since April.

But a large part of this success goes to Bueckers, who is acclaimed for attracting more fans. “This amazing catalyst for growth,” shared Wings’ CMO Elyse Slayton about Bueckers in an interview with SBJ. “What we do with her is what defines our story as a brand… But we don’t just want to have tunnel vision. One incredible player has the opportunity to change the trajectory of the team in terms of our notoriety and people that are paying attention, but we need to get people to stay by becoming fans of the sport and the rest of the team.”

But we already saw this coming in the beginning itself. The growth on social media is, after all, impacted by the impact on the court. According to a report from Front Office Sports, the season opener between the Dallas Wings and Lynx averaged over 612,000 viewers. And this was a notable 121 percent increase from the previous season. The next significant game was when Bueckers returned to Connecticut with her Dallas jersey on. She scored her then-career-best 21 points to beat the Sun 109-87 on their home court. She went 15-0 at the building when she played for UConn during her collegiate time, so we already knew she had a huge fan following there.

And they showed up too. Along with her former teammates, the game saw a sellout crowd with fans wearing her No. 5 jersey from both UConn and the Wings. She even received a loud standing ovation from the crowd when introduced before the game. But it was never about seeing the Wings win. When they fell in the game against Indy on June 27, they still managed to hit the mark as the same game broke the record for the most attended WNBA game in Texas history.

The game welcomed a historic crowd of 20,409 at the American Airlines Center, enough to surpass other league teams like the now-dissolved Houston Comets and San Antonio Silver Stars, who held the attendance records. And even before she played a single game, people had begun to prepare for her impact.

As Casey Washburn-Barksdale, a season ticket holder, said, “It’s exciting, I mean, Dallas has number one pick, and we want to be a number one team. Her, along with a lot of the other great players we already have, we’re looking forward to the chemistry they can have on the court, and like I said we want to fill the seats, we want the stands to be filled with Dallas fans, and all screaming for them.”

University of Texas at Dallas economics professor Kurt Beron had also pointed to the local economy. “Particularly after the move to downtown Dallas, I would anticipate an increase in spending on nearby restaurants and bars. I would expect more revenue going to rideshare companies, taxis, more use of DART,” said Beron. “I think that ticket prices will again be perhaps more affordable than going to see the Dallas Mavericks, certainly, the Dallas Cowboys, but the prices, I suspect, will be going up, I think again, that’s just natural.”

But don’t give all the credit to the Rookie of the Year, though.

Wings’ social media team played a vital role, too!

The Dallas Wings have a social media team featuring Nelson, Davis, content producer Amaya Lacy, graphic designer Jaylen Miller, photographers, and videographers to capture every moment to later use on social media. They work directly on the team’s pages, constantly on their laptops and phones, checking for new information.

The pressure is kind of the same as with the players on the court. For example, on season finale night, when Bueckers passed A’ja for the third-most points scored in a rookie season in W’s history, the team had to mark the occasion. So immediately, Wings’ PR team notified Nelson, who then passed it to her team. And that’s how it’s done on time.

But the work isn’t just done yet. They have to try hit-and-miss strategies multiple times before settling on a particular approach. This year, the team is using different strategies across each platform. They’ve got the largest following on Instagram at 338,000, where they’re using in-depth storytelling about the team, players, and sometimes even posting highlights. For X, they go to real-time stats and highlights, while Facebook is used for factual updates and information.

Since TikTok is tilted more toward fun, they post BTS and locker room content to showcase player personalities. “If you can get everything on one platform, people will only look at the Wings on one platform. But we want people to engage with them on multiple platforms because it’s more time that they’re spending with the team,” Slayton said.

And yes, what you see is something the team wants you to see, as they post it online. Your impressions, views, and overall engagements are what they get in return. “We’ve learned that we don’t need to be posting 15 to 20 times a night, because our engagement tanks if we do that… If we’re putting it on our feed, it’s going to live forever. So we need to be intentional about what we post,” Nelson added. So, despite the league’s 10-34 record, they expect brighter days. They’ve already added two games at the American Airlines Center in advance of playing home games next season.