Abstract. This study examines the political economy of women’s professional basketball in the United States, including both the American Basketball League (ABL) and the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA). To do so, we employ the structure-conductperformance paradigm (hereafter SCP) from industrial organization. In addition to the importance of television revenues and corporate sponsorships to the success of the leagues, we find evidence of economies of scope, bilateral monopoly issues, and reverse causality in the SCP paradigm as applied to women’s professional basketball in the United States.

Keywords: structure-conduct-performance paradigm; economies of scope; bilateral monopoly; pro sports.