‘Battle of the Sexes 2.0’: WNBA champs offered $1 million to beat boys’ basketball team

A squad of Dallas teenage boys famously beat the high-flying U.S. women’s national soccer team in 2017, and now Clay Travis wants to see if women’s basketball can do better.

Mr. Travis, host of the “OutKick the Show” podcast, offered to pay $1 million to the Las Vegas Aces, winners of the 2022 and 2023 Women’s National Basketball Association titles, if they can beat a boys’ high school state championship team in a one-game contest.

Now BetOnline.ag has upped the ante, announcing Thursday it will award $1 million to the boys’ squad if it wins.

“We want to see this game happen — heck, I think the whole basketball world wants to see this happen, and that’s why we’ve committed to pay the million to the boys’ team should they win,” Dave Mason, BetOnline.ag brand manager, said in a news release. “This would be an enormous event that would shatter viewership records and generate a ton of attention for the high school, the WNBA and the sport as a whole.”

The challenge invoked comparisons to 1973’s legendary “Battle of the Sexes” between women’s tennis great Billie Jean King, then 29, and 55-year-old Bobby Riggs, a former top-ranked men’s player. Ms. King won the match in three sets.

I’ll put a million dollars on the line, your WNBA champion team against a 2024 high school boy’s state champion team of my choice. You guys win, you get a million bucks of my money, my team wins, you all pay me a million and I give it all to the boy’s high school team. You in? https://t.co/mYheqnZJLz

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) October 27, 2023

That contest in Houston was hailed as a milestone in women’s sports, but this time, there’s considerably more at stake.

A loss by the best women’s pro basketball team in the nation — and likely the world — to a group of adolescent boys would deal a public-relations blow to the transgender movement’s push for male-born athletes to compete in girls’ and women’s sports based on gender identity.

Some advocates for transgender athletes insist they have no inherent physical advantages over girls and women, a claim hotly disputed by former elite competitors such as Riley Gaines, Martina Navratilova and Nancy Hogshead-Makar.

Foes of male-born players in female sports often invoke the 2017 scrimmage between the U.S. women’s national soccer team, among the best in the world, and the FC Dallas under-15 boys’ team. The teen boys won 5-2.

The WNBA has not commented publicly on the offer, which was spurred by Mr. Travis’ declaration that “a good state championship-caliber high school boys’ team would smoke the best team in the WNBA” after the Aces won their second straight championship.

Las Vegas point guard Chelsea Gray was having none of it. “Dumbass,” she wrote on X in response to the Oct. 25 post.

Mr. Travis swung back two days later by unveiling his offer on X and tagging the Aces player’s account.

“I’ll put a million dollars on the line, your WNBA champion team against a 2024 high school boys’ state champion team of my choice,” Mr. Travis tweeted. “You guys win, you get a million bucks of my money; my team wins, you all pay me a million and I give it all to the boys’ high school team. You in?”

Now that BetOnline has offered to pay $1 million to the boys’ team, the Aces would owe nothing if they lost.

Gray has not responded publicly to the challenge, but Mr. Travis hasn’t given up, predicting that such a matchup “would probably be the most watched WNBA game of all time.”

He doubled down on his pitch Thursday after BetOnline jumped into the action.

“WNBA players have long complained they are underpaid,” Mr. Travis tweeted. “Now they have a chance to make $1 million by winning a single game against a high school boys’ team. (The boys would still get a million if they win too).”

Not everyone agreed with Mr. Travis’ odds. NBA player Patrick Beverley was in the Aces’ corner, saying Mr. Travis “has to be on drugs” for thinking the boys would defeat the women.

“Twitter [X] chatter is arguing both sides of this matchup. In a case for the Aces, people point to professionalism and root fundamentals,” BetOnline said. “Supporters of the high schoolers argue that the sheer physical disparity would be too much for the women to overcome.”