Free agent WNBA guard Sophie Cunningham added more Instagram followers this season than any other player in the league’s top 50 combined, and more than any NBA player, according to a report released Tuesday by branding and social media agency bknown.
Looking at the period from May 8 to Nov. 2, bknown found Cunningham gained more than 2,952,195 followers, taking her from 1,403,868 to 4,356,063, more than tripling her audience over the course of the season.
By comparison, the other 49 most-followed WNBA players combined added nearly two million followers in that same span. On the NBA side, Knicks star Jalen Brunson gained just over a million followers, Victor Wembanyama added 763,134, and Karl-Anthony Towns picked up 384,306.
Cunningham has said she welcomes the attention her rising profile brings to women’s basketball, but the surge in visibility has also come with a darker side. The 30-year-old told the “No Hesitation” podcast on Monday that she has hired round-the-clock security.
“I will say… definitely in certain places people kind of knew who I was and I couldn’t really go anywhere. Now it doesn’t matter what state, what city, it’s everywhere. And so I’ve hired security and they’re going to start traveling with me actually next week 24/7. So that’s a little different. It kind of stops you from your regular routine.”
That decision followed an earlier admission Cunningham made on “This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von,” where she said the FBI is monitoring roughly 20 people she considers stalkers.
“There’s also a lot of kind of crazy people to. We do have a lot of stalkers, I know I do… And that’s the negative side of things that people don’t think about… I have 20, I think, people kind of that the FBI are watching for me.”
One of those individuals, Kevin Singh, delivered a package to Cunningham at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in September 2025 containing a letter and a Guns N’ Roses T-shirt sprayed with men’s cologne. The 48-year-old was arrested in June and faces felony charges of stalking and intimidation, along with a misdemeanor charge.
Cunningham’s visibility rose sharply after she told ESPN in a July feature interview that she wants to “protect young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.” The remark intensified an already heated debate within the league over transgender athletes and prompted rallies at Indiana Fever games organized by both fans and gender activist groups.
Cunningham is now a free agent heading into the 2027 offseason after the Fever were eliminated by the Aces in the first round of the playoffs.
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