Has the WNBA treated Caitlin Clark unfairly? | The Herd
Caitlin Clark had 19 assists in the Indiana Fever’s loss to the Dallas Wings, setting a WNBA record. Clark was left off of the Women’s Olympics team, and left off of the WNBA All-Star skills competition. Colin Cowherd says the way the WNBA is trea…
Indiana University finance professor Ryan Brewer, who specializes in valuation, told the Indy Star that he estimated Caitlin Clark to be responsible for 26.5% of the WNBA’s league-wide activity for the 2024 season, including attendance, merchandise sales and television.
Brewer went so far as to estimate that one of every six tickets sold at a WNBA arena can be attributed to Clark.
Meanwhile, Clark’s WNBA salary this past season was $76,535. Her salary in 2025 will be $78,066.
It’s not just the WNBA that is cashing in big off of Clark’s underpaid presence, according to Brewer. The professor also estimated that Clark brings more than $36 million to the city of Indianapolis’ economy per year.
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Indiana Fever guard Lexie Hull and Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark watch from the bench during the first round of the 2024 WNBA Playoffs at Mohegan Sun Arena. (Mark Smith-Imagn Images)
“The numbers are so staggering,” Brewer told the outlet. “They don’t even seem real.”
Clark’s impact on the WNBA product and earning potential showed up in very clear indicators throughout the season, especially in the playoffs.
After Clark drew a WNBA record 1.84 million viewers to her first playoff game against the Connecticut Sun on Sept. 22, while competing with an NFL Sunday, she followed it up with another record audience of 2.54 million viewers for Game 2.
Clark and the Indiana Fever lost both those games, however, sending Clark home for the offseason.
INSIDE CAITLIN CLARK’S IMPACT ON MEN’S BASKETBALL
Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark drives to the basket as Sun guard DiJonai Carrington defends during a first-round playoff game, Sept. 25, 2024, in Uncasville, Connecticut. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill)
After Clark’s team was eliminated, the first game between the Aces and Liberty, a rematch of last year’s WNBA finals between two of the league’s most popular and successful teams, drew an audience of 929,000, ESPN announced – 50% less than the Fever’s Game 1 against the Sun.
Meanwhile, Game 1 of the Sun-Lynx series had an audience of just around 650,000.
Both of those games have also fallen well behind some of Clark’s regular season games in terms of viewership. In early September, Clark’s Indiana Fever played in front of a TV audience of 1.26 million viewers, in a game against the Minnesota Lynx that was played at the same time as a Week-1 Friday night NFL game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers.
In Clark’s first regular season finale against the Washington Mystics on Sept. 19, a total of 20,711 fans that showed up at Capital One Arena set a new record for the highest-attended WNBA regular-season contest.
Clark made the Fever the most-watched team in the WNBA by a landslide in her rookie year, as the 14 most-watched WNBA games of the season all included the Fever.
Clark’s teammate, point guard Kelsey Mitchell, told reporters in September that Clark is the reason she has more attention and fans.
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Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark works to the basket against Dallas Wings guard Sevgi Uzun, Sept. 1, 2024, in Arlington, Texas. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)
“I think the reality of it is that I don’t think people would know without [Clark],” Mitchell said when asked about getting more attention and fans this season. “She’s done an unbelievable job of bringing her own fans and people that support her, but, for me, I kinda laugh at it and I embrace it at the same time because I always flew under the radar. I’ve always kind of been that person that is very conservative, very introvert, so now I get to see the flip side of it.”
Shooting guard Erica Wheeler told reporters that Clark’s presence this season has resulted in the team needing to be more resilient to scrutiny.
“All we do is have fun with Caitlin Clark, who never takes anything seriously,” Wheeler said. “I tell people all the time she’s really a kid at heart.… There’s moments where we need to be serious, and we are serious, but a majority of the time, we’re having fun. Because you gotta understand, the outside world was really trying to get inside this building. We just didn’t let it.”
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