What We Got Wrong About Caitlin Clark

There’s one thing I misunderstood — or at least vastly underestimated — about Caitlin Clark’s impact on the WNBA. There’s also one thing I think almost everyone misunderstood about the WNBA’s response to Caitlin Clark and her impact on the league.

The WNBA playoffs begin Sunday, with Clark’s Indiana Fever tentatively set to face the Connecticut Sun in a best-of-three series.

Historically, the league has struggled to gain ratings or attention beyond its hardcore fan base, especially when up against pro and college football competition. Last year’s Finals averaged just 728,000 viewers on ESPN — actually up 30 percent, but still a paltry number. The playoffs averaged just 470,000 viewers.

Not this time.

This is the Clark factor I didn’t see coming.

Would her arrival after a legendary and legendarily popular career at the University of Iowa bring her some extra attention and some new fans? Absolutely. Clark is one of the most popular athletes in America. TV ratings, media attention, jersey sales, and so on would skyrocket.

That said, interest at one level of the sport doesn’t always equate to interest at the next level — or any other. The U.S. women’s national soccer team has come off World Cups and Olympic gold medals with plenty of momentum and mega-famous stars — Alex Morgan, Hope Solo, Carli Lloyd, etc. Still, the impact on the National Women’s Soccer League has been a resurgence, not a sustained surge.

While Clark’s playing style appealed to audiences, it also benefited from a number of built-in factors.

First, Iowa has a much larger fan base than any other WNBA team, so they didn’t have to create Hawkeye fans when they got to Iowa City; they just had to get a higher percentage of Hawkeye fans interested in women’s basketball. Second, most of their biggest games were against equally — or even more — popular teams … Ohio State, Indiana, Connecticut, LSU, South Carolina, and so on.

Clark and Iowa became an event wherever they went. That’s different than the interest of night in, night out.

And then there was the NCAA Tournament draw: the brackets, the one-and-done, the March/April timing when the nation is focused on basketball. The women’s Final Four always scores better than the WNBA.

The 2024 national title game between Iowa and South Carolina drew a staggering 18.9 million viewers, but how many of them would follow Clark during an extended WNBA regular season without the drama of March Madness? Would they watch a boring game in July?

Well, a lot of them. The WNBA ratings growth this year has been almost incomprehensible.

ESPN reported that it averaged 1.2 million viewers for its games, up from 440,000 a year earlier. For comparison, the NBA averaged 1.56 million viewers for games on ESPN and TNT last season. About 3.44 million tuned in to watch the WNBA All-Star Game, compared to 5.5 million for the NBA All-Star Game.

The Fever alone had five games with over two million viewers and 18 with over a million. And this wasn’t just on Sunday afternoons on ABC.

A Friday night game on August 30 against Chicago drew 1.6 million viewers to Ion, easily the largest audience in the history of the low-profile cable network. Two games on NBATV drew 600,000 or more viewers.

The Clark fans came and never left. They followed every game. Some of them undoubtedly started watching other teams. Yes, Clark was the main attraction, but more people today know the brilliance of A’ja Wilson and Breanna Stewart than they did a year ago.

It suggests that while the Fever’s playoff ratings may set new records, there may be a sustained and long-term surge across all postseason games that far exceeds any reasonable expectation — especially mine — of what Clark would deliver.

Now, to the part that seemed to bother the league and many fans. Clark demanded massive attention and sellouts everywhere she went. With that came some understandable resentment from returning players and many loyal fans.

There were endless complaints that the WNBA players and coaches should have embraced and thanked Clark for what she did for the league. But having so many people working against her — or sometimes literally pushing her down — made the league even more interesting.

The best thing that happened for everyone was the cold shoulders and hard fouls, the Olympic snubbing and Sheryl Swoopes and TV commentators who seemed to dismiss her game. The more pressure Clark was put under, the more her fans — and all fans — had reason to tune in to see how she would respond.

Rivalries are great for sports. Controversies sell. If Clark had been embraced, accepted and praised, the 2024 season would have lacked the punch that would have made it an even more intriguing sequel.

Clark has slowly adapted to the physical side of the WNBA, while her teammates have adapted to her style of play. She enters the playoffs as one of the top five players in the league, and now regularly scores 25 or 30 points a game while hitting logo 3-pointers and throwing passes the length of the court. That’s what drew so many people to her in the first place.

No, there probably won’t be a playoff game that draws 18.9 million viewers, but Caitlin Clark hasn’t just exceeded expected popularity levels as a rookie; the backlash against her and her success have helped her do it.

Sunday is Game 1 — directly against the NFL. This time, there will definitely be a lot of people watching.