LOS ANGELES – After a dazzling college career that smashed records on and off the basketball court, Caitlin Clark’s legacy as a trailblazing icon for women’s sport is already secure.
Now, as the 22-year-old prepares to be chosen with the No. 1 pick in next week’s WNBA (Women’s National Basketball Association) draft, experts are predicting that she may well have the same kind of transformative effect on women’s professional basketball.
Cathy Engelbert, the WNBA’s commissioner, said on April 8 that Clark and the next generation of women’s basketball players will be economic engines that will ensure the league’s financial footing for the next 30 years.
Engelbert told CNBC that the WNBA expects to see its existing media deals double in value, from around US$50 million (S$67.3 million) a year to US$100 million, when they are next negotiated in 2025.
“We hope to at least double our rights fees,” she said. “Women’s sports rights fees have been undervalued for too long. So we have this enormous opportunity at a time when the media landscape is changing so much.”
Engelbert feels that the arrival in the WNBA of Clark and other college stars such as Louisiana State University’s Angel Reese and South Carolina’s Kamilla Cardoso could have the same kind of impact as the 1980s rivalry between Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, which helped create the modern NBA.
“I think we’re setting the league up with this next media rights deal not just for the next three to five years but for the next 30,” she added.
The WNBA class of 2024 will bring with them built-in audiences from college basketball and, significantly, substantial social media followings.
Clark’s 289,000 followers on X is nearly 150,000 followers more than Breanna Stewart, the current WNBA Most Valuable Player. Reese will bring an X following of 416,000 to the WNBA.
Clark’s impact on the business of college basketball in recent seasons is well documented. This season, she and the University of Iowa Hawkeyes set or broke attendance records in all but two of their games, according to the NCAA.
The April 7 collegiate championship between Clark’s Iowa and eventual winners South Carolina drew an average audience of 18.7 million viewers, ESPN reported.
That made it the most-watched women’s basketball game in history; and the most watched basketball game of any kind – men’s or women’s, college or professional – since 2019.
Already there are signs that the “Caitlin Clark Effect” is starting to wash over the WNBA.
The Indiana Fever, the club who are guaranteed to take Clark with the top draft pick on April 15, sold out seats for games against the Connecticut Sun and Los Angeles Sparks within hours of putting them on sale.
Courtside seats for the May 28 game with Los Angeles in Indianapolis were being offered for US$660 on one resale website. And it is not just Indiana who expect to cash in on Clark’s box-office appeal.
The Las Vegas Aces have already announced plans to move their July 2 home game against Indiana from their 12,000-seat Michelob Ultra Arena in Las Vegas to the bigger, 20,000-capacity T-Mobile Arena.
Mary Jo Kane, a professor at the University of Minnesota and founding director of its Tucker Centre for Research on Girls & Women in Sport, says Clark has been an “unprecedented tsunami of impact and influence”.
“No one has been able to capture the kind of magic or lightning in a bottle like Caitlin Clark has done,” she said.
Clark, meanwhile, is optimistic for the future.
“When you’re given the opportunity, women’s sport thrives,” she said. “We started the season playing in front of 55,000 people, now we’re ending it in front of 15 million people on TV.
“It just continues to get better and better and that’s never going to stop.”
She believes investment will be the key to success of women’s sport in the long term. “No matter what sport it is, believe and invest in them the same, and things are going to thrive,” said Clark.
“You see it with other sports. Continue to invest time, money and resources... That’s what’s going to drive women’s sports in future.” AFP, REUTERS
