Caitlin Clark is a big reason why the WNBA will be just fine in her injury absence

USA Today

2 days ago

Caitlin Clark is a big reason why the WNBA will be just fine in her injury absence
The Caitlin Clark effect is real; I felt it grow in my living room as I tuned into Iowa during the 2024 women's NCAA tournament to continue following what started in full during that 2023 Iowa run.
As a sportswriter keyed in on viral moments during a major basketball tournament, Clark's sensational 2024 run was the sun, moon and stars. No player broke out more during that tournament than Clark, as the wider nation started to realize this feisty Hawkeyes point guard was pretty darn good at shooting 3-pointers.
Since it's obviously helpful to get the full context of a game while you're writing about moments from it, I asked my wife Carlie if it was alright to pop Iowa March Madness games on as Clark's team advanced. She was quite amendable, even if she watched about as much basketball as she did reruns of Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
As with millions across the country, our interest in Clark grew and grew the more we watched. She was magnetizing on the court in a way you hadn't seen in quite some time; her ability to marry the blistering fundamentals of basketball excellence with the gladiator-style thrill of competition in the arena felt generational. Sure, there were past players as good and even better than Clark, but she was singular.
Watching her in the national title game turned into, "Hey, let's watch her get drafted into the WNBA." That grew into watching Indiana Fever games to see how she transitioned into the pros. Then came the "We're going to Indiana to see a Fever game for your birthday!" Then came the shirts, the regular appointments to see a struggling Indiana team slowly find its wings as the season wore on. The flurry of Clark posts for the job; the multi-nights a week of WNBA games on in a household that used to be exclusively tuned into anything but.
A few months turned our house from a WNBA dead zone into a league pass subscription, watching just about all of Clark's and the Fever's ups and downs through that banner rookie campaign. It was a transformative year for the WNBA in so many ways, as Clark's and Chicago Sky rookie forward Angel Reese's respective fan bases flocked to the pros and a league that had long been pushed to the sides finally earned some real national prominence from the public.
Sure, the Clark-Reese "rivalry" that started during the 2023 women's NCAA championship game certainly fueled those Fever-Sky games to must-see television status last summer, but the effect was widening in ways I'm not sure anybody could predict. Clark and the Fever's Olympic break sparked a stellar August-to-September run that earned Indiana a playoff berth, one cut quickly by a more experienced Connecticut Sun.
Once Clark's run was over, I kind of assumed our television might go WNBA radio silence for a bit, until the next Fever season kicked in the following spring. That wasn't the case in the slightest, as Carlie wanted to keep watching the rest of the WNBA playoffs to see who would come out on top. I wanted to see, too. Like many, we came to the WNBA to see Clark. We stayed for everything else.
A thrilling WNBA finals with record viewership turned into a full slate of Clark-less Unrivaled games in the winter, as our house turned into just about all of the 3-on-3 games in Miami. Carlie was just as interested in the other Fever standouts like Aliyah Boston and Lexie Hull and WNBA stars like Napheesa Collier, Sabrina Ionescu, Breanna Stewart and Arike Ogunbowale. She became familiar with just about everyone playing.
Now that we're in the 2025 WNBA regular season, we're getting our money's worth with our league pass subscription. Carlie wants to watch just about every game she can, toggling between various matchups on nights with multiple contests to see what's happening around the W. Even when Clark isn't playing, she's just as turned in as ever. Sure, the high-fives and ref gripes really kick in when Clark and the Fever are playing, but it's still a pretty revolutionary turnaround from where we were before Clark's 2024 tournament run. Even when Clark isn't on television, the WNBA is still at the forefront of our television habits on any given evening.
I think about the growth in my own house when thinking about the discourse surrounding Clark's quad injury sidelining her for a couple of weeks and how a brooding storm cloud seems to be floating over the league as people wring hands about what Clark's absence for the league will mean for the grander WNBA.
What if it really doesn't mean that much?
Falling ticket prices on second-hand websites has created a narrative that the general public is about to drop the WNBA like a hot potato until Clark's triumphant return, which feels genuinely ridiculous when you consider how much the league has grown since Clark arrived in 2024.
The ticket narrative feels particularly flimsy; second-hand sellers probably dropped their own prices out of immediate concern they wouldn't get nearly much return on investment for Clark-less Fever games, revenue the league's teams already pocketed when those tickets were purchased by the original buyers at first sell. The novice fan who just wants to watch Clark bank 3-pointers might not want to put forth the effort to make a night out of a WNBA game, but there will obviously still be plenty of people in attendance for those games.
Sure, that decline in general venue attendance might affect the in-house money those teams and arenas make on concessions and merchandise sales for the time being, but financially, the league has largely already made its ticket money on the Clark hype unless there are unsold seats at original point of sale still standing by tipoff.
Also, just watch how attendance continues to ramp up at Clark-less WNBA games across the country. Obviously, fans of other teams aren't just going to pack it up and stay home because a player on another team suffered a minor injury and will miss a couple of weeks of action. Imagine if we argued the NFL might lose its fans for a few weeks if Patrick Mahomes missed a few games for the Kansas City Chiefs?
The Clark effect on the WNBA, the reason for all the fretting in the first place of what should be an abbreviated absence, has already taken its foothold. The titanic ratings increase in general WNBA games since Clark's 2024 arrival spoke for itself. In a report about the highs and lows of Unrivaled's inaugural season, Front Office Sports' Colin Salao shared that WNBA games in 2024 averaged 1.2 million viewers on ESPN last season, up from a 505,000 WNBA average across ABC, ESPN and CBS the year before. ESPN estimated its 2023-to-2024 WNBA bump in regular-season WNBA viewership as a 170-percent increase across all platforms.
Clark not participating in Unrivaled probably put a ceiling on its general reach past the general WNBA fan base, but averaging 221,000 viewers across the regular season and playoffs on TNT and truTV for an offseason women's 3-on-3 league still felt like a clear win for Unrivaled in its first go-around.
'We've had this kind of consistent audience and that for me is foundational,' TNT Sports chief content officer Craig Barry told Salao about that Unrivaled's first run on television. 'You can continue to grow that audience, especially if you bring in new talent and make a certain amount of adjustments.'
The 2025 WNBA grown on television has already impressed. Clark's Fever taking on Reese's Sky brought in the biggest WNBA regular-season television audience in 25 years with 2.7 million viewers. Just this past weekend, Indiana's Saturday game against the New York Liberty brought in 2.22 million viewers, CBS' second-biggest WNBA game in its history of broadcasting the league.
Clark's effect on the sport is absolutely real, and it'd be foolish to assume Indiana's games until her return will bring in this level of viewership. However, the WNBA doesn't necessarily need Clark every time it broadcasts to bring in a fair share of viewers. The 2025 WNBA Draft, where UConn's Paige Bueckers went first overall to the Dallas Wings, averaged 1.25 million viewers on ESPN, the second-biggest audience in its history.
WNBA arenas are selling out across the country, with Insider Sport's Callum Williams sharing that the "WNBA's 2025 opening weekend in total saw an average attendance of 8,487 across all eight games, a 36.7% increase from the opening week last year." Williams' report estimated "89% of arenas were near full capacity" during the WNBA's 2025 opening weekend.
Two things can be true. Clark's absence will probably pull Indiana ratings down a bit until her return, and the WNBA will be absolutely fine as it stands until Clark gets healthy. There is too much compelling data across the entire league to surmise that the WNBA is a damp paper towel ready to collapse in on itself with no Clark.
Clark's rising tide lifted all WNBA boats, and it's a testament to her widespread reach that the league will be just fine in her absence as opposed to it crumbling under the weight of it. If the WNBA completely falls apart while Clark is out, then the Clark effect was never real in the first place. The entire drawing point of Clark's ascent was that she would bring casual viewers into the WNBA and immerse them into its various teams, players and storylines. Clark served as a generational entry point to hook new WNBA fans for life.
Sure, some of Clark's fans will continue to fold their arms and refuse to watch anything but her, but there's enough in the simple data to suggest a lot of those people have transitioned into general league fans. Consider those who saw the Clark bump play out and wanted to see how the team in their backyard played into that equation. Consider those prone to bandwagoning that wanted to support a more immediate contender like the New York Liberty, Las Vegas Aces and Minnesota Lynx. Consider (gasp) the fans who were already following a growing WNBA before Clark's arrival and won't go anywhere anytime soon.
Clark's injury is a really unfortunate setback for a Fever team still finding its rhythm with a largely new roster and a new coaching staff, but Clark and Indiana will be more than fine in the long haul. She will get better, she will return to the court, the historic television ratings will stabilize and the get-in price will once again spike. Until then, the WNBA will continue on as scheduled, maybe without record-breaking television audiences, but there will still be packed arenas, exciting games and plenty of interest from hardcore and general fans alike.
It's a genuine insult to Clark's tireless work to grow the league with her play and advocacy to suggest all of her efforts will be in vain the second she's not able to play while rehabbing an injury. It's an insult to all of the excellent women athletes who have kept causal fans watching past when Clark's Fever play. It's an insult to the WNBA at large to suggest the entire operation will cease to earn relevancy until one single player gets healthy.
I know, at least at my house, league pass will continue to play regularly until Clark's return. I have a feeling we won't be alone. Clark being out stinks for Fever and WNBA fans alike, but the ship will keep on sailing.