Caitlin Clark: Shaping the Future of Women’s College Basketball

TFD – Dive into the groundbreaking impact of Caitlin Clark’s record-breaking season and her influence on women’s college basketball.

With almost three million spectators watching on television and 15,000 enthralled with the event, Caitlin Clark stands by herself on the Iowa Hawkeyes’ home court.

Her free throw is made. Without effort. Next up, another. The crowd at home explodes.

Clark’s routine points earlier this month sent him into the pantheon of sports, surpassing the all-time collegiate basketball scoring mark for both men and women.

For Clark, 22, this has been a season to remember. Her skill has contributed to a surge in interest in women’s basketball as March Madness began this week.

NBA player Steph Curry described her historic accomplishment as “must-see TV” during a CBS interview earlier this month.

It seems that viewers concur.

With regular season games averaging 476,000 viewers on ESPN platforms—a 37% increase in viewership—college women’s basketball is having one of its greatest seasons ever this year.

According to Michael Mulvihill, president of insight and analytics at Fox Sports, the audience for women’s college basketball has increased by more than 60% across all national networks and more than 48% on games aired by the network, where it is averaging a bigger audience than its men’s counterpart.

According to Jon Lewis, who has been monitoring sports ratings on his website Sports Media Watch since 2006, Clark, a six-foot senior noted for her shooting and passing ability, is unquestionably the main factor behind those figures. Lewis likened her to superstars like LeBron James and Michael Jordan as well as to Curry.

“These are the type of players that, when they’re playing, people tune in and pay attention to in a way that they don’t for other players,” he said.

Clark’s postseason performance, which enabled her to surpass Pete Maravich’s record, is reminiscent of Curry’s final year at Davidson. Curry averaged 28.6 points and 39% from three-point range per game, while Clark averages 31.9 points and 38% from the field.

Growth in college women’s basketball is indicated by TV ratings

Although Clark is drawing in viewers, women’s college basketball is growing for reasons other than “Clarkonomics,” as basketball analyst Debbie Antonelli put it. Its growing popularity corresponds with women’s sports’ general growth in prominence.

This increase can be attributed, among other things, to better TV coverage—such as games airing on major networks during prime times—and the way young female athletes have utilized the Name, Image, and Likeness, or NIL—platform, which has made it possible for high school and college athletes to receive sponsorship money.

According to data from SportsMediaWatch, Iowa and Clark have been featured in six of the ten most watched women’s basketball games this season, with each game drawing in over a million people. This season’s highest viewership surpassed all women’s college basketball matches since 1999, when an average of 3.88 million viewers watched a rivalry game between Tennessee and Connecticut.

While “mainstream” fans have long been familiar with programs like Tennessee and UConn, Melissa Isaacson, an assistant professor of sports journalism at Northwestern, noted that recent years have seen an increase in interest in more recent players. Notably, the national audience for last year’s championship, which drew in about 10 million people, was introduced to Iowa’s Clark and LSU’s Angel Reese.

According to Lewis, increased funding for media coverage of women’s sports is another factor contributing to the rise in women’s college basketball.

For instance, the NCAA has only been adding the “March Madness” branding to the women’s tournament for the past three years.

“A large portion of it is, ‘Hey, let’s show these games where people can watch them,'” Lewis remarked. “The women’s game is experiencing a genuine phenomenon that transcends beyond Caitlin Clark and is unparalleled in the realm of women’s sports.”

Furthermore, the seller stated that as of March 19, fans who used TickPick to purchase Final Four tickets had done so six times more for the women’s final than for the men’s.

NIL gives athletes more authority over their sports.

One of the largest segments of the market for name, image, and likeness sponsorships is college women’s basketball players.

Among the major participants in the market for Name, Image, and Likeness sponsorships are collegiate women’s basketball players.

Football players receive the most money at NIL, which is only in its third year, but female basketball players are also bringing in big sponsorships.

Data from Opendorse, a platform that facilitates brand negotiations between athletes and sponsors, indicates that by the end of the third year of NIL, sponsorships for college women’s basketball are expected to surpass $60 million.

Although women’s stars like Clark, Reese, and Cameron Brink and Paige Bueckers have enormous fan bases, top men’s collegiate players like Reed Sheppard, Rob Dillingham, and Cody Williams—who might be selected in this year’s NBA draft—seem to have smaller followings.

Among those men’s players, Dillingham has the most Instagram followers (669,000), followed by Clark, Bueckers, and Reese, who each have over a million.

Opendorse’s head of communications Sam Weber stated, “By making these deals possible, [NIL] has shed more light on the individuals and, by proxy, on their sports.”

To keep her lucrative NIL deals, there was even talk that Clark would decide to stay in college instead of declaring for the WNBA draft. For instance, Bueckers of UConn decided to remain for the fifth year of eligibility that the league extended to athletes impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Will the WNBA benefit from this attention?

The fact that women’s college basketball has a larger platform than the WNBA contributed to the rumors that Clark might continue her education.

Game 4 of the WNBA championships peaked with 1.3 million viewers, averaging 889,000, while Clark and Reese played for nearly 10 million people in the previous year’s collegiate championship. Sports Media Watch statistics shows that 728,000 viewers watched the entire four-game series on average.

Lewis claims that historically, collegiate women’s basketball has attracted a larger following than the WNBA. This is partially due to the fact that it is newer: According to Isaacson, a number of collegiate women’s programs had garnered sizable fan bases by the league’s 1997 first season.

However, there is a history of collegiate athletes visiting the WNBA with sizable fan bases. Lewis claims that the first game of 2004 for Diana Taurasi, the five-time Olympic gold winner, all-time WNBA scoring leader, and three-time WNBA champion, was the most watched on ESPN/ABC.

Large crowds attended Candace Parker’s 2008 debut game, who is a three-time WNBA champion and two-time gold medallist, Lewis continued.

The cost of tickets to see the Indiana Fever, who are interested in Clark for their first-round selection in the WNBA draft, has more than doubled.

Perhaps a national title would be the apex of Clark’s collegiate career. She will have gone beyond the college game, though, and will have attracted a horde of new, interested fans with her if that outcome doesn’t materialize.