The WNBA has been in existence for 27 years, and for its entire history, it has struggled to gain the attention of basketball and sports fans. Despite having very talented players throughout its short history, the WNBA has been relegated to playing in small arenas that are half-empty. Historically, there has not been much interest in women’s basketball until Caitlin Clark came along. Yet despite the explosion in interest, Clark was not selected as one of the Olympians representing the United States. This is a huge blunder on the part of the WNBA and a missed opportunity to further grow the sport.
Clark has been tremendous for the growth of the WNBA this season. She has accounted for a third of all the WNBA’s ad revenue this season. Caitlin Clark’s games are averaging 1.184 million viewers compared to 428k for other games where she is not present. The surprising part? All games last year averaged 301k viewers. This means that even in the non-Clark games, the WNBA is seeing a 42% increase in viewership. For the games where Clark plays, the WNBA is seeing a 294% increase in viewership.
Multiple times this year, teams have had to move from arenas with a 3-4,000 seating capacity to 20,000+ NBA-sized arenas to accommodate the interest in watching her play. The league is hitting 1 million+ viewers frequently, having surpassed that mark nine times this season despite not hitting 1 million viewers in the last 16 years.
Then came All-Star weekend, and the WNBA All-Star game saw 3.4 million viewers. This represented a 300% increase in viewership year over year and was the most-watched WNBA telecast since the 1997 inaugural season.
The question then is why the WNBA is not doing everything in its power to take advantage of Caitlin Clark? Why not use every opportunity to showcase her, market her, and continue to build a brand that has struggled for 27 years to find that one unicorn?
By not including Clark in the Olympic roster, the WNBA missed a golden opportunity to continue the momentum of having millions of fans watching every Olympic game, keeping track of women’s basketball through their social media feeds, and talking about women’s basketball in general. There was a lot of talk that she might not be deserving or taking someone else’s spot, but now Clark is not only on pace to win Rookie of the Year but she’s also closing in on the MVP award with the third-best odds to win the award as well.
If the WNBA wants to grow rather than being politically correct, they must take a page from the NBA on how they handled Michael Jordan. When Jordan came into the league, he was electrifying; he was doing things that had never been seen and dominating not just by scoring but with an aura that attracted viewers. For context, this was the same league that had tape-delayed finals games just three years before. Jordan was part of the ’84 Olympic team, he was named an NBA All-Star starter and won Rookie of the Year. As part of their marketing campaign, the NBA even held preseason games in non-NBA cities and spent the next fifteen years marketing Michael Jordan as a larger-than-life figure, fully embracing the “Air Jordan” persona. If there is one individual responsible for the growth of basketball into a global force, it is Michael Jordan.
Caitlin Clark is the Michael Jordan that the WNBA has been seeking. She has fallen into their laps after 27 years. Not including her in the Olympics is a blunder and a missed opportunity. Hopefully, for the sake of the sport, they can take a page from the NBA and maximize Clark’s influence, embracing her like the NBA embraced Jordan. The WNBA is ready to explode, and Clark is the detonator that will catapult the league to the next level.
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