Caitlin Clark has been crucial to WNBA. Her absence will be painful
"Once I found out Caitlin wasn't playing, it didn't make sense for us to fly to Indianapolis," Kopecky said in a phone interview Tuesday. "We are Caitlin fans before Fever fans. She's the biggest draw, that's who the girls want to see. That was the whole point of going to Indy, seeing Caitlin Clark. When she was injured, we thought, let's just postpone until August."
Kopecky and his family are not alone. Ticket prices for the next four Fever games on the secondary market are plummeting as fans as well as the WNBA itself begin to grapple with the reality that the biggest draw in the history of women's basketball, and one of the greatest attractions in all of sports, men's and women's, will not be around for awhile. It's happening most dramatically with tickets for the June 7 Fever-Sky game at the 23,500-seat United Center in Chicago, where Clark is such an overwhelming draw that ticket prices have fallen more than 300 percent in less than two days.
I can personally confirm the pronounced change in interest in Fever games without Clark. A week ago, I bought four tickets on StubHub to take my sports-playing nieces to the Fever-Washington Mystics game Wednesday night in Baltimore. Tickets in the same row are now going for less than half of what I paid. I can only imagine what they will cost by game time. Perhaps they'll be giving them away. And yes, we are still going to the game.
Ironically, the reason the game is being played in Baltimore is because the Mystics decided to move it from their 4,200-seat D.C. venue to the 14,000-seat CFG Bank Arena to make as much money off Clark's presence as possible. Massive Capital One Arena, which Clark and the Fever sold out twice last season, including the largest crowd in WNBA regular-season history, 20,711, is undergoing renovations and is unavailable, hence the trip to Baltimore.
The superlatives never seem to stop for Clark, but one stunning statistic stands out above the rest. In Clark's record-breaking rookie season last year, the Fever's average home attendance was by far the highest in the league: 17,036. It also was better than the average home attendance of five NBA teams in the 2023-24 season: their hometown partner Indiana Pacers, the Atlanta Hawks, Washington Wizards, Memphis Grizzlies and Charlotte Hornets, according to my upcoming book, On Her Game: Caitlin Clark and the Revolution in Women's Sports.
You read that right. Clark and the Fever beat five NBA teams in average home attendance. Prior to her arrival in the WNBA, this kind of statistic would have been unthinkable. So, for those who want to continue to minimize Clark or her historic impact on the league and throughout women's sports, consider that as she attracts people who never before watched women's basketball, she helps shine a light on so many players in a league that is 74 percent Black or mixed race -- players who never received the attention or recognition they deserved from the male-dominated sports media, as well as a vast swath of the American fan base, until she arrived.
TV viewership, always sky-high for Clark's games, will likely take a hit as well. During the 2024 regular season, of the 23 WNBA games to reach at least one million viewers, 20 of them featured Clark. According to Fox Sports, Clark's games averaged 1.178 million viewers; all other games averaged 394,000. This is why 40 of the 44 Fever games are on national TV this year, the most of any team in the league.
All of this illustrates the significance of Monday's news about Clark. This is not just another player getting injured; this is the WNBA's top financial driver who is now unavailable to play, promote and sell the league for a couple of weeks, at least.
In December 2024, The Indianapolis Star reported that Clark was responsible for 26.5 percent of the WNBA's league-wide activity during the 2024 season, including attendance, merchandise sales and television, according to Dr. Ryan Brewer of Indiana University Columbus. One of every six tickets sold at a WNBA arena could be attributed to Clark, the Star said.
NBC News went back to Brewer before Clark's injury and had him look ahead to her impact on the 2025 WNBA season. The answer? Nearly $1 billion.
That is just how crucial Caitlin Clark is to the WNBA. One would think that the league might acknowledge the moment. But so far, no. Asked three times for a comment on Clark's injury and what it meant to the league, a WNBA spokesman never replied.
Editor's note: Christine Brennan's book, On Her Game: Caitlin Clark and the Revolution in Women's Sports, will be published by Scribner July 8.
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