Everyone Watches Women's Sports
Examining the Caitlin Clark Effect
I’ve never watched a WNBA game. This feels like a necessary disclaimer before delving into this newsletter, because though I’ve spent many recent hours immersed in the world of collegiate and professional women’s basketball, I’m not a long standing fan. This year, I watched the draft for the first time, learned the ins and outs of the process transitioning to the WNBA (did you know not every drafted player gets a roster spot?), and did everything short of making flashcards for the existing and past athletes. No one can say I half ass being a sports fan.
In high school, I was a basketball cheerleader. (Can you imagine?) I’ve never been good at the sport myself - short, uncoordinated, terrible aim - but as a fan, I fell in love. It doesn’t take much for me to latch onto teams, and my first memories of jumping up and down, yelling, holding my hands above my head in the universal three fingered sign for a three point shot was watching the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team. In 2014 and 2015, the team made it to back to back NCAA Final Fours, and in 2015, they lost in the championship, the closest they had been to securing the title since their sole victory in 1941. Watching this team, cheering on the aptly nicknamed Frank the Tank, was the closest I had gotten to being a raving basketball fan until now, until I joined the record breaking millions of fans - both new and established - in watching the 2024 NCAA women’s basketball tournament.
22.
For some, the number alone - now retired - is enough.
Iowa’s all time leading scorer. The most 30-point games by any man or woman in Division I in the past 25 seasons. The Big Ten’s all time leader in assists. The Big Ten all-time scoring record. The Division I record for total points scored by a man or woman. The only Division I player, regardless of gender, to hit 1,000 assists and 3,000 points. The 2024 number one WNBA draft pick.
For anyone who didn’t already know the player, the list of accolades and broken records left in the wake of her college career is likely sufficient. Caitlin Clark, the homegrown Iowa basketball player, is a household name. Her three point shots, her Midwestern mannerisms, and her eye for assists has skyrocketed her into fame. With a face plastered on State Farm commercials and Nike billboards alike, Caitlin Clark is the female athlete that the world can’t seem to escape, and her fame has assisted women’s basketball, and basketball as a whole, to new heights.
NCAA women’s basketball couldn’t use March Madness branding until 2022. Their weight rooms at the tournament, as publicized by Sedona Prince, a TikToker and basketball player, were pitiful in comparison to the men’s, and as expected across all of women’s sports, the media attention was minimal. Only two years later, in the third season of the women’s tournament using the March Madness label, South Carolina’s championship victory over Iowa smashed what felt like as many records as Clark has throughout her collegiate career. The championship game averaged 18.9 million viewers, making it the most watched women’s college basketball game ever and the most-viewed college basketball game on ESPN - men’s or women’s. It wasn’t just the championship game that made headlines. Even Iowa’s Elite Eight matchup against LSU smashed records, with more viewers than the 2023 NBA finals, World Series, and every college football game except OSU vs. Michigan. To put it simply, the women’s tournament was not just more popular than the men’s - it was more popular than most other sporting events. Everyone watches women’s sports, and we have the stats to prove it, irrefutably.
Witnessing the exponential rise in the popularity and mainstream success of women’s sports has been the highlight of my year. Watching professional women’s hockey and volleyball - two leagues in their inaugural seasons - build, delving back into the NWSL, and learning the big names and big stories of women’s basketball is a consistent source of joy during a time laden with stress. Falling back in love with being a sports fan over the course of the last year has felt serendipitous in its timing, and I can’t help but be giddy over the fact that when my dad - who I watched the Badger basketball games with nearly a decade ago - texts me about basketball, the names we’re exchanging are Cardoso, Reese, Clark, and Bueckers. The professional hockey game we’re going to this weekend isn’t the Minnesota Wild; it’s PWHL Minnesota.
This rise in popularity and media attention, however, is not without its frustrations (or its men with incorrect yet very loud opinions.) In particular, I’m interested in breaking down a notion that has been repeated with increased frequency online: if you build it, they will come. Or, rewritten contextually: if you popularize an athlete like Caitlin Clark - with her flair for logo threes, her Nike contract, and her palatable Midwestern whiteness - people, even men, will finally watch women’s sports.
It has been built. Year after year, women’s sports, and specifically women’s basketball, have been built by Black athletes that have never received the scope of credit that they deserve. Funding, media attention, brand partnerships, NIL deals - tools that have begun to shed mainstream light onto these athletes - have been historically absent from the women’s side. It isn’t enough to acknowledge the impact that social media has had on increasing the ease of marketing across the board. Men’s sports were watched, followed, and praised by mainstream media outlets like ESPN in the years before the rise of social media. Viewership for women’s sports has always been a self fulfilling prophecy. When games aren’t streaming, schedules aren’t posted, and channels are difficult or impossible to come by because these athletes are assumed to be lesser - less entertaining, less athletic, less impressive - of course there won’t be record breaking audiences. When ESPN and ABC devote air time to the games that have been played at elite levels, people watch in droves. When women are given adequate facilities, air time, and the buzz of March Madness, they break men’s viewership records in a matter of years. Without those tools, of course women’s sports are considered unimportant, boring, and subpar. Of course men who have never watched a women’s basketball game in their lives will belabor the existence of a talent gap. So, let us not forget: it’s been built. The mainstream is just now finally being served a glimpse into it.
Women’s sports are often heralded as being a safe sporting space for marginalized communities. My experience of beginning to understand my queerness through soccer is not unique or a coincidence. From a fan’s perspective, professional soccer and professional women’s sports as a whole have been incredibly queer spaces. They have also been spaces led by women of color who have not received the Caitlin Clark treatment. We cannot talk about the exponential growth of women’s sports without talking about the racism that BIPOC athletes, coaches, and fans have faced.
A key facet of sports marketing and fandom is the existence of rivalries. They fuel media attention, attendance at games, and viewership. It doesn’t take being an avid sports fan, or a fan at all, to recognize some of the biggest rivalries in the nation. Michigan vs. Ohio State. (A rivalry I still carry deep in my core, despite no longer being a Wolverine.) The Red Sox vs. The Yankees. Auburn vs. Alabama. Iowa vs. LSU. Caitlin Clark vs. Angel Reese.
In the 2023 NCAA championship, Iowa lost to LSU, and the internet went collectively feral over the competition between Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese. This rivalry was primed to happen. Clark was already well on her way to being a household name, and Reese was easily vilified by fans and media alike. A young, ridiculously talented Black woman on her way to winning a national championship and defeating a Midwest golden child at the same time? People loved, and continue to love, to hate her. During that game, Reese waved her hand in front of her face and pointed to her ring finger, signaling to Caitlin Clark and the Iowa team that the championship was hers for the taking. Those who chose to use the moment to critique Reese for being unsportsmanlike clearly had forgotten - or simply never cared enough to notice - that Caitlin had used the same gesture in previous games. In the post-game press conference, Caitlin defended Angel, reminding the press that “Men have always had trash talk… You should be able to play with that emotion… That’s how every girl should continue to play.” During her time playing collegiate ball, Angel’s trash talk, confidence, and refusal to perform meekness was consistently ridiculed with more fervor than other players, likely due to her success as a Black woman, as a Southern player nicknamed the Bayou Barbie.
As women’s sports continue to become more mainstream, it only becomes more evident that female athletes are held to significantly different standards than male athletes. Pride, confidence, and grit are viewed through a different light. Athletes are considered cocky, stuck up, and full of themselves. Their attitudes are watched with more scrutiny than their play, yet their mistakes are amplified as damning examples of why they are somehow undeserving of their wins, records, titles, and places in sports history. When a male athlete makes a mistake, he is only human, having an off day, overworked, in his head. When a female athlete makes a mistake, it is the welcome proof of every misogynist’s deepest, most preciously held belief that women are inferior, that there is a talent gap that can be pointed to as the reason for every inequity between men’s and women’s sports.
In my last newsletter, I shared some thoughts on the connection between Survivorship Bias - the mistake of looking at visible data and believing it to be representative of the whole - and the resulting societal misconceptions that are formed. This has been happening in sports for longer than I’ve been alive.
Baseball, regarded as America’s past time, has a storied, racist history. Professional baseball was segregated for years, and the integration of Black players into historically white teams was far from a welcome change. I knew this only in the vague way that I understand America’s history and present to be consistently, systemically racist. I began to learn the contours of this moment in history from Andrea Williams’ book Baseball’s Leading Lady, which details not only Black baseball’s history, but Effa Manley and her role in it. Effa Manley was the first woman to be inaugurated into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Alongside her husband, Effa owned the Newark Eagles, a Black baseball team, and was regarded for her business acumen and passion for the team and the league. Effa Manley was a Black female co-owner of a professional baseball team during the era of Jackie Robinson, an iconic, game changing athlete, yet I had never heard her name before reading this book.
Before Caitlin Clark’s entrance into the league, five WNBA players had signature shoe endorsements with either Nike, Adidas, or Puma. These players include Elena Delle Donne, Sabrina Ionescu, Diana Taurasi, Candace Parker, and Breanna Stewart. Two out of these six athletes are, to my knowledge, Black women, comprising only one third of the historic shoe deals in a league that is, per ESPN, comprised of over 80% athletes of color. News of Clark’s seven figure Nike shoe deal hit social media just days after it was announced that she would be making just over $76,000 in her rookie year with the Indiana Fever. This salary sparked outrage from many fans - particularly those who, like me, are new to the league. Comparatively, the 2023 overall number one draft pick for the NBA was offered $10,132,300 for his first year salary. This is 133 times the salary of Caitlin Clark, a historic, generational, game changing player. This pay disparity, of course, is nothing new in the realm of women’s sports. It is the result of so many continually compounding things: sexism, racism, lackluster media deals, and an unwillingness to invest time and money into these leagues for the reasons previously listed. It is also something that, as pointed out by the WNBA fans and athletes who have followed and contributed to the league for much longer than I or any new fan, is nothing new. In fact, for many, $76,000 probably sounds like a great deal. In the week since this singular contract announcement, I have witnessed a shocking number of people vow to start watching games. The shock that Caitlin Clark’s salary - outside of her various other contracts - isn’t even six figures has suddenly sparked mass outrage.
So again, I ask: why her? Why now? Where was this attitude for A’ja Wilson, the Olympic gold medalist, two-time MVP, and two-time WNBA champion who led South Carolina to their first national championship, yet doesn’t have a signature shoe deal? In her 2018 rookie year, A’ja received $52,564 after being the overall first round draft pick, over $20,000 less than Caitlin Clark. Inflation can account for some of that inequity, but not all. As the business of women’s sports grows and becomes more lucrative, I hope that we can continue bringing this energy, this uproar, for more athletes, athletes who aren’t Caitlin Clark.
As this draft class enters the WNBA, as women’s sports continue to grow exponentially, and as the refrain of “everyone watches women’s sports” continues to reverberate, I hope that both the media and fans reprioritize their focus. There is room to celebrate all of the women who have contributed and continue to contribute to the lasting legacy of women in sports. I will never argue that Caitlin Clark isn’t worthy of praise, of being a hotly debated GOAT, of being a household name. I’m a fan. I’m eager to watch her continue to take audacious shots and spearhead great plays, but I want to see other players receiving the same attention. Drive up ticket sales for the Chicago Sky, who drafted both Kamilla Cardoso and Angel Reese. Watch their games. Include their names in the conversation. Demand better from the media outlets who devote the majority of their coverage to one player.
During the 2021 ESPY Awards, Paige Bueckers, a white UConn basketball player, addressed the lack of media attention that Black athletes receive, stating, “They’ve given so much to this sport and the community and society as a whole, and their value is undeniable. In the WNBA last season, the postseason awards, 80% of the winners were Black, but they got half the amount of coverage as white athletes.” In the three years since, it doesn’t seem like much has changed. Angel Reese and the LSU basketball team were still pitched as the villains in a Los Angeles Times article entitled “UCLA-LSU is America’s Sweethearts vs. Its Basketball Villains.” Caitlin Clark is still the only player that Prada is dressing head to toe for draft day, and even after South Carolina won the championship, defeating Iowa, the cameras trailed Clark, reluctant to pull away from their star.
Give Black athletes and coaches their flowers. Spread the love, and as you watch, read about, and cheer on your teams, spare an extra thought towards the ways that racism and sexism may be at work in even the most lighthearted of past times. Don’t stop asking why, even as you (and I) celebrate every historic step forward.
A moment to share some recommended reading if you - like me - are a big sports nerd. :)
Dear Black Girls: How to Be True to You by A’ja Wilson. I listened to this on audio in one sitting, and it made me cry more times than you may expect from a slim book. Though I’m not the target audience, I loved hearing about A’ja’s childhood, learning disability, collegiate career, and relationships with her grandmother and Coach Dawn Staley. She talks about grief, fashion mishaps on draft day, and her experiences being a Black athlete on majority Black teams. It’s truly excellent. I’m a fan!
Baseball’s Leading Lady by Andrea Williams. This is a great pick for baseball fans and anyone interested in the history of sports! As someone who doesn’t know much about baseball (aside from my love for A League of Their Own) it was a super interesting read!
On my TBR: There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension by Hanif Abdurraqib. I haven’t read anything by this author yet, but I want (need) to read all of his books, including this one.
Thanks for letting me write this indulgent newsletter about all of the things I’ve been learning and pondering while I ignore homework to watch games and scroll sports Twitter. Hope you enjoyed!
Thanks for such a great summary of what’s been going on recently! I’ve fell into the world of watching women’s NCAA gymnastics, and it’s been interesting to see the conversations in that world as well about what channels stream their meets, etc.