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The WNBA superstar is the person of the year in sports and, really, this is just the beginning for her
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The most significant game-changing, sport-changing athlete of 2024 was paid $76,535 in salary — nothing like Juan Soto money — to play basketball for the Indiana Fever.
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Really, there never has been an athlete in any sport, at any time, who has altered the landscape the way Caitlin Clark did in 2024.
The year women’s professional sports — and maybe women’s sport in general — changed forever.
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That this gangly, Iowa-born, aw-shucks, almost Wayne Gretzky-like basketball savant could fascinate the public and carry the money-loser that has been the WNBA into near-mainstream status is beyond logic.
But it happened, in the same year that teenager Summer McIntosh will be named Canada’s prestigious athlete of the year award on Tuesday, in the same year that the Professional Women’s Hockey League opened in North America and began to flourish, in the same year that the Northern Super (soccer) League announced its arrival in Canada.
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There have been other game-changing athletes in other years. Tiger Woods was one in golf. That didn’t happen immediately. Mike Tyson had that effect years after Muhammad Ali in boxing. Also neither happened overnight. The Big Three in tennis became an acquired taste.
But not even the Michael Jordans or the Steph Currys; the Gretzkys or the Mario Lemieuxs; the Patrick Mahomes or the Tom Bradys have had the singular individual impact to their games and to their businesses the way it has all come together with Clark.
In a recent Indianapolis Star article, she was deemed to have been responsible for 26.5% of all WNBA business. One player. Television audiences in the WNBA were up 300% this season in the U.S. and 45% of that audience was attributed to Indiana Fever games.
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WNBA merchandise grew by 500%. Games that Clark played in were watched 200% more than games she didn’t play in.
The new television deal the WNBA has signed will pay it $200 million, which is three times more than they were paid in the contract that is about to expire.
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Before Clark played her first WNBA game, her legend had already begun. Her four years at Iowa University were mammoth. The 2024 NCAA tournament — the women’s tournament tends to get a public shrug when compared to that of the men’s tourney — was the most-watched ever on American television.
Clark played in that event, then played in the most-watched WNBA season, for the most-watched team in history, the Fever.
In between all that, she signed all kinds of corporate marketing deals with Nike and Wilson and others that will pay her the kind of life-changing money that WNBA players tend not to attract.
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In fact, the rookie contract she signed with the Fever, which is a standard entry-level deal by the Players’ Association, will average out to $84,514 over four seasons.
On a dollar-for-dollar scale, she already has become sport’s most underpaid player.
The PWHL, with three Canadians teams and three American teams, and looking to expand next year, doesn’t have a Caitlin Clark. It is hard to sell individual hockey players the way you can sell basketball players.
Individually, basketball players impact games far more significantly than single hockey players do. They will play upwards of 35 minutes of a 40 minute game. A great hockey player plays 20-some-minutes of a 60-minute game.
A great basketball player is easily visible — we see their faces, their expressions, their emotions, their human frailties.
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A hockey player plays beneath a helmet and a facemask. We see their faces only in interviews.
In its second season, the PWHL needs breakout stars, needs someone who can do something similar to what Clark has managed in her first WNBA season, a player to relate to, a player to become ours.
The way Gretzky was able to do that becoming a breakout star in the NHL, when he dominated scoring in the 1980s the way no one had dominated before.
Gretzky was traded from Edmonton to Los Angeles and the NHL changed forever. Suddenly, there were teams in San Jose and Anaheim, there were teams in Florida and Tampa Bay, teams moved to Dallas and Carolina and were expanded to Vegas and Seattle.
It wasn’t all because of Gretzky that business grew, but he certainly was instrumental in the growth of the sport in America.
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