Caitlin Clark named Time’s Athlete of the Year

(CNN) — Caitlin Clark – who captivated audiences in arenas nationwide and boosted viewership numbers during her final year of college and rookie season in the WNBA – has been named Time’s Athlete of the Year.

Clark, 22, continued to build on the growing popularity of the WNBA and women’s college basketball in 2024, impressing fans with her impressive long-range shots and precise passing.

In her first season with the Indiana Fever after a standout career at Iowa, Clark won the Rookie of the Year award and was selected for the All-WNBA first team during the 2024 season – the first rookie to achieve this since 2008.

The star player for the Fever also set rookie season records for points and three-pointers made, in addition to being the first rookie to achieve a triple-double.

Besides her scoring abilities, Clark also set the record for most assists in a single WNBA season and the highest number of assists in a single game.

In her final season playing for the Iowa Hawkeyes, Clark set the NCAA Division I women’s basketball scoring record and surpassed the record held by Hall of Famer Pete Maravich across all of Division I.

This was also the first year when the NCAA women’s basketball national championship game had higher viewership than the men’s title game, with South Carolina defeating Iowa 87-75. The game attracted 18.9 million viewers, surpassing viewership for games in the NBA Finals and the World Series this year.

Furthermore, ratings for the WNBA regular season and playoffs – not just games featuring Clark – increased.

The WNBA experienced its most-watched regular season in 24 years, and the WNBA Finals, where the New York Liberty triumphed over the Minnesota Lynx, recorded the highest viewership in 25 years.

Additionally, the WNBA had its highest total attendance in 22 years. A game between the Fever and the Washington Mystics on September 19 at Capital One Arena in Washington, DC, set a single-game attendance record for the WNBA with 20,711 attendees.

Three games in the season drew over 20,000 fans, including matchups between Indiana and the Las Vegas Aces on July 2 (20,366) and Indiana and Washington on June 7 (20,333).

The Fever set a single-season attendance record for a WNBA team in 2024 with a total home attendance of 340,715.

Last week, Clark made her debut on Sportico’s list of highest-paid female athletes, earning a total of $11.1 million. A small portion of Clark’s earnings came from her WNBA salary of $100,000, with the majority coming from endorsements.

CNN’s Thomas Schlachter contributed to this report.

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