‘The Caitlin Clark Effect Is Real,’ and It’s Already Changing the WNBA
Ticket sales are way up, new TV deals are coming—and the players might actually start getting paid like pros.
Clark shoots a free throw during a preseason game against the Dallas Wings on May 3 in Arlington, Texas. “She’s so much bigger than just basketball,” says a WNBA investor.
Photographer: Cooper Neill/NBAE/Getty Images
On a Monday at the end of April, Caitlin Clark is on the practice court at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. It’s her second day of training camp as a rookie with the Indiana Fever. During a scrimmage against a squad of male players, she dribbles up the floor, crosses over from her right hand to her left, steps back and sinks a deep three. It’s a signature shot for Clark, one she made hundreds of times in her career at the University of Iowa, seen on SportsCenter highlights and in State Farm ads. Now the Fever, whose season begins on May 14 when the team opens on the road against the Connecticut Sun, expect it to become a fixture in the WNBA.
Clark is already the biggest thing to happen to the Fever. At the end of February, when she declared her intention to enter this year’s WNBA draft, the phone lines at the team’s ticket office began ringing immediately and didn’t stop for days. “Everybody was here all weekend long just answering phones,” says Todd Taylor, president and chief commercial officer at Pacers Sports & Entertainment, the ownership group for the Fever and the Indiana Pacers, the team’s NBA counterpart.
WNBA inks groundbreaking 11-year media-rights deal worth $2.2BILLION giving stars Caitlin Clark and A’Ja Wilson a MASSIVE new platform
The WNBA has another tentpole moment in its rise, inking a groundbreaking 11-year media-rights deal worth $2.2billion.
This will give the league’s biggest stars such as A’ja Wilson, Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, and Sabrina Ionescu a bigger platform and more nationally televised, games.
The silver lining to the deal, which begins for the 2026 season, is that the league is open to signing other media-rights deals beyond this agreement.
The WNBA inked with the Walt Disney Company, which owns ABC and ESPN, Amazon Prime Video, and NBC Universal.
More than 125 of the league’s regular-season games will be broadcast between the league’s new media-rights partners.
The WNBA has inked a groundbreaking media-rights deal worth around $2.2billion
Players like Caitlin Clark and A’ja Wilson will now have a bigger platform for their games
As is common with media-rights deals, companies to reevaluate the deals, meaning the WNBA could earn more than $2.2billion from this deal down the road.
That will be especially true with the current growth of the league, on the backs of players like Clark.
‘Partnering with Disney, Amazon and NBCU marks a monumental chapter in WNBA history and clearly demonstrates the significant rise in value and the historic level of interest in women’s basketball,’ said WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert via news release.
‘These agreements allow the league to continue to build a long-term and sustainable growth model for the future of women’s basketball and sports which will benefit WNBA players, teams and fans,’ Engelbert continued.
This media-rights deal will expire in 2036 but will likely be renegotiated to last beyond the 11-years already agreed to.
As part of the media-rights deals, Disney platforms will continue to telecast all events from WNBA All-Star weekend, including the All-Star Game, and the WNBA Draft, while Prime Video will continue to stream the Championship Game of the WNBA Commissioner’s Cup.
Prime Video Channels will be the global channels store destination for WNBA League Pass, the WNBA’s subscription service for streaming live and on-demand games.
