April 17, 2024; Indianapolis, IN, USA; Indiana Fever participant Caitlin Clark, former Iowa Hawkeye standout and the no. 1 choose within the 2024 WNBA draft, speaks Wednesday, April 17, 2024, throughout an introductory press convention contained in the entry pavilion at Gainbridge Fieldhouse. Necessary Credit score: Mykal McEldowney-USA TODAY NETWORK
Initially posted on
Hardwood Heroics
By Ernest Hernandez
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Final up to date Dec 23, 2024 11:13 AM ET
Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark has been getting a number of feedback and has sparked an extended chain of dialogue over the previous weeks since she was named TIME Journal’s 2024 Athlete of the Yr. Whereas lots of people, together with workforce house owners of the WNBA, had come to assault her over her feedback and statements from her TIME interview, plenty of individuals additionally got here to her protection. One of many individuals who provided form and inspiring phrases to the WNBA star was a world sports activities advertising and marketing govt.
In a feature piece on Forbes, The Collective Govt Vice President Thayer Lavielle referred to Clark because the “lighting rod” of girls’s sports activities.
“Caitlin Clark grew to become the lightning rod of this second in time,” Lavielle mentioned. “It’s an extended path to fairness. The lads’s aspect of the ecosystem is $54 billion.”
In response to Lavielle, “the worth {of professional} ladies’s basketball and soccer stands to extend by a mixed $1.6 billion over the following three years, a determine that’s primarily based on attendance and viewership (on tv or streaming equivalents) and doesn’t embrace merchandise or media offers.”
Primarily based on the numbers coming from Laville’s The Collective, ladies’s sports activities earlier than 2024 solely amounted to fifteen% of complete sports activities media protection and 10% of sponsorship {dollars}.
Caitlin Clark’s “Actual Worth” to The WNBA Calculated
There isn’t a denying that the recognition of Caitlin Clark, in addition to the record-breaking viewership and viewers rely that she has dropped at WNBA video games have introduced in some money to the league, too. However how a lot worth has she introduced precisely?
Caitlin Clark Gushes Over Tyrese Haliburton’s GF Jade Jones Classic Gown In Paris Photoshoot 9
Iowa’s Caitlin Clark speaks throughout a celebration of the Iowa ladies’s basketball workforce Wednesday, April 10, 2024 at Carver-Hawkeye Enviornment in Iowa Metropolis, Iowa.
The Indy Star introduced famend “valuation guru” Dr. Ryan Brewer to calculate how a lot worth Clark is bringing to the ladies’s basketball league. Primarily based on the calculation, Clark is answerable for at the least 26.5% of the WNBA’s league-wide exercise for the 2024 season, and he or she has boosted TV viewership by 300%, with 45% of the overall views coming from Fever video games the place she performed.
Clark additionally boosted the WNBA merchandise funds, because the league noticed a 500% progress, primarily on account of Clark’s affect, with Angel Reese coming in because the #2 contributor. It was additionally estimated that her general monetary impression on the Indiana Fever was a lift of a minimum of $36 million.
Jul 20, 2024; Phoenix, AZ, USA; Crew WNBA guard Caitlin Clark (22) in opposition to the USA Ladies’s Nationwide Crew through the 2024 WNBA All Star Sport at Footprint Heart. Necessary Credit score: Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports activities
This was just for the WNBA and the Fever. Outdoors {of professional} basketball, Caitlin Clark was reportedly charging a minimum of $100,000 for a thirty-minute digital discuss.
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