Caitlin Clark is a painful example of how not to market a generational talent

Caitlin Clark’s departure from college basketball and entry into the WNBA has been a whirlwind for her, teammates, the WNBA and fans. She has the unique ability to capture dedicated women’s basketball fans while appealing to people who are casually interested. While she’s one of the most famous athletes in the world, mistakes were made along the way that could have made her even bigger.

Life changed in a major way for Caitlin Clark in April 2024. The Indiana Fever made her the first pick of the WNBA Draft. Additionally, she signed an eight-year, $28 million contract with Nike a couple of weeks later, which ESPN covered at the time. It made sense that Clark would partner with the most recognizable sports apparel brand in the world, but things may have been mismanaged from the start.

There may not be a more influential sports marketing executive in the world than Sonny Vaccaro. He was front and center for Nike in 1984 when they moved heaven and earth to sign Michael Jordan, which proved to be one of the most savvy business decisions in marketing history. He had some choice words for how Clark’s negotiations with Nike played out.

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Vaccaro told TMZ Sports, “Caitlin Clark was in the best position to maximize her value immediately, more than any woman in sports that I knew.” Vaccaro believes that Clark’s representation could have held firm and coaxed a much more lucrative deal out of Nike. He said, “All the women who made progress here, this could have been the bottom line. They messed up, they should have held on to the last drop.”

Vaccaro also said that Clark should have gotten a piece of everything, just like Michael Jordan did back in 1984. That seemed to cast some doubt on Nike’s strategy here as well, questioning why they didn’t lock Clark up to something resembling a lifetime deal. There might be a chance that Clark could start another bidding war in the prime of her career.

Despite the finances, Vaccaro did say that he believed Nike would use her fame and profile better than their competitors. “The other companies dropped out, they dropped out not having an idea what the heck they were doing.”

While Vaccaro had high hopes for Nike’s brand strategy centered around Clark, things haven’t really taken off as quickly as most would have expected. Fans wondered throughout 2024 when the unicorn WNBA rookie would get her own signature merchandise, including her own shoe.

UConn star Paige Bueckers had her Nike signature shoe released in December 2024, which prompted a wave of confusion. It didn’t make sense that a college player, even one as talented as Bueckers, would be ahead of Clark in the production line for signature gear.

Basketball reporter Ethan Sherwood Strauss said on a podcast in 2024, “Based on conversations with people in the know, it indeed has something to do with WNBA MVP and Nike athlete A’ja Wilson. But beyond Wilson, it’s about a culture at the company that’s more concerned with quelling noise rather than making it, as Nike once used to.” Wilson is in the prime of her WNBA career, and Clark is just beginning hers.

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In January 2025, Nike CEO Elliott Hill gave fans the update they were waiting for. He told Fortune, “We had Caitlin Clark in today… She was in yesterday working on her signature shoe that will launch. We are working on her logo and her design of her logo.” Hill still declined to confirm an estimated date of arrival for Clark’s shoe.

For the first time in 27 years, Nike released a commercial on Super Bowl Sunday, which Clark was a part of along with Wilson, Sabrina Ionescu, JuJu Watkins and other prominent female athletes. However, this brought up some old wounds for Nike, as Yahoo Sports’ Krysyan Edler noted that the company has a bit of a checkered past with regard to how it previously treated pregnant female athletes.

It isn’t just Nike that has made some mistakes with regard to its marketing of Caitlin Clark. The WNBA also made a curious decision leading up to the playoffs. They left the Indiana Fever star off of its main promotional graphic ahead of the postseason, which raised the eyebrows of many people.

It’s hard to come up with an appropriate comparison, but this might be like the NBA deciding to keep Michael Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal or Victor Wembanyama off of playoff promotional material in their rookie seasons. The common denominator they have with Clark is that they were all high draft picks who proved they could be the face of the league immediately.

In July 2024, excitement for Clark’s first All-Star appearance was building. Fans wanted a piece of Clark’s All-Star memorabilia, but there was a problem. As noted by Chris Rosvoglou of The Spun, the Indiana Fever sold out of Clark’s All-Star jersey online in 15 minutes. They quickly said that they would not be restocking their inventory to keep up with the sky-high demand.

Once again, with a player of Clark’s magnitude, it would seem like the best idea is to produce as much merchandise as possible, considering that her allure seems to have no end in sight. Limiting the Clark related items fans can purchase also limits the reach she can possibly have in society at large.

Katie Lever of Awful Announcing also questioned the WNBA for not diving into the Caitlin Clark-Taylor Swift budding friendship during the NFL playoffs. Lever wrote, “And that’s a problem for the league especially because they had the perfect marketing model to capitalize on the moment.” Granted, the WNBA season was over by that point, but it’s not the worst idea in the world to ride the coattails of Clark and Swift together.

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