Caitlin Clark's popularity set to soar to even greater heights

There are certain people in the world of sports who aren't just famous. They transcend society, and that's exactly the level of relevance that Indiana Fever superstar Caitlin Clark has ascended to.

It's pretty clear to see how popular she is when broadcasts are cutting to her watching NFL playoff games with Taylor Swift.

As if her brand needed any more enhancement, Nike has confirmed that they're going to step up for Clark. CEO Elliott Hill told Fortune, "We're working on her signature shoe that will launch, and we're working on her logo and that design."

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Hill declined to predict when the shoe would be released, but many people believe Nike has slow-played their efforts to bring Clark's merchandise to the public. There have been others who felt Nike doesn't take Clark's transformative potential seriously enough.

Clark secured an eight-year, $28 million deal from Nike in April 2024. While that's no small pact, former sports marketing executive Sonny Vaccaro thinks she should have been more handsomely rewarded given her impact.

Vaccaro said, "She should have gotten a piece of everything like Michael Jordan." We'll see if Nike utilizes Clark's stardom more in 2025 than they did in 2024.

The terms "generational" and "once in a lifetime" are often thrown around too much in the world of sports. With regard to Caitlin Clark, it's become clear that they're pretty accurate.

While there are multiple reasons why women's basketball has grown, Caitlin Clark is the engine that has driven the sport to new heights. We'll take a closer look at the impact she's had on the WNBA. All statistics are sourced from Basketball Reference.

Anyone who has even a fleeting interest in sports has heard of Caitlin Clark, dating back to her college basketball days at the University of Iowa. Clark was breaking NCAA records left and right before 2024, but the true test of her brilliance would come when she jumped to the professional ranks in the WNBA.

Clark didn’t just pass the test; she saw right through it. The Indiana Fever star took home Rookie of the Year honors with averages of 19.2 points, 8.4 assists and 5.7 rebounds. She also shot a pristine 90 percent from the free throw line.

Clark’s one-woman offensive show brought multiple positive changes to the WNBA that arguably would not have taken place without her.

Up until the 2024 WNBA season, the league flew its players and team personnel around in standard flights. As ESPN wrote, everyone would wait in security lines, require bodyguards in public areas, and take layovers as needed. That all changed when the league announced it would spend $50 million in 2024 and 2025 to accommodate all teams will full-time chartered flights.

Former WNBA star Candace Parker was not happy that she missed out on chartered WNBA flights, as she retired after the 2023 season. She told Bloomberg Originals, “I’m not gonna lie, because our back to backs used to be… We would play and then we’d go to sleep and then we’d wake up to take the 6AM flight.” Clark’s timing could not have been better, and some might not chalk that up to coincidence.

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Not only are WNBA players traveling more comfortably; the league was able to negotiate a landmark television rights deal in the summer of 2024. As AP News reported, the WNBA agreed to an 11-year media rights deal with Disney, Amazon Prime and NBC, worth an estimated $2.2 billion.

It seems fair to say that the WNBA would not have had the same leverage to negotiate this type of deal had it not been for the attention Clark drew to the league. Yahoo Sports wrote that the WNBA drew more than a million viewers for 23 games during the regular season, and Clark’s Indiana Fever were involved in 20 of them.

According to Front Office Sports, Clark and the Fever also set a record during the last game of their season. Game 2 of their playoff series against the Connecticut Sun drew 2.5 million viewers on ESPN, which made it the most watched WNBA game on cable.

Indiana was bounced out of the first round of the playoffs in a two-game sweep, without ever playing a home game. Of course, it’s impossible to predict where the Fever will finish in the standings in 2025, but the WNBA altered its playoff format moving forward.

The lower-seeded team in round one will now have a home game, as the league announced in a press release in October 2024. While Clark may not have affected this shift herself, the league might have realized that they needed to balance things out a bit more to increase the possibility of a series going in the distance in the first round.

The league is also expanding the WNBA Finals from a five-game series to a seven-game series. They want to showcase the best of the best for additional contests, which in turn makes them more money as well.

While Clark’s presence and performance have drawn fans to the WNBA in droves, it’s also the type of attention she’s getting that has helped moved the game forward. Analytics have been a part of sports for quite a while now, but basketball junkies are taking the time to delve deeper into Clark’s game to quantify just how impactful she’s been on the court. That same level of effort might not have been the norm even five years ago.

WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert told CNBC, “There’s no more apathy. Everybody cares. It is a little of that Bird-Magic moment if you recall from 1979, when those two rookies came in from a big college rivalry, one white, one black. And so we have that moment with these two.” Engelbert was also discussing the impact of Chicago Sky star Angel Reese.

According to Sportico, Indiana Fever merchandise sold 1000 percent more than it did in 2023, and Clark is certainly the main reason for that. WNBA jerseys have a chance to become much more prevalent in society than they ever have before.

As if her impact and entertaining play wasn’t enough, Clark’s legacy in 2024 was memorialized even further. Time Magazine named her their Athlete of the Year in 2024, further stamping her historic year.

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