The Popularity Of WNBA And Indiana Fever
Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark brings the ball upcourt as the WNBA basketball team practices in … [+]
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INDIANAPOLIS — Caitlin Clark is already aware of her place in sports and the WNBA. The Indiana Fever guard hasn’t even played a professional game yet and is already among the World’s most popular athletes. She recently signed a reported eight-year, $28 million endorsement deal with Nike — her brand is growing rapidly after dominating the sports news cycle for nearly two months.
The Fever are seeing massive ticket demand as a result of Clark’s arrival. There were more than 6,000 fans at the team’s draft party earlier this month who just wanted to watch the franchise select Clark, and the media presence after team practices this week is over 10 times greater than what it has been in past seasons. The buzz around Clark and the team is massive.
“I think that just shows the excitement regarding our team,” Clark said this week of the number of people at the draft party and the team’s growing popularity. She expects a big attendance number for Indiana’s preseason opener on Friday in Dallas.
The Fever are looking forward to having large crowds at their games. Veteran guard Erica Wheeler thinks that Fever outings will have some of the biggest attendance numbers she’s seen since Wheeler battled UConn in college while at Rutgers University. NaLyssa Smith remembers playing in front of smaller crowds at Indiana Farmers Coliseum during her rookie season with the Fever. Now, that will look a lot different.
It won’t just be the home crowds that are massive. The demand for tickets to see Clark and the Fever play in non-Indiana markets is high. The Las Vegas Aces are playing a home game against the Fever in T-Mobile Arena instead of Michelob Ultra Arena to accommodate about 6,000 more fans. The Washington Mystics will host Indiana for one game this season in Capital One Arena instead of Entertainment & Sports Arena. That change will up the total capacity by about 16,000 fans.
Fans in Chicago are petitioning for something similar to happen. Clark and the Fever will be popular wherever they go, and that could change the landscape of the WNBA.
“The day she declared, we immediately started selling tickets,” Fever general manager Lin Dunn said after the 2024 WNBA Draft. “From the business side, she’s already had a great impact on the excitement in this city… She’s just created this unbelievable attention. But she’s earned it. Look what she’s done.”
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – APRIL 15: Caitlin Clark poses with WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert after … [+]
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Clark averaged 31.6 points and 8.9 assists per game in her final collegiate season. She became the NCAA Division I men’s and women’s all-time leading scorer that season, which boosted her status significantly.
Clark explained that she’s still in a hotel in Indianapolis as she acclimates to her move to a new city. She likes Indianapolis — the city’s size and speed are fitting for Clark and how she likes to live.
“Just have a quiet presence about me. I mean, I don’t really go out in public and do much,” she shared after her first official practice with the Fever. Clark said her free time consists of recovery and watching movies — she brought her PlayStation 5 to Indy but hasn’t hooked it up yet.
Her life has changed significantly due to her skill and popularity. She was a star in college basketball for years, but after Clark’s Iowa Hawkeyes had a dramatic run to the NCAA Title game during her junior season, things changed.
“Probably after my junior year of basketball in college. But it’s kind of grown on a level that’s a lot different than what it was then,” Clark said when asked about the moment her life became different and abnormal. “I probably still don’t really go about my life in the way that I probably should. I still try to do normal things and live as a normal person,” she added before joking that she has a security team that follows her around now.
That level of popularity comes with a ton of off-court experiences. Clark has appeared on Saturday Night Live, signed with Nike and will get a signature shoe, and will be an executive producer for a show, among many other things. She’s in countless commercials and has become one of the planet’s most recognizable athletes.
That will change everything for the Fever and the WNBA. Indiana hasn’t made the playoffs since 2016 and has ranked bottom-two in attendance in each of the last two seasons. That will certainly change this year.
“I think there’s gonna be a lot of new fans coming into the WNBA. There’s already a lot of fans here,” Clark said. “Just continuing to grow that and attract that and keep those fans will be super important.”
The star guard is aware of her status and what it means for her and the Fever. But she has carried herself well in recent weeks and will hope to translate that to the court when Indiana’s season begins next month.
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With An OT Win, The Islanders Have One More Shot At Making History
The Islanders as we know them will play at least one more game. But even in victory late Saturday afternoon, Patrick Roy managed to sum up this era for the franchise.
“It doesn’t have to be pretty, you know?” Roy said after Mathew Barzal redirected a shot by Robert Bortuzzo 1:24 into the second overtime to lift the Islanders to a 3-2 win over the Hurricanes in Game 4 of an Eastern Conference first-round series.
With the win, the Islanders avoided being swept, forced a Game 5 tonight in North Carolina and redirected the conversation from what will happen to the longest-tenured core in the four professional sports after this season to can the longest-tenured core in the four professional sports do what has only been achieved a handful of times in history?
The odds, of course, are still long. With the Rangers completing a sweep of the Capitals in the NHL, the NBA’s Thunder and Timberwolves dispatching of the Pelicans and Suns in four games and the NHL’s Panthers and NBA’s Nuggets finishing off the Lightning and Lakers, respectively, in five games, teams that race out to a three games to none lead in a best-of-seven series are now 296-5 all-time in the aforementioned series.
That gives the Islanders a 0.02 percent chance (or 0.166, if you want to be exact) of completing the comeback. More recent history suggests the Islanders will be hard-pressed to even flirt with the 1942 Maple Leafs, the 1975 Islanders, the 2004 Red Sox, the 2010 Flyers and 2014 Los Angeles Kings, who are the only teams to win a best-of-seven series after falling behind three games to none.
Entering this season, 28 NHL teams had fallen into an 0-3 hole since the Kings’ comeback. None of those series went the distance and only four lasted six games.
But having a chance certainly beats the alternative, and at the very least, both teams are aware of how dangerous the Islanders can be with their backs embedded a few inches into the ever-cliched wall.
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“At this stage of the series and where we’re at, you almost can play maybe a little more free,” Barzal said.
“They’re back in it,” Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour said Saturday. “We gave them some hope here now.”
And hope is a dangerous thing, especially for a team like the Islanders that remains a decided underdog. They aren’t the 2004 Red Sox, who finished just three games behind the Yankees but outscored them by a single run (106-105) while winning the season series 11-8.
The Islanders finished 17 points behind the Hurricanes, who were tied for seventh in the NHL in goals scored while surrendering the fourth-fewest goals. The Islanders were tied for 22nd and tied for 19th, respectively.
On Saturday, the Islanders were outshot 44-35, including 18-10 in the overtimes. Barzal’s redirect was the Islanders’ only shot in the second extra session.
“That’s how teams score in overtime — greasy goals, you just throw the puck on the net,” Islanders goalie Semyon Varlamov said. “I always say any shot is a good shot.”
And now what if Varlamov, now firmly entrenched over Ilya Sorokin, is the modern version of Chico Resch, who took over in net for the Islanders after they fell behind 3-0 against the Penguins in 1975? And what if Barzal’s redirect is Hurricanes’ equivalent of Tony Clark’s double bouncing into the stands for a two-out ground rule double in the ninth inning in Game 5 in 2004, which forced Ruben Sierra to stop at third instead of surely scoring the go-ahead run in what turned out to be a 5-4, 14-inning win for the Red Sox?
History suggests Varlamov, Barzal and the rest of the Islanders will not join that select club of players and teams who made history. But for at least one more game, they’ve got a shot.
“You see the guys around with a smile in the room — that’s contagious,” said Jean-Gabriel Pageau, who scored the Islanders’ second goal Saturday. “We believed in ourselves all season. We believed that we were a playoff team, that we had a chance. And that’s what we did tonight — we kept believing.”
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