WNBA Draft Continues Women's TV Ratings Bonanza, But Will It Lead To Higher Player Salaries?
Everybody's talking about women's basketball.
Women's college basketball broke TV ratings records with each game in the Elite Eight and Final Four of the NCAA Tournament in recent weeks.
Little girls can't stop talking about Caitlin Clark. They want to be like Caitlin.
They even watched the WNBA Draft on Monday night on ESPN.
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The previous record television viewership for the WNBA Draft was 601,000 in 2004 when Connecticut's Diana Taurasi was the first pick by the Phoenix Mercury. When the Indiana Fever took Clark with the first pick of the 2024 WNBA Draft, 3.09 million were watching, and the two rounds of the draft drew an average of 2.45 million.
Caitlin Clark holds up her new Indiana Fever jersey with WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert after being taken with the first pick of the 2024 WNBA Draft in Brooklyn, New York, on Monday night. (Getty Images)
Just a year ago, only 572,000 watched.
"When you’re given an opportunity, women’s sports just kind of thrives," Clark said at the Final Four in Cleveland two weeks ago. "I think that’s been the coolest thing for me on this journey. We started our season playing in front of 55,000 people in Kinnick Stadium, and now we’re ending it playing in front of probably 15 million people or more on TV. It just continues to get better and better and better. That’s never going to stop."
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More than that, young Caitlin. Iowa's loss to South Carolina in the women's national championship game on April 8 drew 18.9 million viewers and a 24.1 million peak on ABC and ESPN during a typically slow ratings time outside of the NFL season - a Sunday afternoon. That was four million more than the men's title game would draw on the next night.
The overall women's NCAA Tournament drew the most viewers in its history.
Caitlin Clark's WNBA Salary Will Be $76,000
And Clark's salary from the Indiana Fever for her first season is $76,000! Sports writers make more than that.
Yes, she will make multi-millions with her various Name, Image & Likeness sponsorship that carry over to her pro career along with new sponsorship and other ventures. But still, that is an embarrassing salary for any first-round WNBA athlete regardless of its lowly TV viewership during its summer season.
Caitlin Clark this season broke the record many said would never be broken - 3,667 career points by Pistol Pete Maravich from 1967-70 at LSU. (Getty Images).
Clark broke Pistol Pete Maravich's all-time, career NCAA scoring record of 3,667 points from 1970 at LSU during the 2023-24 season and finished her career with 3,951 points. Maravich's first NBA salary was $380,000 during the 1970-71 season with the Atlanta Hawks, who paid him $1.9 million over five years.
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The WNBA Players Association needs to have a meeting, if it has not already. The money will soon be rolling in for the fledgling league, or it should be, if the NBA-sponsored league knows how to market.
The Indiana Fever's games are already a hot ticket. Clark's debut with Indiana will be on Tuesday, May 14, at the Connecticut Sun (7:30 p.m., ESPN2).
Gametime, a leading app/site for last-minute tickets purchases reported the top 10 highest-priced Fever games on Wednesday:
-Indiana Fever at Minnesota Lynx, July 14, Median ticket price - $615
-Indiana Fever at Chicago Sky, June 23, Median ticket price - $600
-Indiana Fever at Los Angeles Sparks, May 24, Median ticket price - $583
-Indiana Fever at Washington Mystics, June7, Median ticket price - $530
-Indiana Fever at Las Vegas Aces, May 25, Median ticket price - $354
-Indiana Fever at New York Liberty, May 18, Median ticket price - $311
-Indiana Fever at Connecticut Sun, June 10, Median ticket price - $294.50
-Indiana Fever at New York Liberty, June 2, Median ticket price - $290
-Indiana Fever at Phoenix Mercury, June 30, Median ticket price - $248
-Indiana Fever at Connecticut Sun, May 14, Median ticket price - $233
The WNBA should be making more and more money with the likes of Clark and other top players joining the league. That includes such stars as reigning national champion South Carolina's Kamilla Cardoso and 2023 national champion LSU's Angel Reese now with the Chicago Sky as the third and seventh picks of the first round Monday night.
The same logic that led to NIL with players getting large shares of money after watching the NCAA rake it all in for decades should work for WNBA players as the WNBA begins to make money. Or should begin to make money.
If anything, the players should get a piece of the pie as far as any new television deals that may be struck with the WNBA.
WNBA Fever, catch it. And hopefully, one day the stars of the WNBA can catch and pocket the high six figures they deserve.
(Let me know your feelings about why WNBA players should or should not make more money by emailing me at glenn.guilbeau@outkick.com or tweeting me @SportBeatTweet.)