Years in the future, there will be full bookshelves dedicated to Indiana Fever basketball star Caitlin Clark. Some of those, we assume, will be about her athletic prowess, assuming the former Iowa college star continues her rise into basketball royalty. But some of those volumes, a lot of them I’ll guess, will be about things off the hardcourt – more specifically, Clark’s impact on the economics and sociology of the sport. Because if there’s one thing that’s quite obvious in her still relatively short basketball career, only her second year in the WNBA, is that to a whole lot of people, she’s way more than a basketball player.
That’s become even more clear in just this past month, starting with Clark’s recent injury that will sideline her until June 10. That’s caused inflated ticket prices to Indiana games to drop by around 70%. Some teams had moved their home games against Indiana to a larger arena to sell more tickets. Clark’s absence makes the Caitlin Clark effect even more obvious, not unlike what happens in the MLS when Messi and Miami visit your town, or what it was like in the late 80’s and early 90’s when Jordan’s Bulls rolled in. Clark is the biggest national star to emerge in WNBA history – this isn’t a statement on abilities, but rather stardom – which changes the economics of a sport that’s still in its growth phase. It also can lay bare some of its shortcomings, a lesson learned in men’s basketball when MJ decided to give baseball a try. An economist estimated that over a quarter of WNBA economic activity in 2024 was related to Caitlin Clark, and she’d be affiliated with over $1 billion this year. Economists can argue the semantics of the analysis, but at the least, it’s impossible to ignore the singularity of Caitlin Clark’s fiscal heft.
Economics are only one part of the current Caitlin Clark story. The other, for lack of a more elegant analysis, is race. More to the point, Clark is a white mega star in a league that is 70% black, where a long list of non-white star athletes have played to nowhere near the public interest and economic viability. And it’s been a subtext of nearly game she’s played in the league, including moments when tensions begin to boil. That includes a recent accusation of Indiana fans yelling racist slurs at Chicago’s Angel Reese, who has become Clark’s most notable rival – for the record, the League said they their investigation found no evidence to substantiate the claim. There’s also an accusation that Atlanta star center Brittney Griner hurled a racial slur at Clark during a recent game, a claim for which we have video but no audio. And there’s now a cottage industry around whether either Caitlin Clark is overrated because she’s white or whether she’s so popular because she’s white or whether there’s a larger narrative about race and racism that stems from Clark’s moment. All this is happening as women’s basketball, both in college and the pros, is reaching new audiences and significant new revenue streams. In other words, as the sport is going more public, so are its problems.
I won’t extensively pontificate on whether either Caitlin Clark is as good as advertised or the extent to which race confounds her standing – both in and outside the game. To state the obvious, she is very, very good. And to be clear, regardless of our progress as a society, it’s impossible to ignore at least the presence if not impact of race on the games we watch. It’s a reminder that even as we aspire to a meritocracy, something seemingly more facile in the world of elite athletics, we’re certainly not so evolved as an aggregate that we can even agree upon its application.
But as Caitlin Clark both takes a short break and reminds us of her impact, I’d simply say two things. One, despite the discomfort of the moment, don’t ignore the progress of the League and the sport. The fact that we’re having these arguments about Caitlin Clark is a reminder of how far the game has come in the public conscience. Second, never ignore how much sport is part of the larger social movement, where we’re currently having much larger conversations about race, merit, diversity, fairness, and the like. And oddly, it’s a conversation that’s much further along in men’s basketball, where Cooper Flagg, a white forward from Duke, is the hands down number one pick without similar discord.
Women’s basketball, and hopefully society at large, can get there in time. At least we hope.
Keith Strudler is the Dean of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. You can follow him at @KeithStrudler.
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