Caitlin Clark, our sinful nature, and the economics of sports

As I write this column, I’m watching Springfield play North Central in the NCAA Division III football playoffs. There is no reason for someone to care about this game unless he went to Springfield (no idea what state this school resides in), went to North Central (ditto), or is so enamored with football that he will watch it regardless of who is playing. I occupy the third category. I also really like D3 sports because of what they represent.

I mention this only because it dovetails with the issue at hand, which is something that somebody in the media coined “the Caitlin Clark effect,” which can be boiled down to the following: After starring in women’s basketball at the University of Iowa, Caitlin Clark matriculated to the WNBA and, for a brief period of time, made it something that people occasionally chose to watch even though they had other choices.

To wit: A recent playoff game involving her team, the Indiana Fever, against the Connecticut Sun drew 1.8 million viewers. A non–Caitlin Clark playoff game featuring the Atlanta Dream and the New York Liberty drew 440,000 viewers.

For comparison’s sake, last year’s Myrtle Beach Bowl, featuring Ohio (not Ohio State) vs. Georgia Southern, pulled in 1.2 million viewers. Something called the Cure Bowl, featuring Miami of Ohio vs. Appalachian State, drew 1.95 million viewers—or 150,000 more than Clark’s playoff game, according to Sports Media Watch.

These are economic realities. Another economic reality is that the NBA has subsidized the WNBA since its inception, kicking in $15 million per year to cover the league’s operating expenses. I would gently suggest that $15 million is couch cushion money for the NBA and is a small price to pay for what amounts to a nice little bit of PR and probably nothing more. The sixth-highest-paid Los Angeles Clipper (Terrence Mann) is slated to make $11.4 million himself this year.

But in driving viewership and being responsible for a large chunk of the league’s economic activity, Clark improved her economic position, the league’s economic position, and the economic positions/bargaining power of other WNBA players. All of this scans as very positive except for the fact that (much of) the rest of the league hated and resented Clark for her fame/influence and bullied her to such a degree that she may decide to go and play professional basketball elsewhere next year, which would effectively tank the league and send it back to relative obscurity (save for ESPN’s insistence on promoting it). If you don’t believe in man’s (or woman’s) inherent sin nature, I would gently invite you to just reflect on the above paragraph.

Time magazine named Clark its 2024 Athlete of the Year, much to the chagrin of Sheila Johnson, who owns the WNBA’s Washington Mystics.

“I want to be very diplomatic about this, and it’s just the structure of the way the media plays out race, if I’m being very honest,” Johnson said in a CNN interview. “I feel really bad, because I’ve seen so many players of color that are equally as talented, and they never get the recognition that they should have.” She then went on to say, “So now you’re starting to hear stories of racism in the WNBA, and I don’t want to hear that.” Which would seem to pretty directly contradict the first thing she said.

I’d like to gently suggest that economics, not race, is the real story here. Time is trying to sell magazines. ESPN is trying to sell subscriptions to its services and ads during its televised content. The NBA is trying to sell you on the idea that it cares about professional women’s basketball even though audiences have proven year in and year out that they don’t. Clark’s leaguemates beefing with her is, to some degree (at least from an eyeballs on the product standpoint), akin to Miami of Ohio’s left guard beefing with Appalachian State’s right defensive tackle—which is to say, a thing that nobody really cares about.

A large part of the delicate fantasy-construction calculus of sport includes convincing ourselves that the games matter. The NBA has basically conceded that its regular season matters only to degenerate gamblers. I guess, because I used to pay taxes in Michigan, I am a Detroit Lions fan and will watch them play Sunday though I don’t know any of the players personally and none of them know me. I’ll watch because I love football.

Something that’s fun to do is watch male sports talking heads pretend to care about the WNBA, which is now a requirement for their jobs. But, by and large, the league has failed to make us care whether the Washington Mystics can beat the Atlanta Dream. They haven’t convinced us that the games matter in any significant way. For a moment, that seemed destined to be forgotten. Caitlin Clark made people care.