Caitlin Clark Puts WNBA Haters on Notice, Headlines Biggest Game in Over 2 Decades

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Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark continues to cement her marquee status despite being the target of race-hustling trash talk and flagrant fouls.

On Sunday, the rookie sensation helped the WNBA score its biggest TV audience in 23 years, as a whopping 2.25 million viewers tuned in to watch the Fever defeat the Chicago Sky, CBS Sports announced.

That’s a 225 percent increase in viewership from the same time last year.

CBS Sports delivers record viewership for Indiana Fever’s win over Chicago Sky on Sunday, with most-watched WNBA game in 23 years

“The Caitlin Clark-led Fever have now played in each of the five most-watched WNBA games since 2002, with two of those five matchups coming against Chicago,” reported.

The WNBA announced that in May, it had its highest-attended opening in 26 years and its most-watched season opener ever across all networks that aired its games.

The league also boasted that it had set records for merchandise sales, social media engagement, app downloads and league pass subscriptions — with triple-digit spikes across all categories.

More than half of all WNBA games last month were sellouts — an astonishing 156 percent increase from last year, the league said.

In short, Clark’s WNBA debut has exponentially raised the profile of a heretofore sleepy sports league.

 

Indeed, the 22-year-old superstar has ignited such enthusiasm that countless new fans are buying tickets to WNBA games, purchasing merchandise, tuning in to games on TV and discussing women’s basketball across social media.

So it’s no surprise that Clark has become the target of bitter jealousy and malicious resentment.

Numerous X users agree that the NCAA scoring champion is responsible for the meteoric surge in public interest in her sport.

“The public hasn’t cared about the WNBA or women’s basketball as a whole for decades,” one person wrote. “Historically, Attendance numbers, TV ratings for both NCAA and WNBA show that.

“For the first time, women’s basketball has a player in Caitlin Clark that is must-see TV…”

In the simplest of terms. The public hasn’t cared about the WNBA or women’s basketball as a whole for decades. Historically, Attendance numbers, TV ratings for both NCAA and WNBA show that