In February 2024, we published an editorial under the headline: Thanks Caitlin Clark. It focused on the attention — but insufficient appreciation — that Ms. Clark had earned during a collegiate career that made her the all-time leading scorer in NCAA basketball history and a transformational figure who brought an unprecedented level of visibility and interest to the game.
The numbers told the story. The 2023 NCAA women’s championship game between LSU and Iowa drew an average of 9.9 million viewers, according to ESPN, making it the most-watched women’s college basketball final in television history. Iowa’s 2024 regional final against Louisville drew 2.49 million viewers, more than any NBA game on ESPN that season.
The surging popularity of women’s college basketball also drove attendance, thanks to Ms. Clark. Schools seized on the momentum to create marquee events, including the top-10 showdown between Iowa and Virginia Tech at the Ally Tipoff and an Iowa-DePaul outdoor exhibition game dubbed the “Crossover at Kinnick,” which set a single-game women’s basketball attendance record with 55,646 fans, according to The Athletic.
Those figures helped drive a landmark $920 million agreement between the NCAA and ESPN covering rights to 40 championships — 21 women’s and 19 men’s events — along with exclusive championship coverage.
We are reprising that headline today. Ms. Clark is doing at the WNBA level precisely what she did in college, and it deserves greater appreciation from players, fans, and the business community alike. Her impact echoes what Tiger Woods meant to the PGA Tour and what Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Michael Jordan meant to the NBA.
The results are now tangible. The WNBA’s new collective bargaining agreement (CBA), taking effect in 2026, establishes what the league describes as the first comprehensive revenue-sharing model in women’s professional sports history. The model offers players unlimited upside as league and team revenues grow, and the league projects more than $1 billion in total player salaries and benefits over the seven-year deal. The salary cap for 2026 will be set at $7 million, adjusted annually based on revenue growth. For the first time in league history, top players will be eligible for multimillion-dollar contracts, and the No. 1 overall draft pick in 2026 is projected to earn $500,000.
The contrast with Ms. Clark’s own entry into the league is striking. As the No. 1 pick in 2024, the Indiana Fever rookie of the year earned a salary of less than $80,000 in her first season, while the top NBA draft pick had a salary of more than $12 million.
Ms. Clark was photographed during the past year wearing a T-shirt that read: “Pay us what you owe us.”
Message received. Now that the new CBA has delivered a meaningful step toward pay equity for WNBA players, perhaps those same players should consider a new shirt: “Thank you, Caitlin.”
