I’ve been waiting for this all season. Watching from the sidelines during the Seattle regional last weekend, I finally learned what Caitlin Clark’s experience was all about. Dagger 3-pointer of course. But also one-handed passes that slipped into every corner of the square. Sliding dribbles drive past stunned defenders. And more rebounds and sprint layups than I could count.
In Iowa’s 97-83 win over powerhouse Louisville in the round of 16, Clark dominated: 41 points, 12 assists and 10 rebounds.
“It felt pretty strong,” Clark said after the game, smiling impishly.
Powerful.
This is current women’s football. A sport’s popularity often grows through the power of the story, through narratives that propel the game forward and compel us to watch. This year’s NCAA tournament is full of it, along with the talent and high stakes that give meaning to these narratives.
Clark continued her performance with another 41-point game in the Final Four to give South Carolina its first loss of the season. This week, Clark was named International Player of the Year, edging out South Carolina’s Aliyah Boston, the 6-foot-5 forward who has produced many memorable moments while leading her team to three straight Final Fours and the 2022 national championship.
On Sunday, Clark and Iowa take part in the national championship game to face off against Louisiana State, the exciting No. 3 with jack-of-all-trades forward Angel Reese and a fiery, pink boa-wearing coach, Kim Mulkey, whose outfits would make Elton John swoon drop.
The power of the women’s game for high stakes narrative and immersive play has been around for years. But it wasn’t always presented with proper attention. Women’s basketball was part of a $34 million transfer deal that bundles all NCAA championships except soccer and men’s basketball in the same deal.
A change could be on the way soon: This week, as the NCAA neared a decision on its next broadcast deal, several women’s coaches argued that it was high time for the association to sell the rights to the women’s tournament separately and possibly a financial windfall in the range of $81 million to $112 million per year, according to one estimate.
“It was supposed to happen,” said Dawn Staley, South Carolina’s superlative head coach. “We are where we are in high demand. I believe women’s basketball can stand on its own and be a tremendous revenue-generating sport and, to some degree, do what men’s basketball has done.”
After finally beginning to broadcast and stream their tournament games as artfully as their male counterparts, women’s college basketball is soaring in popularity.
Visitor numbers at this year’s NCAA tournament have risen sharply.
So are broadcast ratings. Iowa’s regional finals with Louisville drew a staggering 2.49 million viewers, more than any NBA game this season on ESPN. Viewership for round of 16 games increased by 73 percent compared to last season and set a record for total minutes watched.
But this is about more than basketball and sports within the United States. What we are witnessing during March Madness is symbolic of a steady shift in the popularity of women’s sports across much of the world.
“This isn’t just a moment,” said Cheryl Cooky, a Purdue professor who studies the gender gap in sport. “It’s more than that. It’s the cumulative effect of decades of fighting for equality and recognition. We are at such a turning point of a new era and the momentum is so great that it cannot be stopped.”
Beginning in the 1970s, tennis was the first women’s professional sport to gain widespread acceptance, earning its players multimillion-dollar fortunes.
Then came the WNBA in the 1990s. In the last 20 years it has grown from a start-up to a league with so-called super teams and recognizable stars.
Other sports have the same ambitions and are gaining momentum.
It is the National Women’s Soccer League that lays a solid foundation for professional women’s soccer in the United States.
87,000 fans packed London’s Wembley Stadium for the final of the European Women’s Championship between England and Germany last July, a record for both the men’s and women’s tournament. It’s 25,000 in the home of Newcastle United last year for a fourth tier game in England’s professional women’s league.
When the New Zealand women’s rugby team reached the World Cup final in 2022, they played to a sold-out home crowd of 40,000, doubling the previous finals record.
Female boxers and mixed martial artists were a popular sideshow in the not too distant past. Nowadays they are often the show.
I could go on, but you get the point. Investors certainly do, and they come armed with cash, the lifeblood of any sport trying to win over fans.
A collection of cities at the moment – Nashville; Oakland, California; and Toronto, to name just three — are hoping for new WNBA franchises, perhaps bolstered by the Seattle Storm’s recent valuation at a league-record $151 million.
In India, broadcasting rights to Premier League cricket matches were recently sold for around US$117 million.
Betting on women’s sports is a new frontier in sports investing, according to Kara Nortman, a Los Angeles-based venture capitalist whose company Monarch Collective is focused on supporting women’s sports with pioneering investment funds.
“When I decided to focus on sports, the first thing I asked myself was, ‘Is it supposed to be just sports or women?'” said Nortman, co-founder of Angel City Football Club, the Los Angeles NWSL team that averages Fans counted 19,000 players in its inaugural season last year.
“I came to this realization – a lot of people are investing in men’s sport. It’s harder to influence there from a dollar point of view. But there is a tremendous financial and cultural opportunity in women’s sport to make a difference, generate returns and grab people’s attention.”
With the domestic league game approaching, they pay attention now, fans new to women’s football and longtime die-hards alike engrossed in a powerful new chapter in an unfolding story.
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