Caitlin Clark is queen, but it’s women’s sports that is being crowned
Still on the fence about women’s college basketball? Well, at this point I feel sorry for you. The NCAA Division women’s basketball tournament has started, and for the third time, the NCAA is using the same logo and branding — “March Madness” — for the women and the men, a change that came after Oregon’s Sedona Prince (who now plays for Texas Christian University) raised alarm bells in 2021 regarding gender inequities in everything from food service to weight room facilities.
Still, this year’s tournament doesn’t feel like a turning point for women’s basketball. We don’t have to make a case for women’s basketball anymore. Not after last year’s women’s tourney topped the previous year’s numbers by over 100%, with some 10 million viewers watching LSU and Iowa vie for the title. This March Madness feels like a coronation.
Crowning Caitlin Clark
At the center, of course, is the queen: Caitlin Clark. the University of Iowa senior, who was born and raised in the state, is the most famous face in her game right now by far.
Her impact on viewership and passion for the sport, especially among those who are new to it, has been seismic. Viewership for that record-breaking Iowa-Ohio State game peaked at 4.4 million, the biggest regular season audience for a women’s game in 25 years.
At this point, keeping track of the soaring viewership and attendance statistics is enough to make anyone’s head spin, with unprecedented numbers coming at every turn. Some 4.5 million viewers watched Iowa’s overtime conference title win over Nebraska, another record. And for those lucky enough to get tickets? Just about every women’s conference tournament set a record, with the Big Ten selling out for the first time (109,000).
Right now, Clark is Messi. She is Ledecky. She is LeBron. She is Ohtani. She is Serena. She is Simone.
But as exciting as it is, we aren’t just watching Clark take her
throne — we are watching the sport evolve alongside her, ahead of her and behind her. The excitement that surrounds this year’s women’s tournament is part of a bigger landscape, one that feels like a saturation point for women’s sport in America, in which the women’s side of things is taking up as much — if not more — space than the men’s.
We would be hard pressed to find another moment when women’s sports were just, well, everywhere. Last summer, 92,000 people gathered in Nebraska to watch a women’s volleyball game, Coco Gauff owned the US Open (and the weeks leading up to it), and the return of Simone Biles, who garnered both national and world titles in a stunning comeback, redefined everyone’s standard of greatness, while ensuring a loud buzz around this summer’s Olympic Games.
Hockey, soccer and contracts
January’s launch of the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) has seen sold-out games and record attendance numbers. Molson, “the official beer of hockey,” launched its PWHL
partnership with its “see her name” campaign, in which they moved their logo up and players’ names down on the back of game day jerseys so that long hair didn’t obscure player identity. “We covered our name,” the commercial states, “so hers can be seen.”
Meanwhile, the US Women’s National Team, a veritable soccer dynasty, just won the first-ever Concacaf W Gold Cup behind the force that is goalie Alyssa Naeher, erasing some of the memories from last year’s early departure from the World Cup.
Their professional counterpart, the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL), opened the 2024 season last week with the first arena ever built expressly for an NWSL team, and no one was happier to be sitting in Kansas City’s CPKC Stadium than the Mahomes family, which is part of the ownership group. The league closed its 2023 regular season logging recordsetting attendance, the announcement of two new franchises and a new media rights agreement to the tune of $240 million.
That rights agreement represents the money that has been lining up behind women’s sports, including last year’s WNBA contract with Ion Television and
ESPN. “I think it’s time,” E.W. Scripps (owner of Ion) CEO Adam Symson said, “for women’s sports to be showcased in a way that its fans deserve. It’s time for the league, the owners and the players to have a platform where they can showcase the athleticism and the drama that is the WNBA.”
The weight of women’s sports
All this does not mean — and let’s be crystal clear here — that inequity in sport is a thing of the past or that there aren’t still important parity issues, particularly in terms of investment, pay and media coverage. But in a moment when the political landscape for women often feels (and is) so grim please remember this: A lot of people aren’t just watching women — they’re cheering for them.
Because what could be more glorious than seeing boys and girls scrambling after Caitlin Clark, offering her their handmade posters that declare their fandom to the world in hopes that she will scribble her name? Nothing.