The Caitlin Clark Effect on the WNBA

It’s a bounce beyond anything we expected.

Caitlin Clark wrapped up her first WNBA season with a trip to the playoffs and Rookie of the Year honors.

But the bigger impact is the effect Clark — along with a strong rookie class and talent across the league — have thrust women’s basketball into a bigger spotlight than ever before.

The West Des Moines Scheels store has a large display of Caitlin Clark-related merchandise. (Photo by John Naughton.)

In 40 games, Clark, the rookie sensation from Iowa, averaged 19.2 points, a league-leading 8.4 assists and 5.7 rebounds. The Indiana Fever reached the playoffs for the first time since 2016.

Across the WNBA, attendance and attention from fans and media alike skyrocketed.

In Iowa, you can buy Clark’s No. 22 or smiling face in the form of T-shirts, mugs, socks and more.

I recently made a visit to the West Des Moines Scheels and found more merch featuring Clark than, say, Brock Purdy.

Care for a pair of Caitlin Clark socks? You can find them at Scheels. (Photo by John Naughton.)

The magnitude of Clark’s popularity in Iowa is hard to measure. Is she the most popular Iowa native athlete ever? That’s a high standard; but certainly she brings comparisons to world renown female athletes like Shawn Johnson. (Now, if we can see Caitlin on “Dancing With The Stars,” she’ll reach a whole new orbit.

Clark and her Indiana teammates set an all-time WNBA home attendance record with 340,715 fans — that’s more than 90,000 more than the previous single season mark set by New York in 2001.

Three Indiana games drew more than 20,000 people at the gate. A WNBA record 20,711 fans attended the Sept. 19 game vs. the Washington Mystics.

Across the WNBA, attendance increased 48 percent.

Rally House in Clive has a selection of Caitlin Clark shirts for sale, plus more online. (Photo by John Naughton.)

Let’s look at a few more factors across the league:

*Viewership across TV and other platforms showed tremendous increases. Audiences accounted for 54 million unique viewers on networks such as ABC, CBS and ESPN. The all-star game, carried by ABC, drew an audience of 3.4 million — triple last year’s numbers.

*Social media/online: The league counted almost 2 billion in video views through its own platform.

*Merchandise: The WNBA store increased its sales more than 600 percent from a year ago.

While Clark has been the biggest individual factor in the rise of the WNBA, let’s not forget fellow rookies like Angel Reese and Kamilla Cardoso of Chicago and pro legends like A’ja Wilson and Breanna Stewart.

Amid all the increased attention has come more scrutiny.