How Caitlin Clark’s rookie season has been ‘the perfect fuel on a fire’ for a new WNBA era

Nearly 20 years ago, Conrad Piccirillo attended his first Indiana Fever game. The WNBA franchise was just five years into its existence and on the brink of its best year to date, but he admittedly was not there for the basketball. His daughters, 10-year-old Caitlyn and 11-year-old Claire, were members of the Fever Inferno’s youth dance team, and he was there to cheer them on during their performances.

Eventually, his daughters aged out of the dance troupe, but by that point, Piccirillo was hooked. He bought six season tickets and invited friends, reveling in the Fever’s 2012 WNBA championship. Yet, when the Fever hit hard times with consistent losing records for nearly a decade, Piccirillo found it harder to convince friends to join him at Fever games in his free courtside seats.

Flash forward to 2024 and he hasn’t had that problem again thanks to Caitlin Clark. His cohort is part of the legion of fans who have made Fever games the hottest ticket in the WNBA. He attended all but one game at Gainbridge Fieldhouse this season, soaking in the energy and environment as he watched waves of fans fall in love with the Fever and the WNBA the same way he did.

“I think she’s the perfect fuel on a fire that had been really growing,” Piccirillo said about Clark.

Clark’s rookie season marks a new era not only for the Fever franchise, but also the city of Indianapolis, the state and the WNBA. Clark was a spectacle at Iowa unlike anyone women’s college basketball has ever seen with her logo 3s and competitive fire. The WNBA and the Fever — who had the No. 1 draft pick — hoped her dazzle and appeal would carry over to provide a similar spark for the league.

This was a blast! Best fans in @WNBA – @GainbridgeFH – FEVER NATION is alive & well! @IndianaFever pic.twitter.com/LYrCfGHqCh

— Eddie White (@eddiewhite3) September 16, 2024

As the playoffs began Sunday — even with an opening loss by the Fever at Connecticut — the payoff of banking on Clark is evident on TV, in the stands and in the marketplace. Before Clark even stepped on the court in a Fever jersey, she surpassed expectations.

Only once in the 2000s had a WNBA game garnered 2.4 million viewers on TV, but on draft night, even more fans tuned in to watch the league commissioner call Clark’s name. Since then, Clark has continued to help the Fever and WNBA smash television records.

Six different league television partners set viewership records this year for its highest viewed WNBA game, and all six included the Fever. ION, which broadcast 43 WNBA games, experienced a 133 percent increase in viewership year over year, and each of its seven broadcasts that topped 1 million viewers included Fever games. Per Yahoo Sports, NBA TV set its own WNBA viewership record eight times this season — each of those a Fever game.

ESPN, a longtime WNBA partner, had its most successful year of broadcasting the league.

The 2024 #WNBA regular season on ESPN platforms was the most-watched EVER! 🎉

🏀 1.2M avg. viewers
🏀 WNBA Countdown: 508K avg. viewers pic.twitter.com/FrnWHOp11h

— ESPN PR (@ESPNPR) September 11, 2024

The first regular-season Fever-Sky game — with Clark and rookie rival Angel Reese taking center stage — marked the most-viewed WNBA game in 23 years across any network, with 2.35 million viewers. That record was broken a month later when the WNBA All-Star Game brought in a whopping 3.4 million viewers, making it the third most-watched WNBA game in history.

But it’s at Fever home games where the buzz is palpable.

Attendance in Indianapolis hit a record high — 17,036 per home game to lead the league in attendance for the first time. Fever season ticket sales were already on the uptick, but when Clark announced in February that she was forgoing her fifth season of college eligibility, demand for Fever tickets became unprecedented.

According to Across the Timeline, the Fever hadn’t been in the top half of WNBA average attendance since 2016.

Piccirillo, the longtime Fever season ticket holder, now wears earplugs inside Gainbridge Fieldhouse, and his AppleWatch frequently notifies him during games that the decibels he experiences could be reaching damaging levels. “It is like watching Pacers playoff games — that’s how loud it is,” he said. “In my mind, I think it’s even louder.”

It wasn’t just in Indiana where Clark bumped attendance. Before the season started, four Fever opponents — Las Vegas, Atlanta, Washington and Los Angeles — moved at least one of their home games against Indiana to larger arenas to accommodate more fans.

Tamika Catchings, a Hall of Fame forward who spent her entire 14-year career with the Fever, still lives in Indianapolis. She was excited last season when Indiana, led by 2023 No. 1 pick Aliyah Boston, experienced an eight-win increase. “But last year to this year is insane, how much energy is around,” she said.

She’s noticed big-box stores that never sold Fever gear now displaying merchandise front and center. Fans enter her local tea shop, Tea’s Me Cafe, and ask her about Clark, Boston and Kelsey Mitchell. “(Fans) get excited when they see me because they want to talk about the Fever,” she said. “In (past) years, it might be that they get excited about seeing me, but that’s it. You can tell there’s a genuine energy and interest in: ‘What are your thoughts about the Indiana Fever?’”

Indianapolis comes to life when the Fever play. An executive with the city’s tourism department said hotel and rentals spiked this summer when the Fever played.

During the 2024 women’s NCAA Tournament, Brent Drescher, general manager of the downtown Indianapolis bar The District Tap, said fans began stopping in to watch Iowa women’s basketball, anticipating Clark’s future arrival to town. Fans of the Pacers, who made a run to the NBA’s Eastern Conference finals, often frequented his bar, showing up around 5 p.m. for late tip-offs, Drescher said. Fever fans are even more engaged. “They are coming in as early as 4,” he said.

Jeff Metson, general manager of Taxman CityWay, notices a similar buzz. A brew pub with a beer garden and only four TVs inside, it isn’t a typical sports bar, but because it’s on the same block as the Fever’s arena, it’s become a pregame destination — to the point that he’s often had to double his staff. During Fever home games, he said, the Taxman welcomes as many as 400 patrons compared to about 250 on a typical Friday or Saturday night.

“Not only do we fill up the entire restaurant pregame, but like clockwork, two hours after the game starts we have people starting to walk down the street, right in front of us,” he said. “Unlike the others — Pacers and Colts games — our postgame crowd fills the restaurant again. The other sports don’t do that.”

Jaden Brown and his fiancee had never bought season tickets for any sport before buying them for the Fever this year. They were stunned to see even a small pizza shock packed with fans before the Fever’s first preseason game.

“You just see this flood of Fever, Clark, Iowa jerseys,” Brown said. “It’s like a pregame with strangers. But they’re not strangers because you’re all there supporting the same team.”

However, it’s not just bars and restaurants in the Indy area that have seen the Caitlin Clark Effect up close. Portland’s The Sports Bra — a bar that has created buzz by showing only women’s sports on its TVs since opening in 2022 — is more than 2,000 miles away from Indianapolis and in a city currently without a WNBA team. When the Fever play, owner Jenny Nguyen said, there’s a 56 percent increase in the number of bar bills and a 52 percent increase in revenue.

A framed Clark No. 22 Iowa jersey, next to photos of Serena Williams and Diana Taurasi, hangs on a wall at the bar. But that’s not surprising, considering Clark apparel can be found anywhere.

The laws of supply and demand are evident around Fever games. Fans did not flinch to shell out money despite significant ticket price increases for Fever games.

Heading into the playoffs, the get-in price for the Fever-Sun game as of Saturday was significantly higher on TicketMaster at $89 than the league’s other three Sunday games, which averaged $15 per game. This follows a season-long trend. The five highest average ticket prices this season all featured the Fever.

Those numbers alone are impressive, but compare them to the same matchups from last season. The average price when the Fever visited the Sky in June 2023 was $45.  When Indiana traveled to Washington twice in July 2023, tickets went for $59 on average in July 2023 when the Mystics hosted the Fever, and they sold for $55 when Indiana played at Dallas last September. The hottest ticket for any game last season was $120 for a regular-season game between the Aces and the Dream.

Across the board, WNBA ticket pricing followed suit — jumping from $62 per game in 2023 to $109 per game in 2024 (through mid-September), according to Vivid Seats. But no team experienced quite as drastic a jump as the Fever, whose home game tickets averaged $110 this season, compared to the rest of the W, which averaged $79 per home game.

Despite the higher price point, even more tickets were sold this year.

“The fans in Indiana love basketball, and I’m glad to see them back in the seats, especially for the Fever,” said Briann January, who played the first nine seasons of her career with the Fever and is now an assistant coach with the Sun. “For that team to be recognized and supported the way they should be makes me so happy.”

During the first week of the season, the WNBA said it saw a 236 percent increase year over year in merchandise sales, with jerseys for Clark, Reese and Cameron Brink all in the top five. Through the first two months of the season, four Fever home games set single-game sales records at the arena’s team store, according to the Fever. Total items sold grew 694 percent year over year, and the store’s net sales increased more than 1,000 percent. Jersey sales were up 1,193 percent heading into the All-Star break.

Clark collectibles have been in high demand as well. Her signature Wilson basketball sold out in 40 minutes earlier this month, prompting a restock for the latest drop on Monday. A one-of-a-kind autographed Clark WNBA Draft card — the first showing her in a Fever jersey — sold at auction for $84,000.

The sense something big was coming in Indianapolis was looming for months. Before Clark’s Fever debut, the city hung a 150-foot banner of her on a building near Gainbridge Fieldhouse. Clark’s image seems to be staring across the city.

Now, for the first time in eight years, the Fever are back in the playoffs. Indy’s past greats already can recognize and appreciate her impact. “Playing basketball in Indiana is different, whether it be in Indianapolis or one of the smaller cities, basketball is bred differently,” Indiana Pacers legend Reggie Miller said in an email. “So watching the excitement the Fever have brought to the city and state has been fun to witness.”

A Fever road win over the Sun on Wednesday would guarantee a series-clinching Game 3 in Indianapolis. Catchings predicts a crazed crowd showing up to watch Clark try to lead the Fever to their first semifinals since 2015.

“It’s like Fever basketball and women’s basketball has been rejuvenated,” Catchings said. “Especially here in Indy.”

(Illustration: Meech Robinson / The Athletic; Visual data: John Bradford / The Athletic; Photos: Luke Hales / Getty Images, G Fiume / Getty Images, Brian Spurlock / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)