The most significant game-changing, sport-changing athlete of 2024 was paid $76,535 in salary — nothing like Juan Soto money — to play basketball for the Indiana Fever.
Really, there never has been an athlete in any sport, at any time, who has altered the landscape the way Caitlin Clark did in 2024.
The year women’s professional sports — and maybe women’s sport in general — changed forever.
tap here to see other videos from our team.
That this gangly, Iowa-born, aw-shucks, almost Wayne Gretzky-like basketball savant could fascinate the public and carry the money-loser that has been the WNBA into near-mainstream status is beyond logic.
But it happened, in the same year that teenager Summer McIntosh will be named Canada’s prestigious athlete of the year award on Tuesday, in the same year that the Professional Women’s Hockey League opened in North America and began to flourish, in the same year that the Northern Super (soccer) League announced its arrival in Canada.
There have been other game-changing athletes in other years. Tiger Woods was one in golf. That didn’t happen immediately. Mike Tyson had that effect years after Muhammad Ali in boxing. Also neither happened overnight. The Big Three in tennis became an acquired taste.
But not even the Michael Jordans or the Steph Currys; the Gretzkys or the Mario Lemieuxs; the Patrick Mahomes or the Tom Bradys have had the singular individual impact to their games and to their businesses the way it has all come together with Clark.
In a recent Indianapolis Star article, she was deemed to have been responsible for 26.5% of all WNBA business. One player. Television audiences in the WNBA were up 300% this season in the U.S. and 45% of that audience was attributed to Indiana Fever games.
WNBA merchandise grew by 500%. Games that Clark played in were watched 200% more than games she didn’t play in.
The new television deal the WNBA has signed will pay it $200 million, which is three times more than they were paid in the contract that is about to expire.
Before Clark played her first WNBA game, her legend had already begun. Her four years at Iowa University were mammoth. The 2024 NCAA tournament — the women’s tournament tends to get a public shrug when compared to that of the men’s tourney — was the most-watched ever on American television.
Clark played in that event, then played in the most-watched WNBA season, for the most-watched team in history, the Fever.
In between all that, she signed all kinds of corporate marketing deals with Nike and Wilson and others that will pay her the kind of life-changing money that WNBA players tend not to attract.
In fact, the rookie contract she signed with the Fever, which is a standard entry-level deal by the Players’ Association, will average out to $84,514 over four seasons.
On a dollar-for-dollar scale, she already has become sport’s most underpaid player.
The PWHL, with three Canadians teams and three American teams, and looking to expand next year, doesn’t have a Caitlin Clark. It is hard to sell individual hockey players the way you can sell basketball players.
Individually, basketball players impact games far more significantly than single hockey players do. They will play upwards of 35 minutes of a 40 minute game. A great hockey player plays 20-some-minutes of a 60-minute game.
A great basketball player is easily visible — we see their faces, their expressions, their emotions, their human frailties.
A hockey player plays beneath a helmet and a facemask. We see their faces only in interviews.
In its second season, the PWHL needs breakout stars, needs someone who can do something similar to what Clark has managed in her first WNBA season, a player to relate to, a player to become ours.
The way Gretzky was able to do that becoming a breakout star in the NHL, when he dominated scoring in the 1980s the way no one had dominated before.
Gretzky was traded from Edmonton to Los Angeles and the NHL changed forever. Suddenly, there were teams in San Jose and Anaheim, there were teams in Florida and Tampa Bay, teams moved to Dallas and Carolina and were expanded to Vegas and Seattle.
It wasn’t all because of Gretzky that business grew, but he certainly was instrumental in the growth of the sport in America.
In Toronto, attendance has more than tripled in the second season of the PWHL, as the Sceptres franchise has moved from the old Maple Leaf Gardens location to the coliseum on the CNE Grounds.
The business is growing faster than it was anticipated by its founders. The players soon will look seriously at attendance figures, do the math and realize that very soon they will be underpaid.
That is part of what comes with growth. The collective bargaining agreement in the WNBA is up. The dollars in the league are flowing. Players want more of the pie. Expansion money has come in at an all-time high rate, including the extraordinary price Larry Tanenbaum paid for his Toronto Tempo franchise.
There will be more money for everyone in the league and the public fascination with Clark is more responsible for the growth than anyone or anything else.
No one else in the league got a brief appearance this year on Weekend Update, the only segment that’s consistently funny on Saturday Night Live. No one had explain who she was or what she was doing there.
It was that kind of year for Clark. The person of the year in sports. The woman of the year. And really, this is just the beginning.
twitter.com/simmonssteve