Women's basketball has never been as popular as it is right now. A lot of people might credit that surge in popularity to Caitlin Clark, who helped raise the popularity of the game while balling out at Iowa, and now is doing the same with her pro team in the WNBA, the Indiana Fever.
Since Clark has joined the WNBA, ratings and attendance are both massively up, and the league is taking advantage by expanding. Clark might not be the only reason that people are tuning in, but she's certainly a large part of it.
With that said, if Clark were to leave the league for whatever reason, it wouldn't be crazy to think that the ratings and attendance would decline. This is obviously something the league is hoping doesn't happen for a long time, but Christine Brennan, a journalist who also wrote "On Her Game: Caitlin Clark and the Revolution in Women’s Sports", recently appeared on ESPN LA radio and threw out an absolute nightmare scenario for the WNBA.
That scenario includes Clark leaving the WNBA and launching her own professional league instead. So not only would Clark be exiting the WNBA, but she'd be launching another league that would directly match up against it.
“Even though the salary’s $76,000 for a rookie—it’s more now—she’s making $28 million from Nike alone, according to the Wall Street Journal,” Brennan said. “So she’s at $40 million, whatever. Nike loves her. She’s got Wilson. She’s got Gatorade. If Nike said, ‘We’re going to make the Nike-Clark League,’ it would obviously take a few years to get the arenas and whatever… but they could absolutely do it.”
Caitlin Clark leaving WNBA to form her own league would be nightmare fuel for WNBA
Not only would this be torture for the WNBA to lose Clark and the popularity she brings, but there's a strong chance that the networks would want to follow the popular player if she were to head to her own league. Brennan pointed that out as well, noting that Clark is responsible for the eyeballs on the league.
“The TV contract? It’s Caitlin,” Brennan said. “It’s not Caitlin and Angel [Reese]. It’s Caitlin Clark only. She moves the needle in ways we’ve never seen before in women’s sports. Angel’s a great rebounder and plays her role well—but Caitlin is the reason TV ratings are exploding.”
Clark helped the WNBA land a massive 11-year deal with NBC because everyone wants to watch her ball out with the Fever.
The league would surely be panicking if Brennan's theory became a reality, but hopefully for everyone's sake (because it's been fun watching the WNBA get the respect it deserves recently), Clark stays in the WNBA and all is well.