JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
WNBA star Caitlin Clark announced this week that she'll be out for the rest of the season. There had been speculation about whether or not she would return to the court after suffering a groin injury back in July. Clark's injury is bad timing for her team, the Indiana Fever, especially with the playoffs starting next week. But what does her absence mean for the league as a whole? The WNBA is coming off of a record-breaking 2024 season, and Clark has been a huge draw for fans. Sabreena Merchant covers women's basketball for The Athletic, and she joins us now. Hey.
SABREENA MERCHANT: Hi there.
SUMMERS: So Sabreena, Caitlin Clark was the 2024 Rookie of the Year. She just brought in so many eyeballs to the game. And it seems like there were just huge expectations for her on the court coming into this season.
MERCHANT: Absolutely. Coming off of, as you mentioned, a Rookie of the Year season and also being first team All-WNBA - so one of the top five players in the league as a rookie - the understanding was that she would get better and that the Indiana Fever would be able to compete for a championship. And that is decidedly not where they stand with a week left in the regular season.
SUMMERS: Remind us, what kind of season was Caitlin Clark having before she got injured?
MERCHANT: Yeah. So it's kind of hard to say before she got injured because she suffered her first leg injury during the preseason and has sort of been working off of rehab and recovery as she played the 13 games that she managed to during this sophomore season. The Fever did go 8 and 5 in those 13 games, which is better than the .500 record they managed when she was a rookie. But, you know, Caitlin really struggled shooting from the field. She had this ridiculous 2 of 35 shooting on three-pointers away from home this season, which is - it's kind of hard to fathom for someone who you associate with the three-pointer as much as Caitlin Clark. But yeah, her efficiency really struggled this year. Considering the high bar that she set as a rookie, it's hard to say that she met those expectations as a sophomore and definitely didn't exceed them the way she did in her first season.
SUMMERS: I mean, the WNBA is coming off of this really historic year, with so much energy and enthusiasm around it, and Caitlin Clark was just a huge part of that. I remember that teams had to switch arenas to accommodate larger crowds when she'd come into town. So I guess I wonder, what do you think her absence means in terms of enthusiasm, in terms of viewership as we head into the playoffs?
MERCHANT: Well, the good thing is is that the WNBA has sustained a measure of that growth from last year. It isn't, you know, 2x attendance or TV viewership like they saw in 2024, but the league has experienced its highest attendance since 2002 - almost 11,000 people per game, which is significant, considering a few teams don't even play in stadiums that seat 11,000 people.
They've also experienced a decent chunk of growth in their national TV games. ABC reported that they had 13% year-over-year growth from 2024 to 2025. And again, not all of those were Clark games, but the WNBA is in a period where you would hope for, like, the hypergrowth that you saw in 2024. And this is more of a measured growth heading into the postseason and what figures to be a very pivotal offseason as the Players Association negotiates a new collective bargaining agreement with the league as a whole.
SUMMERS: Yeah, I want to ask you about that. If I remember correctly, the current collective bargaining agreement expires at the end of October, and we've just heard so many players being vocal all season about what they want. Do you think that Caitlin Clark's absence and the potential impact it may have on viewership changes the scope of those conversations at all?
MERCHANT: Well, if you think about the major sources of revenue for a sports league, broadcast rights is a big part of that, and the WNBA is entering a 11-year, $2.2 billion broadcast rights deal with ESPN and, you know, a couple other big partners that starts in 2026. And there's a look-in (ph) option on that deal that allows them to reevaluate within three years. And part of the metrics that, you know, would decide if the broadcast partners are willing to pay more is if they have higher postseason ratings because we saw last season that even as the regular season was dramatically popular in 2024, once Caitlin and Indiana were eliminated in the playoffs, the postseason had a lot more measured ratings.
And so I think the WNBA was hoping to put up a really big number with the Fever and, you know, their most popular star in this year's postseason, so that would have been a nice carrot for the players to head into negotiations with. But I still think that the players have a lot on their side in terms of the revenue and sponsorship and attendance and all of these metrics working in their favor. It just would have been nice to have one more item in their bag when they come to the table.
SUMMERS: Sabreena Merchant covers women's basketball for The Athletic. Thank you so much.
MERCHANT: Thank you.
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