...and the media is doing everything they can to be completely silent about this and you can't help but wonder why that is.
It is no secret that Caitlin Clark is the ONLY reason why a lot of people started to watch the WNBA as they finally got some regular viewers after 20 years in existence, but since she got involved in the league it seems like most of the media and even the league itself has attempted to attribute the new fans' arrival as anything other than because of her.
Well someone was bold in the media and published the Nielson data regarding TV viewership since Caitlin Clark's prolonged injury.
Every other team in the WNBA had seen some level of increased viewership because of the attention that was cast upon the league, even though a lot of it was negative in origin. I was going out of my way to watch some games but even then it was only Clark games and most of the time I would just catch the highlights. Caitlin has now been out of action because of a groin injury and prior to this it was because of a strained quad injury.
The results are in though folks, and TV viewership is down over 50% since Caitlin stopped setting foot on the court. CC herself has done as much as she possibly can as far as being active in the games on the sidelines, signing autographs for fans, and being accessible to the press. There really aren't any more questions to ask her though other than "when are you coming back?" and she and the staff of the Indiana Fever give a non-committal answer every time this question is asked.
As was noted by officials inside the WNBA though this obvious massive drop off in viewership has very broad implications on the league about how try as they may, the reason people are watching WNBA games is still exclusively because of her.
I will catch the highlights after the fact to see a few other things such as how the Fever handles the game without their star point guard and am quite pleased as to how they have found a rhythm that works without CC being in the game. In many ways, I feel as though the system actually kind of works better without her because there is no standout "go to" player that the defense can double-team every game. It is worth noting that at the moment and completely without Caitlin, the Fever have won 5 games straight and remain in 3rd place in their division just one game out of 2nd behind Atlanta.
There was some internal talks about how the referees need to do a better job in reducing the amount of hard fouls against Clark but at the same time I wonder if the hard fouls were always happening against everyone but we just noticed it more when it was happening consistently against Clark.
I wouldn't really know and neither would anyone else that watches this sport since half of us don't watch it anymore.
I think it will be interesting to see if this 50% of "walk away" fans return when Caitlin returns or if many of them stay gone. The WNBA is once again facing rough times as some of the players and especially very outspoken ones like Angel Reese keep talking about how if their payment demands are not met that the players will walk away and refuse to play. For those of us that are not involved in the financial side of things this seems like a really ignorant and short-sighted view for the players to have seeing as how they are not, even with Clark playing, a very highly-sought after sport to watch compared to other sports.
This isn't misogynistic, this is just a statistical fact.
The media still tries to cover it up with any other factor that doesn't involve Clark such as there being "other sports to watch as well" but I think it is kind of important to at least recognize that this one women is largely the reason why people are even watching. If they handled it better they could probably make it so this passion extended to other players as well but simply denying that she is the focal point (even she denies it - as she should) is not having the effect that I think the powers that be would like it to have.
For me, it will be interesting to see if the officiating has changed a bit when she does return. I think it will but the league will never admit that a conversation of that sort ever happened. To do so would be to admit fault and they just aren't very good at that.