This Sunday’s matchup between the Indiana Fever’s Kaitlin Clark and the Chicago Sky’s Angel Reese will mark the third time the 2 WNBA rookie superstars have performed one another this season. It is really the fourth matchup this 12 months for Clark and Reese, together with their assembly within the NCAA Event, when Clark’s Iowa defeated Reese’s LSU to advance to the Ultimate 4 in April.
However the truth that followers have already seen this match doesn’t imply that the demand for the following chapter of the rivalry is much less.
In actual fact, Sunday’s matchup between the Fever and Sky is the most costly WNBA recreation in historical past, in accordance with TickPick. This was reported by the net ticket gross sales platform Fortune that the typical buy value of tickets for a recreation is $271 – greater than 3 times greater than Sky’s common buy value for dwelling video games of $88.
Earlier than Reese and Clark have been drafted in April, the most cost effective ticket bought for that recreation was $49, mentioned Kyle Zorn, head of content material technique at TickPick. Now the most cost effective place prices about 5 instances.
“It is loopy,” he mentioned Fortune. “I’ve by no means seen two gamers in sports activities impression a league like this. It’s extremely LeBron James-esque, to be trustworthy.”
“The Caitlin Clarke Impact”
In 2024, the “Kaitlin Clark Impact” grew to become a tangible financial sensation that affected each crew, league, model and community the 22-year-old level guard touched. In April, the NCAA championship between the Iowa Hawkeyes and the South Carolina Gamecocks drew 19 million viewers, the very best ever for a girls’s school basketball recreation and 5 million greater than the boys’s championship between UConn and Purdue the day earlier than , in accordance with Nielsen. .
Shortly after being drafted by the Fever 1st within the WNBA draft, Clark reportedly signed an eight-year, $28 million take care of Nike. The contract, which features a future shoe deal, can be the biggest attire contract of any participant within the league. . Across the identical time, Dick’s Sporting Items introduced that it will carry Clark Fever merchandise in any respect 724 places so long as she didn’t play a single skilled recreation.
And as quickly as she began enjoying, the phenomenon continued.
The WNBA opened Could with its highest attendance in 26 years and the preferred begin to the season throughout all networks. The variety of sold-out video games in Could elevated by 156% in comparison with 2023, and enviornment occupancy in all WNBA arenas was nearly 95%.
As charming as Clark has been this season, her star energy garnered probably the most consideration — and led to the very best costs — when she confronted off in opposition to Reese.
In response to TickPick, the buy-in value — the worth of the most cost effective ticket — for this Sunday’s recreation is $249. That is 336% greater than the $57 buy-in value for his or her final recreation in Indiana. The final time Reese and Clark performed one another, on June 16, CNN reported that the matchup was the most-watched WNBA recreation on any community in 23 years, peaking at 3 million viewers, in accordance with CBS.
A part of that, Zorn mentioned, is the market through which the sport is performed. Each earlier video games have been in Indiana, a a lot cheaper market than Chicago.
“The WNBA’s bandwidth has elevated considerably in consequence [draft] class, and these are the 2 largest stars on this class which have a really deep historical past,” he mentioned. “That is the primary time this season Kaitlyn has come to Chicago, and I believe a whole lot of Chicago followers are rooting for his or her crew, after which folks wish to see Kaitlyn, too.”
They usually’re not simply breaking previous WNBA data. The $271 buy-in value for Sunday’s recreation is effectively above the typical for Chicago’s males’s sports activities franchises. The typical buy value of the Chicago Bulls final season was simply $117, in comparison with $201 for the Bears.
Zorn mentioned he expects demand for the WNBA to proceed all through the summer time so long as the narratives surrounding the league’s younger stars stay scorching. He mentioned will probably be attention-grabbing to see what occurs in September when the beginning of the WNBA playoffs coincides with the primary weeks of the NFL season.
“In sports activities, the storyline clearly helps,” Zorn mentioned. “The extra protection it will get, the extra individuals are within the sport … I believe so long as there are storylines and protection, there will likely be demand. I do not see issues slowing down.”
