Common Sense Caitlin Clark Context Is Missing Amid Indiana Fever National TV Coverage
New Indiana Fever guard Sydney Colson got it right when she said the attention surrounding the WNBA's most high-profile teams can gain respect for the entire league. This is why the discourse surrounding the coverage Caitlin Clark receives is so often misguided.
Yes, the Fever will have 41 of 44 games on national television during the 2025 WNBA season. For good reason. Last season, Clark and the Fever averaged over a million viewers per game and delivered almost all of the highest-rated games the league has seen in more than 20 years.
So of course the WNBA and its broadcast partners would want to televise the main attraction as much as possible. The problem is when this is positioned as a bad thing for everyone else.
It sounds like Syd is remarking on the 41 Nationally televised games the Fever have, and how it will garner more exposure for other players and teams in the WNBA
— Rosalina Lee (@YoitsRosie) March 25, 2025
Let’s goooo Syd! pic.twitter.com/SxP46qy2hr
Which is exactly how it was framed during an appearance by Minnesota Lynx star Napheesa Collier on ESPN's First Take. Collier was asked by host Molley Qerim whether it was fair for the WNBA to have the Fever on national TV so often while the defending champion New York Liberty "only" have 32 nationally televised games.
First of all, the entire premise ignores the role of the media partners in choosing which games are aired, including ESPN, a network that happened to have its most-viewed WNBA season ever in 2024 in large part due to Clark and the Fever. It also positions the 32 games the Liberty has as some paltry number.
For context, the Los Angeles Lakers led the NBA with 39 scheduled nationally televised games this season. Only the Lakers, Golden State Warriors, Boston Celtics, and New York Knicks were scheduled for more than the Liberty and Las Vegas Aces are currently. Of course, the NBA has more games to choose from, but the coverage both the Liberty and Aces are set to receive is nothing to sneeze at.
Napheesa Collier weighs in on whether the Indiana Fever should have 41 games Nationally Televised. pic.twitter.com/fb6DpDJ1FI
— Ken Swift (@kenswift) March 25, 2025
The same Liberty team was a part of the most-watched WNBA Finals game this century, the championship deciding Game 5 against the Lynx. Common sense would tell you many of the fans who got caught up in the fever around Clark stayed to help bolster that number as they gained appreciation for many of the other awesome players in the league, including Collier.
Given the nature of the topic, it'd be interesting to see the combined hours of coverage the WNBA had received on a program like First Take before Clark's rookie season.
The same principle can also be applied to the college game. Amid numerous think pieces analyzing the ratings in the first year without Clark, reasonable context so often seems to be missing, as if what happened with Clark and Iowa took place in a vacuum.
While numbers for the NCAA Tournament are down from a year ago thus far, they are up from recent years prior to that. This is a testament to the overall growth of the game continuing in tandem with the explosive popularity of Clark.
Chiney Ogwumike famously dubbed Caitlin Clark "the needle" on the same airwaves where the aforementioned interview with Collier took place. But the thing about it is the rest of women's basketball has moved with her.
It's about time that common sense context is regularly applied to conversations around Clark and the WNBA, instead of trying to create controversy over something that should be celebrated.
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Robin Lundberg is a media veteran and hoops head who has spent the bulk of his career with iconic brands like Sports Illustrated and ESPN. His insights have also been featured on platforms such as Fox and CNN and he can currently be heard hosting shows for Sirius XM and on his burgeoning YouTube show. And now he brings his basketball expertise to Women's Fastbreak on SI!