CNN
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Caitlin Clark – who helped draw crowds to arenas across the nation and drive up viewership numbers in her closing 12 months of school after which in her rookie 12 months within the WNBA – has been named Time’s Athlete of the Year.
Clark, 22, helped proceed in 2024 the rising reputation of the WNBA and ladies’s faculty basketball, wowing followers together with her long-range pictures and crisp passing.
In her debut season with the Indiana Fever following a stellar profession at Iowa, Clark took residence the Rookie of the Year award and was named to the All-WNBA first workforce – the primary rookie to take action since 2008 – throughout the 2024 season.
The Fever celebrity additionally set rookie season data for each factors and three-pointers made and have become the primary rookie to get a triple-double.
As properly as scoring, Clark additionally set the all-time WNBA league document for assists in a single season and essentially the most dimes in a single sport.
In her closing season in an Iowa Hawkeyes uniform, Clark set the NCAA Division I girls’s basketball scoring document after which broke Hall of Famer Pete Maravich’s document throughout all of Division I.
This additionally was the primary 12 months when the NCAA girls’s basketball nationwide championship sport had increased viewership than the boys’s title sport, when powerhouse South Carolina accomplished an undefeated season with an 87-75 win in opposition to the Hawkeyes. With 18.9 million viewers, South Carolina-Iowa outrated video games on this 12 months’s NBA Finals and the World Series.
Meanwhile, scores for the WNBA common season and postseason – not simply video games involving Clark – had been up.
The WNBA delivered its most-watched common season in 24 years, whereas the WNBA Finals, the place the New York Liberty outlasted the Minnesota Lynx, was the highest-viewed WNBA Finals in 25 years.
Additionally, the WNBA had its highest complete attendance in 22 years. The September 19 sport at Capital One Arena in Washington, DC, between the Fever and the Washington Mystics set a WNBA single-game attendance document of 20,711.
It was certainly one of three video games to attract a minimum of 20,000 followers this season, together with 20,366 for Indiana vs. the Las Vegas Aces on July 2 and 20,333 for Indiana vs. Washington on June 7.
The Fever’s complete residence attendance in 2024 was 340,715 – a single-season document for a WNBA workforce.
Last week, Clark debuted in Sportico’s highest-paid feminine athletes listing, together with her earnings totaling $11.1 million. Just a fraction of Clark’s earnings comes from her WNBA wage, which was $100,000. The relaxation is from endorsements.
CNN’s Thomas Schlachter contributed to this report.
