By: Victor Olorunfemi

From a financial point of view, Caitlin Clark is becoming the most impactful athlete of the 21st century. The 23-year-old basketball star has redefined how popular women's sports can be and, most importantly, the revenue it can command.

To break it down at the most basic level, female athletes have historically earned a small fraction of their male counterparts because of television revenue. The secret to understanding pro athlete salaries is that it has little to do with how many people attend the stadium and more to do with how much television networks are willing to pay for broadcasting rights.

For example, 67% of the NFL's revenue comes from their lucrative TV deals versus 17% for ticket sales. That split is 49-31 for the MLB and 54-26 for the NBA. The dilemma for women's sports is that the broadcasting revenue has never been there, which limits the profitability of each league. For example, while the NBA just signed a record-breaking 11-year $76 billion TV deal, the WNBA had a deal that paid out $60 million yearly, far from enough to cover $290 million in estimated expenses, resulting in a let loss that capped how much players were getting paid. It is why the average NBA salary is $11 million with a maximum of $63 million, while the average WNBA salary is $147 thousand and a maximum of $240 thousand.

Then, the Caitlin Clark phenomenon happened, a once-in-a-lifetime athlete who will indirectly generate over a billion dollars and impact generations of female athletes.

Starting with her time in Iowa, her games commanded millions of viewers, not only shattering women's college records but pro basketball in general. Her win over LSU in the 2024 Elite Eight commanded 16.1 million viewers, the most for a college basketball game ever and the second most ESPN has had for a basketball event since 2012. It had more viewers than every MLB and NHL game from the 2023 season.

That somehow fell short of the 24.1 million viewers for her national championship loss to South Carolina, the most-watched sporting event since 2019, excluding the Olympics, World Cup, and NFL.

That momentum carried over to the professional level, where the 2024 WNBA draft set a record for 2.4 million viewers, a 328% increase from the past year. The Indiana Fever saw a 319% increase in attendance, and three of their games became the three most-watched WNBA games ever on ABC.

Simply put, Caitlin Clark is Lisan al-Gaib, Neo from The Matrix, the chosen one who has single-handedly redefined how popular women's sports can be from a broadcasting perspective, unlocking a potential multi-billion dollar industry.

Behind Clark as one of the most popular athletes in American history, the WNBA negotiated a new TV deal to start in 2025 at $200 million a year, a 330% increase from the last deal of $60 million annually.

It is, BY FAR, the most lucrative TV deal in women's sports history. It also has the WNBA in line to become the first major professional women's sports league to earn a yearly profit. As a result, that maximum WNBA salary of $240K and the average of $147K will increase exponentially over the next five to ten years.

That is a monumental achievement directly linked to Clark. She confirms my long-held belief that mass sporting popularity has little to do with the sport itself and more with the storylines surrounding the leagues and how they engage casual fans.

Where Clark is concerned, she is the perfect timing of a dominant athlete whose look and background, for better or worse, commands racial discourse and polarization at one of the most sensitive times in American political history. It creates a fascinating phenomenon akin to the Magic and Bird rivalry, where warring factions can express their often taboo and deep-rooted racial and socio-economic views under the guise of supporting a particular athlete. You search Clark's name on social media and you are just likely to see footage of her talent as you are someone giving their full fledged unhinged dissertation on something relating to her race in a predominantly black-American sport. This is not to say that everyone who supports or dislikes Clark observes it from a racial lens. Whether that racial polarization is appropriate is not the point.

What matters is that this perfect storm has shattered the proverbial ceiling previously attached to the popularity of women in sports.

Clark has opened the door for what broadcasting revenue looks like for women's pro sports and, therefore, the financial investment, an impact that will trickle down to other leagues such as the NWSL and a rumored revamping of professional softball. Practically overnight, the perception of women's pro sports has morphed from it will never be as popular as their male counterparts- to the viewership will be there if the storylines are interesting enough.

Without a doubt, Caitlin Clark will be the most impactful female athlete of the 21st century, if not across both genders.