It’s not surprising that corporations are lining up like fans along arena railings to get Caitlin Clark’s autograph. The former Iowa star is a transcendent talent who has proven she is as proficient at breaking viewership records as scoring marks, drawing capacity crowds at home and on the road and even attracting 17,000 spectators to an open practice during Final Four weekend. Her WNBA jersey sold out within hours of her being drafted No. 1 overall by the Indiana Fever, and multiple teams have moved upcoming games to larger venues to accommodate “unprecedented demand” for Fever games.

So, it makes perfect sense that she has been hired to pitch everything from home and auto insurance to performance drinks, from trading cards to supermarket chains, from automobiles to financial investment firms. She’s not only deserving of every opportunity but also has earned every endorsement deal that’s been placed before her, including a $28 million Nike pact that includes her own signature shoe line, as reported by The Athletic.

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Caitlin Clark’s whirlwind WNBA Draft week just the start for the in-demand rookie

That being said, we should not delude ourselves into believing her appeal as an influencer is based solely on basketball, because it’s not. Arguing otherwise is…

A Professional Women’s Hockey League game between Toronto and Montreal has, once again, broken the all-time attendance record for a women’s hockey game, just two months after first setting the new high.

The league has broken several attendance records in its inaugural season: first for the most fans at a professional women’s hockey game in Ottawa (8,318) on Jan. 2 and then four days later in Minnesota (13,316).

On Feb. 16, the league drew 19,285 fans to a game between Toronto and Montreal at Scotiabank Arena — home of the NHL’s Toronto Maple Leafs — which became the largest crowd to watch women’s hockey ever, including at the Olympics, world championships and the NCAA.

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PWHL breaks women’s hockey all-time attendance record

Saturday afternoon’s crowd of 21,105 at the Bell Centre — home of the NHL’s Montreal Canadiens — sets a new mark.

“There are a lot of people who didn’t even get tickets, so 21,000 wasn’t even enough,” Montreal goalie Ann-Renée Desbiens said at a news conference Friday. “People come, they bring friends, they look for more tickets. It says a lot about the talent on the ice, the level of play, the organizations, the media coverage.

“When we put all those things together, that’s what makes this possible. We saw it with…

As the WNBA heads into its most anticipated season in recent memory, half of the league’s teams are getting a new look.

Six franchises — Chicago, Connecticut, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Seattle — are adding new “Rebel” jerseys for the 2024 season. When Nike took over jersey production for the WNBA in 2021, it instituted three rotation jerseys: the Heroine (home), Explorer (away), and Rebel (alternate). In 2023, the league unveiled new Rebel uniforms for five teams: Dallas, Indiana, New York, Minnesota, and Washington, which leaves Atlanta as the lone organization not to get an update since the original release.

The new uniforms play off of the characteristics of each city and region. For instance, the Sparks’ new jersey is the team’s first gold jersey in the Nike era, as its current rotation includes a white home and purple away uniform. It gives the effect that the sun is shining on the team, especially when paired with the iconic palm tree logo. Meanwhile, the Storm have played up the weather aspect of their name with lightning-shaped indents in the jersey’s lettering.

Several elements of the Sun’s Rebel jerseys serve as symbols and homages to the Mohegan Tribe’s culture and history. Among them, the purple and white neck is modeled after the…

Reporting by Shams Charania, Mike Vorkunov and Ben Pickman

Indiana Fever rookie phenom Caitlin Clark — the No. 1 pick in Monday’s WNBA draft — is nearing a lucrative, eight-figure endorsement deal with Nike, industry sources tell The Athletic.

Clark is expected to receive a signature Nike shoe as well, those sources said. Under Armour and Adidas also made sizable offers to Clark, two industry sources said.

Clark’s previous deal with Nike ended after the conclusion of the recently finished college basketball season, which allowed her to hit the market at the peak of her popularity. Clark was a supernova at the University of Iowa, breaking records and bringing new fans to college basketball. The women’s NCAA Tournament set viewership records with every game in which Iowa played, culminating in 18.9 million viewers for the Hawkeyes’ national title game loss to South Carolina.

The Fever drafted the 22-year-old Clark first overall in Monday’s draft. Interest in the draft was at an all-time high, and it also set viewership records, with more than four times as many viewers for this year’s draft (2.4 million) compared to last year, blowing away the previous record for the most-watched WNBA draft, set in 2004.

Clark was expected to land one of the most lucrative sneaker…

You tuned in for Monday’s 2024 WNBA Draft.

Boy, did you ever.

Monday’s draft, featuring Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, Cameron Brink and a ton of other star college basketball players, averaged a record 2.446 million viewers, a head-spinning 307 percent increase in viewership over last year.

The previous all-time viewership for a WNBA Draft came in 2004 for Diana Taurasi’s draft year. That drew 601,000 viewers. Last year averaged 572,000 viewers on ESPN, which was up 42 percent over 2022 and the most-watched WNBA Draft since 2004.

What traditionally drives big viewership numbers for the NBA and NFL drafts are well-known players from college (think Zion Williamson) and star skill position players (think Joe Burrow and Tua Tagovailoa). This is the case even if the public has an idea of who will be picked first.

This WNBA Draft had an endless supply of players with name recognition and an obvious transcendent viewership draw in Clark. It has also never had this kind of momentum.

GO DEEPER

Is Caitlin Clark’s star power strong enough to spike WNBA fandom?

South Carolina’s 87-75 win over Iowa on April 7 averaged 18.9 million viewers, the most-viewed women’s college basketball game ever and the most-viewed college basketball game (men’s or women’s) on record for an ESPN platform….

Can Caitlin Clark, Cameron Brink and the great WNBA Draft class significantly increase that league’s viewership? What do you want most in an NFL Draft broadcast as a viewer? Can pro golf find its audience mojo again? Leave your sports media questions below and senior writer Richard Deitsch will answer some of them in an upcoming mailbag.

NEW YORK — The WNBA is looking to continue growing in the next few years. The league intends to reach 16 teams by 2028, commissioner Cathy Engelbert said before the draft, confirming The Athletic report from earlier Monday.

The league announced earlier this year that the Bay Area would receive an expansion team for a 13th league franchise, which is expected to start playing the 2025 season. The WNBA is looking at the 2026 season for its 14th team, Engelbert said. She named Philadelphia; Toronto; Portland, Ore.; Denver; Nashville, Tenn.; and South Florida as places the league is exploring as options. Charlotte, N.C., is also in consideration for the next team, sources with knowledge of the league’s plans told The Athletic.

“We’re talking to a lot of different cities,” Engelbert said. “I think I’ve thrown out names before. It’s complex because you need an arena and a practice facility and player housing and all the things, you need committed long-term ownership groups. The nice thing is we’re getting a lot of calls.”

The WNBA was close to bringing a team to Portland. The city was in strong consideration this fall, but those plans fell through during talks with the prospective ownership group.

Engelbert didn’t put a timeline on when the league would decide on…

Of course, you know the calls. Verne Lundquist provided the soundtrack for so many iconic sports moments, from Jack Nicklaus’ 17th-hole birdie putt at the 1986 Masters (“Yes, sir!”) to Christian Laettner’s jumper at the buzzer in the 1992 NCAA Tournament (“Yes!”) to Tiger Woods’ famed chip at No. 16 at the 2005 Masters (“In your life, have you seen anything like that?!”) to Auburn’s kick-six in the 2013 Iron Bowl (“An answered prayer!”). So many more, too.

But here is something you may not know: On the night of Nov. 22, 1963, Lundquist was just a 23-year-old weekend sportscaster on television and afternoon disc jockey at KTBC-AM-FM-TV, an Austin, Texas, radio-television station owned by Lyndon Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird. That evening, he volunteered to drive CBS News correspondent David Schoumacher and two other CBS staffers the 60 miles from Austin to Johnson City so they could interview friends, relatives and high school classmates of Johnson, who would soon become President of the United States. He never forgot that night. How could you?

But my favorite Verne story is how he met his wife, Nancy. It’s one he told me many years ago for a Sports Illustrated piece. Here it is, in his own words:

We met in a bar — and I hasten to add it was an…

So what now?

That’s the big, media-centric question for women’s college basketball. Where does the sport go after the head-spinning viewership figures for the national championship game? South Carolina’s 87-75 win over Iowa on April 7 averaged 18.9 million viewers, the most-viewed women’s college basketball game ever and the most-viewed college basketball game (men’s or women’s) on record for an ESPN platform. The audience was up 90 percent over the 2023 national championship (9.9 million for LSU’s win over Iowa) and 289 percent from 2022 (4.9 million viewers for South Carolina’s win over UConn). The game peaked at 24 million viewers on ABC and ESPN during the final 15 minutes.

The 2024 NCAA Women’s Final Four was the most-viewed on record, averaging 13.8 million viewers. Those numbers included 14.4 million viewers for Iowa-UConn (the second-most-watched women’s college game on record) and 7.2 million viewers for N.C. State and South Carolina. The tournament overall (57 games) across ESPN platforms averaged 2.2 million viewers, up 121 percent from 2023. It’s the most-watched women’s NCAA Tournament since ESPN acquired exclusive rights in 1996.

To put the South Carolina-Iowa viewership in perspective, the game topped:

• Every World Series game since Game…

Just eight days after playing for an NCAA national championship, Caitlin Clark is poised to become the No. 1 pick in the WNBA Draft and burst into the professional ranks with the star power to jolt the league at a pivotal moment in its trajectory.

Throngs of fans are expected to tune in for Monday night’s national broadcast when the Iowa star is all but certain to be selected by the Indiana Fever. From the moment her name is called and Clark takes center stage, she will become the WNBA’s most anticipated rookie in years. A popularity boost similar to the effect she had in women’s college basketball could follow her with every logo 3-pointer she makes and each pin-point pass she throws.

At Iowa, Clark’s impact was even greater than her resumé, which itself was outstanding with three conference tournament titles, two national championship appearances, and dozens of broken records, including the NCAA Division I all-time scoring mark. When Clark played, every game was appointment-viewing. Arenas sold out and television ratings records shattered.

The WNBA has already been on an ascent over the last few seasons with increases in nationally broadcast games, greater attendance and more media coverage. But Clark, who even South Carolina coach Dawn Staley described as “one of…