Getty Caitlin Clark
Caitlin Clark will not be a part of Team USA when the 2024 Paris Olympics kick off in July, and while she could have been a ratings boon, TV ratings had nothing to do with her chance of making the team, a Team USA official said.
“It would be irresponsible for us to talk about [Clark] in a way other than how she would impact the play of the team,” Jen Rizzotti, chair of the team’s selection committee, told Doug Feinberg of the Associated Press on June 11. “Because it wasn’t the purview of our committee to decide how many people would watch or how many people would root for the U.S. It was our purview to create the best team we could for [head coach] Cheryl [Reeve].”
While Clark has sold out WNBA arenas across the country in her rookie season for the Indiana Fever, a Team USA without Clark should still draw strong ratings. That’s an assumption based both on the history of women’s basketball in the Olympics and the recent surge of interest in the sport, predating Clark’s arrival on the national stage.
Fans Interest Exists, Even Without Caitlin Clark
The Athletic’s Richard Deitsch laid out exactly how popular Olympic women’s basketball has long been, pointing out that even with a 10:30 p.m. Eastern time tipoff, the gold medal game in 2021 in Tokyo drew 7.9 million viewers. That’s only slightly below the 8.1 million who watched in 2016, with a tipoff at a much more reasonable 2:30 p.m. Eastern time.
There’s no doubt that Clark on the Olympic team would send those numbers through the roof, and Deitsch conceded as much. But given the increase in attendance, investment and viewership in the WNBA since 2021, there’s every reason to expect strong numbers in 2024.
The Paris 2024 gold medal game will tip off at 9:30 a.m. Eastern time on Sunday, August 11. That’s not exactly prime time, but responsible East Coasters at least won’t need to set an alarm to be awake for the Sunday start.
For those worried that A’ja Wilson, Breanna Stewart and Diana Taurasi won’t attract fans, WNBA attendance numbers tell a different story. 2023 was the highest-attended WNBA season in six years, with teams averaging 6,615 fans per game. That may sound pedestrian, but keep in mind that number is higher than the maximum capacity for two of the league’s 12 arenas. It’s also an increase of almost 1,000 fans per game from 2022.
TV viewership also jumped by 21%, making it the most-watched season in 21 years. Think back to that time, and it was 2002, when Sue Bird and Taurasi were first hitting the national stage and igniting interest in the women’s game much like Clark is now.
Continuity Matters
With Rizzotti’s assertion that USA Basketball’s job is to put the best team on the court for Reeve that it can, it’s also important to remember that this is a team that has to play together. It’s not just a ranking of the 12 best players.
One could make an argument that Clark is among the 12 best players in the WNBA, but the team as assembled already has plenty of chemistry. Taurasi and Brittney Griner have played together for more than a decade. Stewart and Sabrina Ionescu played together in 2021 and are now starters for the New York Liberty. Chelsea Gray, A’ja Wilson, Jackie Young and Kelsey Plum are all part of the defending world champion Las Vegas Aces.
“We were supposed to be giving [Reeve] a team that has experience and familiarity with international competition, familiarity with the coaching system, leadership abilities, versatility, depth at every position,” Rizzotti told The Athletic in a June 11 story. “The 12 that we selected, we felt were the best when it boiled down to a basketball decision.”
Team USA is 54-0 in the Olympics since 1996 and its success that year served as a catapult toward creating the WNBA the following year. Making one of the most successful rosters in all of sports is a tall task, but Clark will have plenty more opportunities, starting in Los Angeles in 2028.