I could name almost every team in the men’s National Basketball Association off the top of my head. I know star players like Joel Embiid, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jayson Tatum, LeBron James, Steph Curry. I can argue with the best of them that Embiid is a better center than Nikola Jokic…but what about the WNBA?
Women’s basketball has scandalously been a fourth-world sport for close to 30 years. The salaries barely above a livable wage, the game attendance often lackluster at best, the buzz behind jersey sales and star players is minimal. In fact, you rarely see many front-page stories on women basketball professionals.
All it takes is one…as Nike told Michael Jordan: it’s not about the shoe, but who’s wearing the shoe. Over the past few years, it hasn’t been the WNBA that’s drawing attention to women’s basketball…but the NCAA Women’s Basketball League.
“The One” in question is Iowa Hawkeye, Caitlin Clark. During the month of March, NBA devotees ripped their attention away to the NCAA March Madness tournament. And while the men’s teams generally dominate our screens, the women have recently stolen the show.
Who Is Caitlin Clark?
Caitlin Clark
AP Photo/Abbie Parr
Hailing from Des Moines, Caitlin Clark quickly became one of the most talked about players in college basketball. This past season, the 6-foot guard averaged 32 points per game, 7 rebounds, and 9 assists. She’s widely regarded as one of the greatest female basketball players of all time, and she’s only 22 years old.
As a senior with another year of eligibility due to the pandemic, Clark has options. She can continue to eviscerate all competition in her path and continue working towards an NCAA championship…or she can test her luck in the WNBA. And then there are the multi-million dollar offers from 50 Cent and Barstool’s Dave Portnoy to play in their respective leagues.
Clark is set to become the highest paid female basketball player, and for a good reason. A first team All-American, the recipient of the John Wooden Award, an NCAA Division I all-time leading scorer among both men and women — I could go on…
She’s making women’s basketball not only cool, but she’s had an effect similar to the one Taylor Swift had on football. The Caitlin Clark Effect knows no boundaries: the 2023 NCAA Championship game versus Coach Kim Mulkey’s LSU Villainesses was the most-viewed women’s college game in history. Each team that Iowa played saw their highest attendance ever, and Iowa’s home games were seeing equally sold-out successes.
Celebrities are suddenly flying to Iowa just to see Clark play. During April 1’s LSU-Iowa rematch, Jason Sudeikus cheered on Clark. Her fan base includes Travis Scott, Tom Brady, Billie Jean King, and Ashton Kutcher. A game in Iowa City now resembles the courtside section of Madison Square Garden.
Clark is a joy to watch. A true anomaly of a human whose basketball prowess borderlines on the robotic, it’s that impressive. She makes an NCAA game look like the prime Golden State Warriors…and she’s not alone in women’s college basketball superstardom.
Who Are The Women’s NCAA Basketball Stars?
Angel Reese taunting Caitlin Clark in the 2023 NCAA Championship
Tony Gutierrez/AP
It feels like there’s a superstar on every team in the women’s 2024 March Madness tournament. This made the tournament a thrill to watch, because every game has been a head-to-head matchup of some of the hottest young talent heading into the WNBA.
Caitlin Clark’s next matchup are the UConn Huskies, who have their own star in guardPaige Bueckers. Bueckers has garnered a host of awards and accolades throughout her college career: the 2021 Wooden Award recipient, Big East player of the year and freshman of the year, etc.
Bueckers and the Huskies just knocked off USC’s Trojans led by true freshman guard JuJu Watkins. Watkins is yet another thrilling name in the realm of women’s hoops and the face in Nike and AT&T Wireless commercials alongside NBA stars like Joel Embiid.
And then there’s the aforementioned “villainesses” at Louisiana State University. Led by power dresser and controversial coach, Kim Mulkey, the LSU women’s basketball team is constantly the talk of the town.
After LSU lambasted Iowa last year in the tournament, all eyes were on the trash-talking, bold LSU Tigers. Guard Angel Reesebacked up her trash talk with a killer performance on the court, and off the court, she embraces the villain role with open arms.
She’s not wrong. The LSU team undoubtedly gets a majority of the heat from the public. It’s not lost on me that it’s often a bunch of grown men trolling the women’s physical appearance on social media and harping on their “unladylike” behavior rather than their commanding presence on the court.
One more point Angel Reese wasn’t wrong about: they’re like The Beatles. There’s fervent support and a cult-like following surrounding women’s college basketball. And as these powerhouses progress in their careers, there’s been a WNBA resurgence. Men are opting to watch 22-year-old Caitlin Clark over 39-year-old LeBron James.
Welcome To The Women’s Basketball Takeover
Don’t believe me? The proof is in the numbers. Games featuring Iowa and Caitlin Clark during her final season are reported as the most-viewed women’s college basketball games of all time across platforms like ABC, Fox, and NBC. Clark’s final regular season game – when she broke the scoring record – was the second most-watched game (men or women) of the season.
Tickets for the Iowa-UConn matchup are currently going for over $1000, and the Iowa-LSU matchup on April 1 recorded 12.6 million viewers. That smashes last year’s previous record of 9.9 million…but, before that the record was in 2002, at 5.6 million.
To put that in perspective, they’re not that far behind men’s basketball – the NC State-Duke game peaked at 15.1 million viewers. The game was more viewed than the 2023 World Series and NBA Championship. And although you can’t yet bet on women’s basketball, I would say we aren’t far behind.
It’s a new era for women’s basketball. A new investment. And we can’t wait to see what happens next.
Actually, Spotify Does Pay Their Artists
After Universal Music Group, the largest record label in the industry, took all their artists' music off TikTok after failure to reach an agreement on AI usage of their artists and safety...people are now more than ever looking into how artists are treated on platforms where their music is the main focus. For TikTok, it's detrimental- they tried to punish UMG, and now they're paying the price.
At the 2024 Grammy Awards this Sunday, there were tons of controversial moments: should Taylor have brought Lana Del Rey onstage, should this person have won, what was that person wearing? But one of the more subtle digs was taken by host Trevor Noah, who commented on the UMG-TikTok battle by including another well-known streaming platform,
"Shame on you, TikTok, for ripping off artists. How dare you do that? That’s Spotify’s job!”
Without artists and their music, there would be no streaming platform to be had...and Spotify knows that, which is why they've been tracking their royalty payments to the music industry though their Loud & Clear report. The Loud & Clear report comes out every March and shows exactly how Spotify pays it back. According to their site,
"Nearly 70% of that revenue is paid back as royalties to rights holders, who then pay the artists and songwriters, based on the agreed terms."
This means that whatever Spotify is making from these artists and labels, and their music, they're making sure it gets back to them. It should be a mutually beneficial experience: one where both the artist and their representation trust that their work will be valued and protected (and thus, properly compensated), and where the platform also gains traffic from an artist's fans.
Today, Spotify announced that they've paid labels over $9 billion to give us a glimpse of their Loud & Clear report. In an exclusive statement to Popdust, a Spotify spokesperson states,
"Spotify paid record labels and publishers – which represent artists and songwriters – more money than ever in 2023: $9B+. That figure has nearly tripled over the past six years, and represents a big part of the $48B+ Spotify has paid since its founding."