Why Caitlin Clark is one of the 100 most powerful women in the world in 2024

The Indiana Fever freshman was the creator of the game that sent women’s sports into turmoil this year – including a $2 billion media rights deal for the WNBA, gender parity in the Olympics and record-breaking viewership in women’s professional soccer.

_{From Maggie McGrathForbes contributor}

CAitlin Clark reacted almost nonchalantly to the shot that made her the NCAA’s all-time leading scorer – male or female – in March. “Pretty cool,” she told Fox courtside reporter Allison Williams, before in the same breath launching into an analysis of her team’s performance in the game’s first half.

“Pretty cool” is one way to describe the year Clark has had. Others are groundbreaking, stirring and historic. After leading Iowa to the NCAA Women’s Finals – which was watched by a record 18.7 million viewers (24 million at its peak), making it one of the most-watched games in college basketball history and the first time surpassed the men’s final – Clark became number one in the 2024 WNBA draft.

In her first WNBA season, she continued to make history – setting rookie records for most points and assists and being named the league’s Rookie of the Year. Along with draft class members Angel Reese, Cameron Brink and Kamilla Cardoso, Clark is credited with driving a record 54 million viewers to ABC, NBC, ESPN and their cable counterparts to watch the WNBA regular season.

All that attention is lucrative, too: Over the summer, the WNBA inked an 11-year, $2.2 billion media rights deal with Disney, Amazon Prime and NBC.

A basketball player has never made it to the rankings before Forbes list of the world’s 100 most powerful women (tennis ace Serena Williams is one of the few other athletes to appear in the rankings in the last 20 years), but the 22-year-old Clark has been a driving force in a game-changing year for women’s sports. This year, for the first time, there was gender parity in the number of Olympic athletes competing in the Games. U.S. women’s soccer concluded its 2024 season with the most-watched championship game in NWSL history; Angel City FC became the highest-valued professional women’s sports team at $250 million when Willow Bay and Bob Iger acquired a controlling stake this summer.

“Caitlin Clark became the lightning rod for this moment,” says Thayer Lavielle, managing director of Wasserman’s athletic division, The Collective. Lavielle estimates that the value of women’s professional basketball and soccer stands will increase by a total of $1.6 billion over the next three years. This figure is based on attendance and viewership (on television or streaming equivalents) and does not include merchandise or media deals.

It’s a growth spurt that’s long overdue. Dawn Staley, who now has three NCAA women’s titles to her name as head coach of the South Carolina Gamecocks, told the story Forbes in July that the momentum in women’s sports has been increasing for so long that it is finally “uncontrollable.” But it also takes a single number to really pique consumer interest.

“I think sometimes you need unity,” Staley said. “I think Caitlin Clark has done a great job becoming the person people want to see. She brought a completely different perspective to our game.”

Of course, for all the attention Clark and her cohorts have paid to women’s sports in 2024, “it’s a long road to justice,” says Lavielle. “The male side of the ecosystem is $54 billion.” And research from The Collective shows that women’s sports received an average of 15% of all sports media coverage and 10% of sponsorships in the years ending in 2024.

This discrepancy naturally leads to significantly lower starting salaries for female players in the WNBA. Clark’s rookie salary of $76,535 made headlines earlier this year when it was compared to the salaries of her male counterparts in the NBA: Zaccharie Risacher, the 2024 No. 1 overall pick, and Victor Wembanyama, the first overall pick in 2023, both received a starting salary of $12 million.

“Most of the money that funds women’s sports comes from sponsorships and media rights, and even media really only reflects what brands are willing to spend,” says Pete Giorgio, a director at Deloitte who leads the company’s sports division. “Caitlin Clark gets paid the same as Victor Wembanyama when companies spend 50% of their marketing dollars on women’s sports.”

Giorgio predicts that 2024 will be the first year that global revenue from women’s sports will top $1 billion, and says any “bear” case in his thesis is gender-neutral: an economic downturn that for example, would impact sport as a whole. “I fundamentally believe that women’s sport is an undervalued asset that will continue to grow,” he says.

The power of Clark’s three-point shots at half-court will be part of that continued growth. This also applies to investments by owners of women’s sports teams such as Michele Kang, who in November committed an additional $30 million to the development of women’s soccer in addition to her shares in the NWSL team “Washington Spirit.” And Olympic stars like Simone Biles and Katie Ledecky, as well as coaches like Cheryl Reeve (Minnesota Lynx) and Emma Hayes (UWNT), are becoming household names, also driving consumer interest and sponsorship dollars.

“While I think what Caitlin has done and what she’s done this year is extraordinary, I think it’s part of a larger narrative, not just within basketball, but in the Olympics, in football, in volleyball, in gymnastics and all the different parts of it,” says Giorgio. “I think we are at the beginning of a new normal in women’s sports.”

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