Caitlin Clark and the WNBA's new attention economy

“In the attention economy, anyone trying to connect with an audience must treat the user’s time as the ultimate resource.”
– Jakob Nielsen

For any business in today’s attention-driven economy, taking up mental “shelf space” is key to success and growth. Especially businesses in the business of entertainment. Having your customers thinking about and talking about you is literally pure gold when it comes to making more money.

Which is why every headline you’re seeing about today’s WNBA is music to the ears of the league, whether positive or negative. Is Caitlin Clark being headhunted in her rookie year? Is Angel Reese getting equal calls or opportunities? Is Kate Martin actually the best Iowa alum rookie in the league so far? Is Cameron Brink actually the best rookie of the class so far? Is super story Alissa Pili even one of the top ten rookies of this draft?

And that’s just the rookie stories. A’ja Wilson’s historic stat line, Breanna Stewart’s early pace towards another MVP, Alyssa Thomas’ pace towards a well-deserved first MVP, and will Nneka Ogwumike or Brittney Griner continue to resurrect their careers?

All ten of those stories crossed my news feed unbidden in my recent scan of “sports” from the 10,000 foot view, crossing over “Top Stories” in apps like The Score, The Athletic, and ESPN. The clicks and searches of millions of others has impacted what was something they thought I might want to see as well. Just as Lionel Messi’s arrival to MLS injected life back into a league looking for headlines and attention, the arrival of some of the most popular players the league has ever known has translated into new attention. New “mental shelf space” amongst the casual sports fan for the WNBA that it hasn’t occupied amongst anyone in their past but their most dedicated of fans.

With this attention, the league has already immediately and drastically changed the economies of teams and players alike coming into the new season. Players enjoy chartered flights and newfound perks with the new scale of cash flowing into the league. Headlines and eyeballs that seem to follow along with every move the stars make, especially the rookie class that drew all this attention in the first place.

The data behind that attention isn’t just vapor, either, with last week’s contest between Clark’s Indiana Fever and Reese’s Chicago Sky garnering over a million viewers. That was the fifth game the WNBA has televised this season that crossed the million mark, with Clark’s league debut passing two million. The number of times the league had exceeded that million marker prior to this year? Zero, in 22 seasons. This year, even regionally shown matches between teams with player names that aren’t always quite as recognizable regularly draw viewerships in and around 300 or 400 thousand, and nationally televised games end up with viewerships averaging close to 800,000 up from 600k+ last year. To put that into context, it may not be the numbers the NFL, NBA, or even Major League Baseball put up on an average per-game basis, but is very much in line with or above what both MLS and the NHL draw to television regularly. It’s also an order of magnitude above the WNBA’s previous totals, which could very much be the league’s golden ticket.

With viewership averages so steadily on the rise, commercial, marketing, and sponsorship dollars are quite predictably falling into line right behind. Contract totals, sponsorship announcements, and even surprise bonuses become the fodder that feeds the interest engine generating all these eyes on the WNBA. As the drama of all of these stories actually sees the light of day, and a few million clickety click clicks later, the ladies just see a bit more social sunshine, with an effect that still seems to be snowballing. Suddenly, many more consumers get the opportunity to see just how compelling a game the WNBA is playing.

Oh, by the way, that last part is the best part, and amazingly the part so few of all of these attention pieces end up getting around to. These women play an impressive and cohesive brand of basketball, at least the teams who win. Even better, it’s a lot of fun to watch. A lot of the most successful teams in the league the last few years were playing a style of ball very similar to the current Denver Nuggets style, as many of the WNBA’s top players learned the skills of all positions on the court, just like Nikola Jokic did. You’ll see players rotating to every position on the court, and an emphasis on team-first ball correlating to winning. While the season is shorter and the scores are lower, there’s some very compelling hoops being played by nearly every team in the league, and the attention-grabbing rookies are amongst the best at some of the biggest aspects of the game.

Reese and Brink have already proven themselves as formidable defensively as they’d shown themselves to be at the NCAA level. Martin has shown herself an already invaluable part of one of the league’s best teams. And Clark is still simply scintillating, even when finding her way through a few types of bumps and bruises.

Whether the stories have all been positive or not, whether the league has done it’s best in marketing all of its new stars, whether a lot of this attention was due before this moment, and so many other whethers… now is the moment the attention has come. Happily in the moment, the eyes, hearts, and shelf spaces seem to be sticking. Can the WNBA leverage this moment to become the most popular women’s league in America, if not globally? Only time will tell, but in watching, there aren’t any of these ladies I’d be betting against.

The WNBA’s economy has scaled up, due to some long-overdue attention. Here’s hoping it’s only the first rung of the ladder.