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Caitlin Clark — fueled in part by her rivalry with Angel Reese — along with a historic WNBA rookie class are unquestionably lifting the W to new heights of popularity.
A record number of fans are showing up at the gate and even more tuning in on television — the league has had 15 games with at least a million viewers, already tying the WNBA record for a season (and the playoffs don’t start for a month).
Far more fans are tuning in for events like the WNBA All-Star Game, which takes place Saturday in Phoenix. There, Clark and Reese will be teammates as the WNBA All-Stars face off against Team USA before it heads to the Paris Olympics.
But you couldn’t build this skyscraper without a rock-solid foundation.
“Yes This new class of generational talent will forever change the W, but we wouldn’t be here if not for the legends who did the hard work of establishing the WNBA as the premier professional women’s sports league in the U.S.,” Colie Edison, the WNBA’s Chief Growth Officer, told NBC Sports.
There is no Clark without Diana Taurasi, Cynthia Cooper, Maya Moore, Lisa Leslie, and the Indiana Fever’s own Tamika Catchings, just to name a few WNBA legends. For approaching three decades, those players and hundreds of others built the W into the highest level of women’s basketball in the world — they laid an unprecedented foundation on the court.
The WNBA’s foundation to be ready for this moment went beyond the court.
“If you recall, back in 2022, we did an outside capital raise of $75 million,” Edison said. “And what that allowed us to do is really invest in the infrastructure needed to support our epic growth trajectory. That was about investing in human capital. We Also saw our digital transformation with our new app and our dot.com, and really giving us the tools from a marketing perspective that we needed to meet this moment.”
The WNBA invested that money raised into a five-year transformational plan, which allowed them to hire a digital team, a marketing team, and other positions that had them ready when Clark and Reese showed up and interest skyrocketed. As one example, the digital team put together a new WNBA…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/caitlin-clark-rookie-class-changing-154643668.html
Author : NBC Sports
Publish date : 2024-07-19 15:46:43
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