Caitlin Clark First Pick at the 2024 WNBA Draft
Caitlin Clark, the star shooting guard from the University of Iowa who has helped usher in a boom in NCAA women’s basketball and passed Pete Maravich as the NCAA’s all-time leading scorer, was selected as the top pick in the in the WNBA draft by the Indiana Fever on Monday.
Clark will be joining last year’s Number One pick, power forward Aliyah Boston, in Indiana. “Obviously, getting to play with Aliyah lights your eyes up as a point guard,” said Clark during the 2024 WNBA Draft. “I can’t imagine a better place.”
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A record 18.7 million people tuned into the South Carolina-Iowa women’s NCAA title game last week, according to ESPN. It was the the most-watched basketball game since 2019, when the men’s NCAA title game between Virginia and Texas Tech drew in 19.6 million on CBS.
Although Clark has yet to play her first game with the league, her impact on the WNBA is already being felt. The Fever confirmed a “spike” in ticket interest, according to ESPN, which also noted the team had begun pre-selling single-game tickets leading up to Monday. Per the outlet, Vivid Seats reported the team’s regular-season opener, a road game against the Connecticut Sun on May 14, saw ticket prices jump 91 percent after Clark declared for the draft; meanwhile, the Fever’s May 16 home opener against the New York Liberty saw a reported 50 percent price bump.
Clark, LSU’s Angel Reese, Stanford’s Cameron Brink, and other star players in women’s college basketball are expected to herald a new era in the WNBA, which saw record-breaking viewership in 2023.
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