The 2024 WNBA season merely hints at what women's basketball can become

The "Caitlin Clark Phenomenon" took the nation by storm two years ago, leading to one of the most dramatic increases in popularity for women's sports since Title IX.

Ever since the Hawkeye point guard led Iowa to the championship game in 2023, women's basketball has received a considerable bump in ratings. The 2023 Women's NCAA Tournament Championship Game saw 9.9 million viewers, making it the third-highest viewed women's college basketball game of all time. In 2024, Iowa broke the record for most-viewed women's college basketball game three times-- in three straight games.

Iowa vs. LSU in the Elite Eight, Iowa vs. UConn in the Final Four, and Iowa vs. South Carolina in the championship game are, to date, the highest-viewed women's college basketball games in the sport's history.

A lot of that has to do with stars emerging in the past two seasons. Angel Reese, Hailey van Lith, Paige Bueckers, Aliyah Edwards, Nika Muhl, Azzi Fudd, Kamilla Cardoso, Te-Hina Paopao, Raven Johnson-- just to name a few-- all going up against Caitlin Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes within one week in the 2024 NCAA Women's Tournament.

The 2023-24 women's college basketball season was a media surge for the sport that had not been seen before. ESPN, as well as other sports media giants, increased their coverage accordingly. 520 women's college basketball games are set to be nationally televised in 2024-25 on ESPN and CBS platforms alone.

This surge in coverage was felt in the professional ranks as well. A total of 149 WNBA games were broadcasted/streamed to a national audience on ESPN, CBS, ION, NBA TV, and Amazon Prime platforms in 2024. The Indiana Fever saw 36 of its 40 regular season games nationally televised.

But some say this is only the beginning-- there is still more to be done.

Mark Schindler, WNBA Draft expert and host of the "They've Got Now" podcast, shared his thoughts on women's basketball coverage on a recent episode of The Ringer WNBA Show.

"ESPN, in my opinion, has not done a good enough job of building up what this [women's college basketball] season means," said Schindler. "This was literally the best freshman class we've ever seen... You've seen what the product can be when you actually advertise it. Why would you drop the ball on that?"

While it is true that women's basketball, as a whole, is reaching new highs in terms of media coverage, the sport is still far inferior in viewership to its male counterpart. Awful Announcing reported that NBA ratings were down 42% on opening night this season as compared to 2023, a "disastrously bad" dip in viewership. Yet those games still outperformed the average 2024 WNBA game by about 200 thousand average viewers.

The NBA has had a pretty big head start, though. Magic and Bird elevated the league's presence in the 1980s, and Air Jordan continued the ascension throughout the 90s. More recent stars like LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Shaq, and Steph Curry have carried the torch into the new millennium. These are all stars that are talented and, most importantly, marketable.

Clark is the first of many next-wave WNBA stars that have seen mainstream success. Chicago's Angel Reese has eclipsed five million followers on Instagram. Sabrina Ionescu competed against Curry in the 3-Point Competition during the 2024 All-Star Weekend festivities. It's a start, but the job that NBA commissioners David Stern and Adam Silver have done to market their players currently transcends the women's game.

It is the harsh reality that is American sports, but the WNBA is on the right track. With Paige Bueckers leading a class of rookies that should continue this trend of WNBA interest, only time will tell what the future holds for women's basketball.