Basketball superstar Caitlin Clark has broken another yet another record — her Indiana Fever jersey is the top-selling jersey ever for a draft pick.
Clark, 22, has had quite the year shattering records on the court for the Iowa Hawkeyes and boosting women’s basketball viewership. It was no surprise this week when she was selected as the No. 1 overall pick in the 2024 WNBA draft by the Indiana Fever.
Her Fever jersey with the number 22 is already the top-earning jersey ever for a draft pick, according to the licensed sportswear retailer Fanatics.
The Fanatics website said Wednesday that it was “sold out” of its initial batch of the jersey but that pre-orders were still available and that restock is expected to ship in August.
Clark’s star power also set a television milestone — ESPN coverage of the WNBA draft averaged a record 2.45 million viewers, with viewership peaking at 3.09 million, the network said in a news release. That’s four times the viewership of the 2023 draft, which drew an audience of 572,000, ESPN reported, and it eclipses the previous draft record of 601,000, in 2004.
The Clark effect has also led to a pickup in ticket sales.
Even before the draft, soon after Clark announced her plans to enter the WNBA draft, the Fever had a spike in ticket inquiries, The Associated Press previously reported. Meanwhile, the Las Vegas Aces announced their July 2 game against the Fever would move from the 12,000-seat Michelob Ultra Arena to T-Mobile Arena, which seats 18,000 for basketball.
“This is a dream. This is something I wrote down on a piece of paper when I was in, like, second grade. Get a basketball scholarship. Play in the WNBA,” Clark previously told NBC News correspondent Stephanie Gosk.
At her introductory news conference with the Fever on Wednesday, Clark said: “I can’t think of a better place to start off my career.”
Asked how she hopes to inspire the next generation, she said: “A lot of the reason I am who I am today is that I had this constant confidence in myself. I think that’s a thing a lot of young girls struggle with today.
“It’s really the support system around them that instills that confidence in them. That’s what I'm so lucky for, whether it was youth coaches I had growing up, whether it was high school coaches, whether it was my parents, whether it was my family, they never told me I couldn't achieve something," she said.
"It was always like, 'If you want it you can go get it; you just have to earn it,'" she said. "And I think that’s the biggest thing I would tell the younger generation.”
