{"id":362788,"date":"2025-12-22T00:59:28","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T00:59:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/362788\/"},"modified":"2025-12-22T00:59:28","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T00:59:28","slug":"indiana-fever-stars-1m-worth-of-social-growth-dwarfs-wnba-fine-tally","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/362788\/","title":{"rendered":"Indiana Fever Star\u2019s $1M Worth of Social Growth\u00a0Dwarfs\u00a0WNBA Fine Tally"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIndiana Fever<\/a> wing Sophie Cunningham was fined twice for her behavior at the end of Tuesday\u2019s clash with the Connecticut Sun. But her misconduct appears to already be paying dividends.<\/p>\n

\n\tCunningham received a reported $400 fine for her flagrant foul on Sun guard Jacy Sheldon with 46 seconds left in the 88-71 victory, as well as an additional, undisclosed financial penalty for her role in the shoving match that followed. The fracas followed an earlier incident in which Sheldon appeared to poke Fever guard Caitlin Clark<\/a> in the eye.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYou\u2019ve got competitive women who are the best in the world at what they do \u2026 and when you allow them to play physical, and you allow these things to happen, they\u2019re going to compete, and they\u2019re going to have their teammates\u2019 backs,\u201d Fever coach Stephanie White said after the game.\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s exactly what you would expect out of fierce competition.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the following three days, close to a million fans seem to have taken Cunningham\u2019s side. The sixth-year vet from Missouri has added 700,000 followers on TikTok and more than 244,000 newcomers on Instagram, according to social media analytics platform Social Blade. Cunningham now has more than 1 million followers on TikTok and 730,000 on Instagram, with some fans dubbing her \u201cthe Enforcer\u201d in various online comment sections. As of Friday, her jerseys on the team\u2019s store were listed as unavailable until July 8.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tIf a brand wanted to add that many new followers on Instagram and TikTok, it could easily spend more than $1 million doing so, according to marketing agency STN Digital\u2019s calculations. In the past, Cunningham offered to post sponsored content on her pages starting at $10,000 via OpenSponsorship.\u00a0But that price has surely gone up. OpenSponsorship CEO Ishveen Jolly said that, in general, having 500,000 more Instagram followers alone could help net an additional $20,000 per post. Cunningham\u2019s current endorsers include Adidas and Quest Nutrition, with multiple new potential partnerships now in the works.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s unprecedented growth,\u201d said Addison Abdo, who represents Cunningham as a senior director at sports management agency PRP. \u201cWe work with some pretty big athletes that have gone viral for some pretty big things, but this has been something that I haven\u2019t seen before\u2014this type of growth in this short amount of time \u2026 was very new territory.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a TikTok spot posted on Thursday, Cunningham jokingly referred to Tuesday\u2019s incident, mouthing the lyrics, \u201cI can\u2019t keep my hands to myself\u2014I mean I could, but why would I want to?\u201d Thanks in part to her new following, the video garnered 3.1 million views within 21 hours.\u00a0She celebrated hitting 1 million TikTok followers in a separate post on Friday.<\/p>\n

\n\tCunningham signed with the Fever in February on a reported one-year, $100,000 deal. She is now seeing the benefits of playing next to Caitlin Clark on a team in the international spotlight. More than 2 million viewers watched Clark\u2019s (and Cunningham\u2019s) return to play last Saturday against the Liberty. Indiana\u2019s game in Las Vegas on Sunday is on ESPN, one of the team\u2019s 41 nationally televised<\/a>\u00a0regular season contests. More than 1 million viewers tuned in for a preseason tune-up against Brazil\u2019s national team. Cunningham\u2019s following has been growing ever since that debut, her representatives said.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe all knew what the power of the Fever was going to be,\u201d PRP client manager Will Gladson said. He had been telling potential partners it was only a matter of time before Cunningham hit 1 million followers.<\/p>\n

\n\tShe worked as an NBA analyst while in Phoenix, where she played previously, and where she earned a prior nickname, \u201cSpicy Sophie,\u201d for her on-court intensity. Still, Gladson added, Cunningham achieved the milestone \u201cquicker than anyone expected.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs the WNBA<\/a> and its players continue to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement, several stars, including Clark<\/a>, see the bulk of their earnings come from beyond the court. That can make playing in a major media market\u2014or on a team drawing outsized attention\u2014even more valuable.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Indiana Fever wing Sophie Cunningham was fined twice for her behavior at the end of Tuesday\u2019s clash with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":362789,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[1760,2839,124706,99,434],"class_list":{"0":"post-362788","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-caitlin-clark","9":"tag-indiana-fever","10":"tag-sponsorship","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-wnba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}