The impact that Caitlin Clark has made on the WNBA is pretty undeniable, but one former ESPN star doesn\u2019t think the league needs her to remain successful.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s impossible to ignore the impact that Clark had on the WNBA, given just how much the league surged in popularity immediately after she entered the league in 2024. That new popularity has already paid dividends for the players who saw massive pay increases following the league\u2019s new collective bargaining agreement.<\/p>\n
But despite what Clark has meant to the league up to this point, former ESPN broadcaster Ros Gold-Onwude seems to think that the WNBA would continue to thrive even without her.<\/p>\n
During the latest episode of Court Vision<\/a>, former WNBA superstar Angel McCoughtry questioned whether or not the WNBA would be able to survive without stars like Clark, Angel Reese, A\u2019Ja Wilson, Paige Bueckers, Azzi Fudd, and other big names. Gold-Onwude seems to think that the league would be just fine.<\/p>\n While Gold-Onwude acknowledged Clark\u2019s role in bringing new fans to the league, she does not think it needs her to remain successful, arguing that \u201cbusiness is booming\u201d even when she isn\u2019t playing.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s possible to say both of these things: I do think that Caitlin Clark and the boom of attention that was around her coming out of college brought a ton of new fans to the W and for that (she) deserves a lot of credit. But I think a lot of those fans were converted. They got here and they became Indiana Fever fans, because that team was really special \u2013 even without her \u2013 or WNBA fans,\u201d Gold-Onwude said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe ratings continue to be through the freaking roof. Business is booming. Everything is up. It\u2019s definitely not ONLY because of Caitlin Clark. Like, there\u2019s so much more going on in the W. Women\u2019s basketball, in my opinion, is much bigger than any one or two players\u2026\u201d Gold-Onwude continued.<\/p>\n While there is some merit to her argument, considering the league\u2019s growth has not been centered purely around Clark or the Fever, it\u2019s still quite clear that Clark means a lot to the league. As Lisa Leslie said recently, \u201cthis is a money business, and the money is about Caitlin Clark.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNever in the history of the WNBA, have we had a player force teams to get into larger arenas. I\u2019ve never seen that happen. If you\u2019re the GM, you\u2019re obviously supposed to be bringing in money. That\u2019s revenue. I\u2019m going with Caitlin Clark,\u201d she said earlier this month<\/a>.<\/p>\n The league may very well be able to survive without Clark, but it\u2019s safe to say that the WNBA would prefer to never have to find that out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The impact that Caitlin Clark has made on the WNBA is pretty undeniable, but one former ESPN star…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":666064,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[1760,99,434],"class_list":["post-666063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-caitlin-clark","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666063","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=666063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666063\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/666064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}