When Caitlin Clark Visits Town

The amount of advance notice needed for away games, as well as the amount of logistical work involved, are indicators of her star power.

When Caitlin Clark visits the area, what happens?

And so does everybody else.

The Big Ten women’s basketball tournament is sold out for the first time, mostly due to Clark, the standout point guard for Iowa and the new Division I record holder for lifetime scoring. The tournament gets underway in Minneapolis on Wednesday.

During the epidemic in 2020, Clark started her collegiate career by performing in front of empty bleachers. She is a national phenomenon this season, packing arenas across Iowa, Wisconsin, and Maryland and bringing women’s college basketball to a level never seen before.

An indicator of her popularity could be changes in attendance at the universities where Iowa has been hosted.

According to data from Big Ten institutions, every away game that Clark played during the regular season was sold out at the arena. (Her in-home games also sold out.)

According to data, her away games had an average attendance of almost 13,000, which was more than twice as many as the non-Iowa games at those universities. Her performances have occasionally drawn twice as many spectators as the next highest attendance event.

Clark has received comparisons to LeBron James, Pete Maravich, Steph Curry, Larry Bird, and others for her skill and ability to draw large crowds. However, according to Debbie Antonelli, an ESPN and CBS analyst who has covered women’s college basketball for over thirty years, there isn’t really a comparable moment in the history of the sport.

“This is the most captivating person we have ever seen at the box office,” she remarked. “It is astounding.”

Antonelli compares the phenomenon to the Taylor Swift tour and dubs it “Clarkonomics.” She notes that some of Clark’s followers refer to themselves as “Clarkies,” much like “Swifties.”