Because of the Caitlin Clark Effect, women's basketball has become the most popular sport

One description of the scenario was "controlled chaos".

According to owner Jenny Nyugen, the Sports Bra in Portland, Oregon is the only bar in the world to exclusively display women's sports, and lines were forming down the block and around the corner to get in.

The crowd was "three times" as drunk as they usually would have been, but that didn't stop them from being enthusiastic even though it was the middle of a Monday.

They were come to watch a thrilling game of women's collegiate basketball, featuring superstars Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese, between the Iowa Hawkeyes and LSU Tigers.

"It was electric," Ms. Nyugen remarked, describing the mood during the University of Iowa's victory over Louisiana State University, which Clark led with a game-high 41 points.

"I've spent decades watching women's hoops. It feels like time is running out—everyone else seems to be just getting caught up," she continued.

Since 1939, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has been the host of the March Madness basketball tournament.

Three weeks are all it takes to narrow down 68 of the top college teams to only one winner.

Millions of spectators watch sports nonstop for days on end during this yearly media frenzy.

This year, tickets for the women's tournament averaged twice as costly as those for the men, with some going up to $11,000 (£8,736).

Front Office Sports reporter Amanda Christovich cited generational talent such as Iowa's Caitlin Clark as one of the factors contributing to this "watershed moment in women's basketball".

The other, according to her, is that there is now more pressure than ever to achieve gender equity in collegiate athletics.

The women's tournament is now valued about $65 million yearly, more than ten times the previous amount, according to a TV deal the NCAA inked with ESPN in 2024. It was impossible to see every women's NCAA tournament game on national broadcasts less than five years ago.

Bigger stars now have a larger platform thanks to the larger stage. And a major factor in the current hype has been Clark, who is perhaps the biggest name in the sport at the moment.

The senior college player has more career points—more than any other male or female college athlete in NCAA history—with over 3,900.

What is the Caitlin Clark Effect?

Caitlin Clark is the 22-year-old headline-grabbing, trash-talking, fan-charming Iowa guard who is considered one of the greatest basketball players in college history.

She triumphs in matches. Numerous games. smashes previous records. many records. And sells out hordes of enthusiastic fans into stadiums to see her.

Many are looking forward to seeing her famed three-pointers from a distance.

She can easily shoot the ball over her opponents' heads while positioned several feet out from the basket, sometimes even in the middle of the court. The distance frequently exceeds what a collegiate female player's typical range would allow.

Steph Curry, a professional player, held the record for the most three-pointers made in a single season before Clark shattered it.

Her celebrity, evidenced by her more than a million Instagram followers, has attracted a large number of new enthusiasts to the sport. People spend thousands of dollars and travel great distances to see her.

The Caitlin Clark Effect is the term used to describe this phenomena of her impact.

Similar to Taylor Swift, her presence raise lodging rates, put a strain on local restaurant reservation lists, and increase ticket prices.

She's a player who comes around only once. She is amazing. She's going viral," Ms. Christovich remarked. "She's the conduit by which a lot of people have discovered women's college basketball this year."

But Ms. Christovich went on, "20 years ago, would Caitlin Clark have attracted the same level of attention as she does now? Most likely not.

"And that's not because she wouldn't have been as good. It's because people weren't paying attention," she said.

According to Ms. Christovich, the women's competition had been "treated like a second-class event" for decades.

One such instance was the prohibition on the women's tournament using the NCAA's registered March Madness emblem until the 2022 campaign. According to Ms. Christovich, it was also more difficult to locate on TV until lately.

Breaking down barriers.

"For the past generation or so, this moment has been a snowball building," stated Kate Fagan, the author of Hoop Muses and a former basketball player at Colorado University.

Three significant turning events occurred, decades apart.

First, when the federal statute known as Title IX went into effect in the 1970s, the NCAA was compelled to give women equal sporting opportunities. The Women's National Basketball League's founding in 1996 then provided young players with a route to become professional athletes.

Over two decades later, on TikTok, came the third significant catalyst. An Oregon University women's basketball player shared a video in 2021 that contrasted the training facilities available to men and women for the NCAA tournament.

There were glaring differences. The gym for males had rows of exercise platforms with hundreds of pounds worth of weights in addition to dumbbells and barbells.There were a few yoga mats and a solitary tower of weights that weighed a maximum of thirty pounds (14 kg) at the women's facility. The video gained widespread popularity.

An external law firm conducted a follow-up investigation and discovered that the NCAA was "significantly undervaluing women's basketball as an asset" and "prioritizes men's basketball, contributing to gender inequity".

Subsequently, the NCAA undertook a comprehensive reform that included permitting the women's tournament to utilize the March Madness logo. Another outcome was the new media agreement with ESPN, which allows them to broadcast all of the women's March Madness games on various platforms.

"There were always great players. There were always great athletes," Pamela Grundy, co-author of Shattering the Glass, a novel chronicling women's basketball, said: "But now a greater group of people are seeing them.

"And frankly it's a lot better than people thought."

But, she noted, "sports is driven not just by tickets, but by sponsors".

Millions of dollars paid to college athletes.

A combination of state legislation and NCAA regulation modifications in 2021 gave collegiate athletes an unheard-of opportunity to profit from the sale of the rights to their name, likeness, and image (NIL).

Six-figure endorsement contracts were soon signed by players, some of whom were still in their teens. Renowned companies like Nike and State Farm started collaborating with elite athletes like Caitlin Clark.

The creator and CEO of Opendorse.com, a platform for NIL contracts, Blake Lawrence, stated that "a small number of female athletes are earning millions of dollars through NIL each year."

Athletes are also exposed to a larger audience more frequently because to national sponsorship deals, which air their advertisements and games on TVs across the country.

Additionally, Mr. Lawrence noted that social media presence is a "big component" in the majority of NIL negotiations, giving women an advantage.

Nonetheless, the NCAA system continues to impede female collegiate basketball players in numerous ways, according to Ms. Christovich.

The deeper into the tournament's rounds men's basketball teams go, the more money they can take home for their conferences. The teams for women aren't.

That is equivalent to a differential of about $40 million for each of the top four teams that are still competing in this year's men's and women's tournaments.

"What's incredibly impressive about the women's tournament success, is that it's happening despite the barriers," Ms Christovich said.