Caitlin Clark is a ticket-selling, viewer-drawing machine. Unfortunately, she’s not able to demonstrate that at the Olympics in Paris this year. And Team USA is paying a price when it comes to attendance.
Of the six opening-round games on Sunday and Monday, USA’s domination of Japan drew the smallest crowd. By a lot.
According to ESPN Gamecast, the contest drew just 13,040 fans. A list of the other games compiled by Bro Bible shows that they are well below every other crowd at the women’s basketball competition.
The lowest attendance for an Indiana Fever home game this season was 15,022. The rookie sensation draws people to the court.
RELATED: Fans Troll Team USA At Summer Olympics Over Caitlin Clark Snub: It Did Not End Well
No Caitlin Clark, No Crowds
South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley recently suggested if Team USA had to do it all over again, they’d be thinking a little harder about adding Caitlin Clark to the Olympic team.
“If we had to do it all over again, the way that she’s playing, she would be in really high consideration of making the team because she is playing head and shoulders above a lot of people,” Staley said.
Olympic organizers probably wished they could do it all over again too. We tried to warn them.
Initial reports showed that Clark was left off the team because veteran players didn’t want to deal with her fans. At least if she were on the squad, they’d actually be playing in front of fans.
Who wants the biggest star in the game drawing attention to the sport that these veterans spent years trying to popularize? Who needs that noise?
The WNBA is experiencing explosive growth in ticket sales and television ratings. But apparently, Team USA preferred to remain anonymous on the world stage instead of being global ambassadors to the sport they love.
Maybe It’ll Get Better
Now granted, Team USA isn’t concerned about ticket sales. They’re focused solely on extending their current 56-game winning streak until they’ve brought home the gold.
Rightly so.
And quite frankly, not a lot of fans outside of those vested in the American team were going to watch a game in which the spread was 21.5 points.
Perhaps as the contest goes on and the competition gets better and better, the attendance will increase. In the initial group play though, the competition isn’t getting better.
Next up for Team USA – Belgium. The American women are currently 24.5-point favorites in that matchup.
More about:Athletics
Read This Next
