New national champion, new WNBA Draft class, same storylines.
After women’s college basketball reached new heights last season, everyone wants to talk about the slump in women’s college hoops viewership in the first year after the WNBA drafted Caitlin Clark.
Of course, after last season’s national championship matchup between Iowa and South Carolina drew a record-breaking average of 18.7 million viewers, this season’s average of 8.5 million viewers seems lackluster in comparison, even if it was the third-most watched women’s championship since ESPN began its exclusive rights agreement in 1996.
But there’s no reason to fear the popularity of women’s college basketball in a post-Clark era and plenty of reasons for fans of the sport to continue to look up. Here are four of them:
History: Magic vs Larry
Although the Caitlin Clark effect is real, the proclivity of sports fans to tune into highly-anticipated matchups in favor of regularly-scheduled sports programming is nothing new. Following the 2025 women’s championship, Haley Rosen, founder of Just Women’s Sports, pointed out that in 1979, the Magic Johnson vs Larry Bird matchup in the NCAA men’s basketball championship garnered a staggering 35 million viewers, making it the highest-rated college basketball game of all time.
That same season, NBA Finals games were aired on tape delay because they weren’t considered good enough for prime time. And how many viewers did the 1980 NCAA men’s championship garner? 20 million viewers – still a nice number, but definitely a slump from the previous year. And in the seasons that followed, the NBA finally started to heat up after years of lackluster ratings despite the college-level viewership dip. So, too, did college ratings increase as years passed.
Viewership slumps in college basketball after key players graduate are normal and not a phenomenon limited to women’s sports. History shows that the sport will do just fine in the coming years—especially considering that, approaching the WNBA’s 29th season this year, the W is leagues ahead of where the NBA was at the same point in its development.
Women’s Sports Bars
There’s another unconventional metric that ensures the popularity of women’s basketball (and women’s sports at large) will live on: the staggering increase of women’s sports bars across the United States. The Sports Bra, based in Portland, OR, was the first of its kind and opened its doors in 2022. Owner Jenny Nguyen brought in $1 million in profit in the first eight months while providing women and LGBTQ fans (along with their male allies) a safe space to bond over women’s sports.
Since the Sports Bra opened, several similar bars have popped up across the country, and the number is projected to quadruple by the end of 2025.
Social Media and NIL
It’s no secret that female athletes are the queens of follower counts, even though the earnings gap between men and women college athletes might suggest otherwise. Although the top-earning college basketball players are men, they pale in comparison to the massive audiences of women. This dynamic extends far beyond just college basketball.
Women athletes are generally outearned by men but have by far the greatest social media followings. This highlights both a cloud and a silver lining: women athletes are clearly undervalued in the NIL space, but arguably have the most earning potential.
The 2025 WNBA Draft Class
The talent of the 2025 WNBA Draft class hardly needs mentioning, but let’s recap anyway. Of course, there’s #1 overall Draft pick, Paige Bueckers, whose jerseys sold out within minutes of the official announcement. There’s also Kiki Iriafen, Georgia Amoore, Anessah Morrow, Hailey Van Lith (who will be reunited with LSU teammate, Angel Reese with the Chicago Sky), and underdogs like Kaitlyn Chen, Aubrey Griffin, and Aaliyah Nye, who came to support their teammates and got drafted themselves.
The WNBA Draft has also become a fashion show of sorts. It shows the investments that brands like Coach and Louis Vuiton, and Amiri (not to mention Amoore’s outfit designed by Russell Westbrook) are investing heavily in talented female athletes. Plus, well before the draft, the Golden State Valkyries, the WNBA’s newest franchise, became the first team in the W to sell 10,000 season tickets, indicating that the investments from fans will keep coming, too.
What the Caitlin Clark era has brought to women’s basketball is a snowball effect of increased visibility at all levels. Paige Bueckers was long considered the next big thing in the sport, even before Clark became a household name. As viewership has increased in the sport and more people follow women’s basketball than ever before, more fans are aware of the journey from college to the pros.
After winning a national championship at UConn and being the best player in the first tournament post-Clark, Bueckers is a bigger star than ever. And after being the #1 overall pick in the 2025 WNBA Draft, she comes into the pros with incredible anticipation. That should only encourage fans to see who might become the next Clark or Bueckers next season. It could be Bueckers’ UConn teammate Azzi Fudd or Lauren Betts of UCLA. Or perhaps someone who rises to stardom that isn’t yet on the national radar.
But that’s the beauty of where women’s basketball is now. In other words, the future of women’s basketball as a whole is brighter than ever before.
