Caitlinmania: Caitlin Clark helps Indiana Fever shatter ticket records
Last season, 227,979 tickets were sold for Indiana Fever games. This season, the number was 643,343.
That’s a 182% jump. That’s Caitlinmania.
WNBA attendance soared to a level not seen since the late 1990s this season, with around 9,800 tickets distributed on average for each game. That’s up nearly 44% from last season, and the huge increase in Fever tickets — thanks to Caitlin Clark — accounts for the overwhelming majority of that leaguewide growth.
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The Fever destroyed the previous WNBA record for average attendance; 16,084 tickets, on average, were sold for Indiana games (both home and away) this season, way ahead of the previous mark of 13,398 set by the 1998 New York Liberty.
And Thursday, as the season closed, Clark was involved in another record: 20,711 attended Indiana’s game at the Washington Mystics, a WNBA all-time regular season mark.
Where she went, fans followed: There were 37 games this season that drew crowds of 16,000 or more, and 32 of them were Indiana games.
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Clark broke the WNBA single-game record for assists with 19, broke the season record for assists with 337 and finished her rookie Indiana season with a resume of averages beyond compare.
Others have scored more, rebounded more and one player — Courtney Vandersloot — has averaged more assists in a season. But nobody in WNBA history ever averaged as much in all three categories as Clark this season: 19.2 points, 5.7 rebounds and 8.4 assists per game.
There have been only four other instances of a player averaging 15-5-5 in the WNBA. Clark is the first in the 19-5-8 club.
Clark also had 12 games of at least 10 points and 10 assists, another single-season record. Only eight players in WNBA history have more such games in their entire careers.
Clark also had two triple-doubles in her rookie season. No other rookie in WNBA history has ever had one. And her 122 3-pointers — the second-most by anyone in any WNBA season — was another rookie record.
