Shortly after the women’s NCAA Tournament set viewership and attendance records last year, when LSU defeated Iowa for the championship, the Charlotte Sports Foundation announced the creation of a major women’s basketball stadium for the start of the 2023–24 season. Calls started coming in about hosting the game.
first call? iowa. If he could get Caitlin Clark into the building in Charlotte, he knew tickets would sell. But the group also wanted a second Final Four team, preferably a more local team where fans could come to the event. So the next call was made to Virginia Tech.
Done. Coach Kenny Brooks and his Hokies will happily mark the start of the season with a high-caliber matchup.
Foundation Executive Director Danny Morrison was excited by how the two Final Four teams earned the chance to play competitive early season games so quickly. But next he expected the toughest call of all: a title sponsor. There is someone who will throw a lot of money at this game.
Morrison called Ally Financial. Within 24 hours they agreed. A game – which historically would have required a year to plan – took only a few days to complete.
“It doesn’t usually occur to you how quickly and easily everything came together,” Morrison said.
Caitlin Clark started her college career by playing in front of cardboard cutouts during the pandemic.
Last night, he dropped 44 points on #8 Virginia Tech in front of 15,000 people in Iowa’s second game of the season. pic.twitter.com/shI90qCCiD
– Front Office Sports (@FOS) 10 November 2023
But you don’t usually have a women’s national title game peak at 13 million viewers. And you don’t usually have stars like Clark, Angel Reese, Paige Bueckers and many others in women’s basketball. Normally you don’t have that many elite teams in one season.
But it’s only the key moments and special seasons that elevate a game. They are rare. They usually don’t. And the only way they can happen more often is when taking advantage of opportunities within those seasons.
Opportunities like a big game in Charlotte between the Final Four teams. Opportunities like South Carolina and Notre Dame are opening the season in Paris. Opportunities like putting and tipping 94 feet of hardwood into a football stadium in Iowa.
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Usually this does not happen.
With each of these opportunities, teams and players have shown that they will perform better this time around. And just as important, the stakeholders around those teams and sports rose up in the moment.
Because the Charlotte game would not have happened unless Iowa coaches Lisa Bluder and Brooks agreed to play a tough game before their teams faced off. This doesn’t happen until Morrison gets Ally to pay the bill. The exact amount of Ellie’s sponsorship is not known. According to the Charlotte Sports Foundation, each team received $150,000 and Iowa received an additional $50,000 for travel, although it was not stated whether Ealy paid all of that cost.
And if Georgia Amur, one of several elite point guards this season, doesn’t go head-to-head with Clark, it doesn’t get the attention it should have.
Paris would not have happened until Lee Miller-Toole, president of Complete Sports Management (which organized the games), thought outside the box about hosting the first college basketball game in Paris. Or if Don Staley and Neal Ivey aren’t on board with taking their teams halfway around the world to test themselves on that stage. And it doesn’t get the attention it deserves unless ESPN sends its top crew across the Atlantic to broadcast from — and not remotely — Bristol.
And 56,000 people wouldn’t have shown up on a cold Sunday in Iowa City with Clark at center stage unless the university and its athletic department got involved in the event.
Women’s college basketball is at a turning point, and many in the game see it that way.
But to squeeze out all the potential to grow the game as much as possible this season, more people need to watch this season – a huge opportunity to make things happen.
NCAA President Charlie Baker and his team face a big decision: Will the organization separate the women’s tournament from other championships and sell the television rights as its own entity? The (nonprofit) NCAA, which runs college football like a Fortune 500 company, has a chance to make an additional $100 million or more, potentially, if it does that. Coming into this season, he should have called each of the Top 25 coaches to establish relationships and understand how they see the game, where they see it fitting within the ecosystem of American sports. The NCAA should have held a summit this summer with the sport’s biggest stakeholders to figure out how to leverage women’s basketball this season.
(Narrator: They didn’t have that peak.)
Big Ten commissioner Tony Pettiti, who is in his first year on the job, inherits a conference that features Clark, arguably college sports’ most recognizable athlete. Next year, the Big Ten will become the nation’s first bi-coastal conference and, in addition to Clark, will have some of the game’s brightest young stars to take over. Few people have held a more important key to the evolution of women’s college basketball than Pettitte. They should have a team studying how stars, especially in women’s college hoops, are crafted and created by exposure through social media and traditional media, and they should take those lessons to Ohio State’s Coty McMahon and USC’s JuJu Watkins and whoever comes up next should prepare to apply. To promote to the Big Ten.
(Narrator: There is no team studying Clark.)
ESPN, which cleverly moved the national title game to ABC last season, giving the title matchup greater reach, will keep the national championship on ABC. But it will not be carried in prime time and the company also opted to move the Final Four matchup to ABC.
(Narrator: Le Ah)
Women’s basketball is potentially the largest high-growth entity in collegiate sports. There are fans waiting to come in, and those who have the keys must open the doors on the left and right. Because the players and teams have shown that once fans are on the field or watching on TV, there is going to be a show. Early returns are promising for another big year.
On the first day of the NCAA season, South Carolina–Notre Dame was the most watched college basketball game of the day, even though it was broadcast during the unfavorable 1 p.m. window (due to the time change). Unranked NC State’s defeat at No. 2 UConn on Sunday, which ESPN televised on ABC, drew 625,000 viewers. This is ABC’s fourth-best regular season women’s college hoops game ever.
The No. 1 and No. 2 teams have already fallen this season. South Carolina, a program known for its impressive defensive performances, has failed to have multiple 100-point games.
Sunday night in a decisive 32-point victory over then-No. 9 Indiana, Stanford — in the middle of the Pac-12 swan song — reminded everyone why it shouldn’t be counted out by anything and why exactly the game’s winningest coach lives in Palo Alto.
There is an abundance of star power and elite teams this season. There is no dearth of stories related to sports personalities. The conversation is full of excitement.
And no, that doesn’t usually happen.
This season could be a game changer.
If so many people are showing up and showing up to watch Caitlin Clarke, the least stakeholders in women’s basketball can do is take a lesson from its brightest star: Shoot the logo 3.
(Photo by Caitlin Clark: G Fume/Getty Images)
