I still have to stand back in awe that I am now a fan of the WNBA. If I could go back in time a few years and tell me and others that I would be following the WNBA closer than the NBA I would have laughed at myself because that's simply not possible. But then a woman by the name of Caitlin Clark came along and completely changed the face of the league. She is phenomenal and tickets that were previously almost impossible to give away are going for record-setting amounts on the open market.
This is mostly true only with games that Clark is playing in and I would imagine it is a little bit insulting to the home team's players that when CC is in the house, it is sold out but during other games the attendance is not anywhere nearly as high. I don't know for sure but I keep abreast of the situation and it seems as though anytime that Clark and the Indiana Fever come to town, the house gets sold out. This has been so true to the point that often other teams will move their games to a larger stadium in order to accommodate the increased demand for tickets.
This Friday's matchup between the host Chicago Sky and visiting Indiana Fever has set a record for the most expensive WNBA game of all time... and it did so by a very big margin.
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This is driven almost entirely by Caitlin Clark but at the same time it is made even more crucial because of her rivalry with Angel Reese, who was a rival of Caitlin's in college and that continues to this day. Reese is a very good player as well but things got ugly between these two during the last 2 years of their college careers and while Angel is good in her own right, there is no denying that if it weren't for Caitlin, most people probably wouldn't even know who the hell she is.
The mood is tense whenever these two get together on the same court and rivalries commonly exist between Chicago and any Indiana team anyway because these two states are right next to one another and for whatever reason, people tend to have rivalries with whichever team happens to be nearest to them.
This is the last time that the Sky and Fever will meet this season unless by some miracle they end up both making the playoffs and meeting there.
Who would have ever thought that the average price for a damn WNBA game would be $334!!! That is exactly what is happening now though. The average price when they met last time in Chicago the tickets were $287 but since then Angel and Caitlin have seemed to smooth things over a bit after playing on the same team during the All-Star game.
I find it absolutely amazing that the league is finally looking like it is going to be profitable and this is important because the WNBA has been around for more than 20 years and they have never made a profit in any of those years. There was always accusations of the WNBA being a "charity" funded by the NBA and while the players take great offense to this, even they know it is true.
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Go back in time and tell people that WNBA games would be sold out and they would just laugh at you.
The average cost of a ticket for a game in the WNBA in the past was $59, which honestly, was way too much for a game that nobody really cared about until recently.
Something pretty amazing about this is that the average cost of a ticket for this game is actually more expensive than the average price for most of the Chicago Bulls' home games this past year.... that is really something special right there.
Despite the league apparently trying to work against her and the racist pundits attempting to downplay Caitlin's excellence there is no denying that this definitely would not be happening without her. She has succeeded in completely changing the world's opinion about this sport and hopefully the jealous people that are constantly trying to push Caitlin down will start to realize this and embrace the absolutely miraculous things she has done for the WNBA completely on her own. She is the Michael Jordon of the WNBA. If it weren't for her the same amount of people that have watched this in the past would still be watching it now and that is... almost no one.
Well done Caitlin!