Caitlin Clark wore an Iowa jersey whereas breaking the NCAA girls’s basketball scoring file, however State Farm, Nike, Peacock and different manufacturers and networks have been additionally on her group main as much as her huge second.
On Thursday night time, No. 22 shattered Kelsey Plum’s all-time file of three,527 profession factors set in 2017, scoring 49 factors towards Michigan—breaking her personal career-high of 46 and setting the Iowa single sport file.
She solely wanted eight factors to interrupt the file, a feat she achieved in simply two minutes and 12 seconds, with a signature three-pointer from the emblem.
Manufacturers and networks alike have been watching Clark chase the file all season, and in all places the star goes, file crowds prove and new TV viewership data are set. Now they’re watching viewer counts climb and the corporate logos alongside for Clark’s largest moments.
The Caitlin Clark Impact
You’ve heard of the Taylor Swift Impact, however now it’s time in regards to the Caitlin Clark Impact.
The Iowa group has offered out or damaged attendance data at 30 of 32 away video games this season. Earlier than the 2023-24 season formally began, Iowa broke the ladies’s basketball all-time attendance file for a single sport with 55,646 folks in Kinnick Stadium, residence of Iowa’s soccer group, for an exhibition sport towards DePaul.
And the Jan. 21 sport towards Ohio State on NBC drew practically 2 million viewers—essentially the most watched regular-season girls’s basketball sport since 2010.
Thursday night time’s sport might solely be streamed on Peacock, serving as a part of NBCUniversal’s bigger Huge 10 programming technique, which incorporates greater than 30 males’s basketball video games and 20 to 25 girls’s video games on the streaming service. These numbers will get greater subsequent yr when Oregon, Washington, UCLA and USC be part of the convention.
Did NBCUniversal ever contemplate shifting the sport from Peacock onto the published community?
“By no means. By no means even entered into the dialogue,” Jon Miller, NBC Sports activities president of acquisitions and partnerships, advised ADWEEK. “This was all the time meant to be a Peacock sport.”
Fox, the opposite Huge 10 rights holder, is seeing girls’s school basketball up 37% from final yr (920,000 viewers vs. 671,000 a yr in the past). Final Sunday’s Iowa sport towards Nebraska pulled in 1.772 million viewers—the most-watched girls’s school basketball sport in Fox Sports activities historical past.