ESPN news: Caitlin Clark’s Initial Case of Indiana Fever Why Bobblehead Is Going Viral Is Completely Incorrect
On Tuesday night, Caitlin Clark formally began her professional career.
In a 92-71 defeat to the Connecticut Sun, the Indiana Fever’s rookie player, chosen first overall in the 2024 WNBA Draft, made her court debut. With 10 turnovers and 20 points on 5-of-15 shooting from the field, Clark led the Fever. She also made 4 of 11 deep shots.
Even if Clark’s debut didn’t go exactly as she had hoped, it was only the first of many games for the most promising young player in WNBA history.
The sport is evolving almost entirely because of Clark. The league has finally begun to charter flights this year, and teams that travel commercial will have security on board.
The popularity of the sport has significantly increased after Clark’s arrival as well. While opposing clubs have rescheduled their home games against the Fever to larger arenas in order to accommodate more fans to purchase tickets, Clark’s jersey has sold in record amounts on Fanatics.
In fact, Clark’s Tuesday night debut created television history by being the first live sporting event to ever air on Disney+.
All of this is to say that Clark has achieved national fame in addition to becoming a WNBA and basketball celebrity. She has even had her own bobblehead.
On its website, the company “FOCO” is offering four Clark bobbleheads for purchase. Three of the bobbleheads are still up for preorder, but the one that shows her being drafted has already sold out. Three photos of her have been released: one with the Iowa Hawkeyes, one with the Fever road jersey, and a brand-new photo that will be her debut. Regretfully, one of them has unintentionally become viral.
The account TwinsJake shared a picture of the away jersey bobblehead on social media on Tuesday, saying, “Got my Caitlin Clark Bobbleheads!”
That post has received more than 7.5 million views in less than a day.
Why is everyone talking about the bobblehead? It doesn’t precisely resemble the well-known basketball player, though. The post has been “quoted” by over 1,000 users, many of whom believe it to be a picture of another athlete, primarily a man.
Even though this bobblehead may not look exactly like Clark, it’s incredible that a WNBA player is receiving this much attention in the sports industry. Additionally, Clark has contributed a great deal to the WNBA in a brief period of time, and as the season progresses, her stature should only rise.
Maybe her three-dimensional likenesses will also get better.
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Tops NHL, Earns Best Ratings Since 2001 for Caitlin Clark’s WNBA debut
With its opening night doubleheader, the WNBA scooped out a sizable piece of the national television pie on a packed Tuesday night full of important NBA and NHL playoff games.
The Indiana Fever’s regular-season opener versus the Connecticut Sun, featuring Caitlin Clark, drew an average viewership of 2.12 million viewers on ESPN2, making it the most watched game in the league since Memorial Day 2001, when NBC broadcast a game between the Los Angeles Sparks and Houston Comets. Although Clark led her team in scoring with 20 points, it was an uneven game for the millions of fans who came to watch the former college superstar shine. Legendary player DeWanna Bonner continued her climb up the WNBA’s all-time scoring leaderboard, and Alyssa Thomas recorded her 12th career triple-double.
It was going to be difficult to surpass the league’s all-time viewership record of 5.04 million for its inaugural game—the Rebecca Lobo-led New York Liberty’s victory over Lisa Leslie and the Los Angeles Sparks on June 21, 1997—even though every promotional and distribution effort was thrown into the Clark basket. It would have required a lot more runway without the NBA in the way to even come close to becoming the most watched WNBA game of the twenty-first century, which was 2.73 million people seeing the Liberty take on the legendary Houston Comets on Memorial Day in 2000. Before 2002, when the W was no longer telecast on its own, it was shown on NBC as an addition to the network’s coverage of the NBA.
Against fiercely competitive broadcast opposition, the Indiana-Connecticut game held its own. Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden, where the New York Knicks were playing Game 5 of the NBA Eastern Conference semifinals against the Indiana Pacers, the leaders in the ratings clubhouse were present. 4.88 million people watched the pivotal game, in which the Knicks claimed a 3-2 series lead. The NBA champion Denver Nuggets stunned the Minnesota Timberwolves to take a 3-2 series lead while TNT Sports’ doubleheader went on. A total of 4.51 million people watched that game.
The Boston Bruins avoided elimination against the Florida Panthers in the opening game of the Stanley Cup Playoffs double feature on the main ESPN channel, which drew in 1.99 million people. In the NHL’s nightcap, Edmonton’s series tie with Vancouver brought in less than one million (989,000). Both were eclipsed in viewership by the Clark game.
Although Clark’s debut received star treatment, the Las Vegas Aces, a real team of superstars, were beginning their defense of another championship. Just 464,000 people saw the two-time defending WNBA champions win 89-80 over the Phoenix Mercury in the second half of the doubleheader. This was a 47% year-over-year fall from the equivalent 2023 Mercury-Sparks opener, which saw Brittney Griner return to the league after missing the 2022 season due to her detention in Russia, despite the large lead-in from Connecticut. Long beyond East Coast prime time, Griner’s comeback drew 683,000 viewers, making it the most viewed WNBA game on cable since June 1999.
Both WNBA games were streamed live on Disney+ in addition to the regular authenticated stream on ESPN+. These were the service’s first and second live athletic events that weren’t animated when it debuted in 2019. The totals were not disclosed at the time of publication.
