Caitlin Clark is the economic engine of the WNBA, plain and simple. With nothing less than a billion dollars at stake, Clark is solely taking the WNBA to a new height. As per Andrew Greif of NBC, the Fever star was responsible for 26.5% of all WNBA economic activity last season. And the 2025 season is going to be even bigger. When Ryan Brewer, an associate professor of finance at Indiana University Columbus and an expert at valuations, did the math on what impact Clark might bring to the league in 2025, the numbers are “quite impressive.”

“If things just go as they were, and we have an expanded season of 22 home games with modest inflation, I’m looking at $875 [million],” Brewer said. “And I could easily see that eclipsing a billion dollars on the economic impact of Caitlin Clark this year.” This also explains why the league is keen on giving the Fever as many nationally televised games as they can. In 2025 alone, 40 out of 44 Fever games are on national TV, the most for any team. While the WNBA is minting millions of dollars from the league’s meteoric rise, the Caitlin Clark effect also has its cons.

Clark’s unprecedented rise in popularity inadvertently overshadowed some of the league’s longtime veterans, leading to tension. As a result, when Clark became the target of repeated hard and flagrant fouls, the response was often dismissive—she was simply told to get up and shake it off.

Nothing changed this season as well. A rough defense on Clark during the Fever vs Liberty game has caused a long-term injury that will keep the Indianapolis star out of the game for at least two weeks. Now, when so much is at stake because of one certain individual, a women’s basketball analyst urged the league to reconsider selling the WNBA as a physical league. “I don’t think that the WNBA should continue to lean on the fact that they’re a physical league and make that the selling point of the league,” Rachel A. DeMita said on her YouTube channel.

DeMita also raised her concern about poor refereeing in the WNBA and how it prevents the game from being free-flowing and continuous. She said, “The thing with the WNBA is, it is physical to a fault, and they even say here their ability to be physical legally is very different. I don’t get that cuz yes, they are bigger, stronger, longer; they have more of the ability to be physical, clearly, but you’re not going to call it the same as college because just because they’re bigger, we’re going to let them be more physical.”

The officiating in college basketball is much more strict than in the WNBA, which is why it is a challenge for rookies to adapt to this league. De Mita also woke the league up to the fact that if they don’t do anything to change this, the recent growth might just be a temporary spike, and they would descend to the early 2010s days.  She said, “If you want to keep these new fans around, you need to make sure that there’s a good product on the floor.”

Before, the glaring issue used to be the marketing of the league, which was not drawing enough people. Now that that is somewhat solved, the league should not sleep on the quality of the league. The NBA had this same problem once, and they solved it with some important rule changes. Even DeMita implored WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert and the management to take a page out of the NBA’s book.

What can the WNBA take from the NBA to solve this physicality problem?

There are two groups of people with regard to this situation currently; one is heavily calling for more NBA-like changes to the WNBA, while the other considers the physicality of the game a nostalgic throwback. De Mita cracked down on the latter group with some harsh words.

She said, “A lot of people are saying things like, ‘Oh, I love it; it’s back to the 90s style of basketball when there were so many fights and this and that.” No, it’s actually not good basketball. it’s not fun basketball to watch, and I call BS when they say that they’re working to make sure that the offense can play offense. That’s not true because we’ve seen what the NBA has done, and they have actually made sure that the offense can run smoothly.”

Even the NBA audience once had a similar situation in the 90s when some of the flagrant 2 fouls right now would be ignored routinely by the referees. The standards have changed along with the times. As soon as the hand-check rule was removed in the NBA, the average scoring jumped by four points, from 93 to 97 points per game.  Such an impact in the WNBA will certainly bring more crowds and not focus on any player but the overall play in the league.

The defensive three-second violation, which was introduced into the NBA in the early 2000s, is another thing they can look at, which is that the defender can’t stay in the paint unless actively guarding an opponent for more than 3 seconds, which promotes the attackers to make more interesting and dynamic plays. We often see the tall defenders posted under the basket in the WNBA, which results in stagnant plays.

The flagrant foul rules are, in general, more lenient, but while implementing they become more confusing. They are implemented according to the interpretation of the referee. The freedom of movement could also be enforced like the NBA did in 2018.

But every rule change should not be copied and pasted; and should be tailored to women. So the opinions of players, fans, and referees should be taken into consideration while making any change. There hasn’t been any indication from the league so far about making changes, but fans remain hopeful that they’ll eventually see the light.