Christine Brennan, author of Caitlin Clark’s biography, says the WNBA is squandering its biggest growth moment. Sometimes, a league’s biggest growth opportunities come from an audience that was never part of the original equation, forcing the league to decide whether it wants to embrace that attention or simply let it pass. The WNBA is going through something similar with Clark and the attention she brought to the league.

The Indiana Fever star is widely credited for bringing new eyes to the league, which has created an opportunity for the WNBA to turn that attention into something much bigger. But Christine Brennan believes the league could be doing more to capitalize on it.

During a recent appearance on Linda Cohn’s podcast, the author of On Her Game: Caitlin Clark and the Revolution in Women’s Sports pointed to the NFL’s handling of Taylor Swift’s arrival in the league as Kansas City Chiefs player Travis Kelce’s partner as an example of what embracing a new audience can look like.

“It’s like they (WNBA) want to keep the small things small. And I don’t, for the life of me, understand that,” said Brennan. “And I’ll use an example. The NFL is not small. It’s big. It’s the biggest thing going. And I’ve known Roger Goodell forever. He had an interesting situation a year or two ago with what we’ll call the ‘Swifties.’ When Taylor Swift started dating, and that became clear she was dating Travis Kelce, and that became public, and all of this interest and the funny memes with the dads saying that the daughters came in and asked about who this Kelce guy is…”

Brennan then compared how well the NFL handled the unexpected influx of young Swift fans to what the WNBA should have done (or be doing) with the hundreds of thousands of new eyeballs that Caitlin Clark is drawing to the WNBA.

“But the NFL, they really didn’t have a choice, but they kind of did, in the same way we’re talking about the WNBA in this moment,” she added. “There were people I’ve seen, some of our colleagues and clips or whatever out there. ‘This is ridiculous. You don’t want Swifties around the NFL. Who wants this?’ And so what did Roger Goodell do, and what did everyone in the NFL do? Of course, because they’re smart and they get it, they’re like, ‘Yeah, this is great.’ Of course, they embraced it.”

Brennan’s reasoning was simple: with Taylor Swift dating her now-husband, Kansas City Chiefs star Travis Kelce, the Swifties were not just temporary spectators. They were potential lifelong customers.

“And here’s why; because that 12-year-old girl has got another what, 70 or 75, 80 years, hopefully longer, of fandom, of being around. That woman is going to grow up to love sports and obviously love Taylor Swift. NFL wants her to watch games, go to games, buy products, buy jerseys. That is brilliant marketing. That is brilliant business sense,” Brennan further added.

That same opportunity exists around the WNBA, where Caitlin Clark’s arrival has coincided with a remarkable expansion in the league’s audience. The league opened the 2024 season with the highest attendance in 26 years, with Clark coming all guns blazing as the No. 1 Draft pick out of Iowa. And according to the WNBA, they “saw complementary viewership marks amongst diversified audiences.” And Clark played a major role in that surge.

A 2026 academic study in Sage Journals examining WNBA attendance from 1997 through 2024 found that Caitlin Clark produced attendance effects that significantly exceeded those of previous and current stars in the researchers’ sample.

They also highlighted that “her attendance effect surpasses the impact Michael Jordan had on NBA attendance from prior studies.”

Since Clark entered the league, the WNBA has signed a massive media rights deal with partners like Disney, NBC, and Amazon, which, as per reports, skyrocketed its annual revenue to $281 million. A new Collective Bargaining Agreement is in place that offers the top players a supermax salary of $1.4 million.

But despite that growth, the WNBA has still faced criticism for not fully embracing Caitlin Clark’s stardom.

One of the best examples of that came during an August matchup between the Indiana Fever and Dallas Wings, when ION promoted the game with a graphic that featured Lexie Hull and rookie Raven Johnson for Indiana, while Paige Bueckers and Arike Ogunbowale represented Dallas. The game could have easily been sold as another chapter in the rivalry between Bueckers and Clark that dates back to their college days. Yet Clark was left off the graphic altogether.

There is also a narrative that the WNBA does not do enough to protect Clark, which spread like wildfire after a matchup between the Phoenix Mercury and Fever. During that game, Alyssa Thomas made contact with Clark around the throat area, but no foul was called on the play.

Incidents like these have only added to the growing divide within the league’s fan base. The WNBA is increasingly caught between what is often described as the old fans vs. new fans divide. That has contributed to an increasingly polarizing environment around the league, with almost every major Caitlin Clark-related moment becoming another point of debate.

So, with Cathy Engelbert set to step down as WNBA commissioner at the end of the 2026 season, many will hope that a change in leadership can help bridge that divide and allow the league to better embrace the attention Caitlin Clark has brought to the WNBA.