“It’s time to surprise some people (in the playoffs).” Aerial Powers beamed as the Indiana Fever reached the playoffs (Side note: without Caitlin Clark). Powers was another one of their midseason patches, signed on an emergency contract, who has performed beyond expectations, and helped propel a Clark-less Indiana side to the playoffs. As the Indiana Fever dreams of winning the championship, will it really matter to the Caitlin Clark fans? Not really, if one analyst is to be believed.

“Caitlin Clark fans don’t care if you win a WNBA championship.” Money Mike said on Money Mike’s Syndicated Podcast.’ This might have some degree of truth to it. While the Indiana Fever aim to win the championship, realistically, the odds are not in their favor. This might be a turn-off for fans in some quarters. Mike further said, “Caitlin Clark fans, they don’t care, they love Caitlin Clark, period, okay, and Money Mike’s starting to understand a fan base and the love and affection that the fans have for that player and the player’s brand.”

Translation? A huge section of Indiana fans are, in reality, just Caitlin Clark fans. This was evident when the Fever lost its place at the top of the league’s attendance record, post CC’s injury. The tally went down from 17,035.75 last year to 16,633 this year. CC’s absence also resulted in a huge hit to the All-Star game viewership, with the numbers dropping from 3.44 million when Clark was playing last year to 2.2 million this year. 

“Caitlin Clark effect manifests itself in 2 ways: Anything with Clark, then without, drops hard. NCAA title game -54%. Draft -49%. All-Star -36%. Regular-season -50% during her time out (but still up for 2025),” Austin Karp, of the Sports Business Journal, wrote on X. This is further proof that a large chunk of Indiana Fever’s revenues is coming from Caitlin Clark’s brand value. This can potentially be an issue down the road if CC decides to move to new pastures or sustains a long-term injury like this year. However, to avoid that, the Indiana Fever have made significant efforts in 2025. 

Indiana Fever Are Quietly Building A Brand Beyond Caitlin Clark

The Indiana Fever know a brand beyond Caitlin Clark needs to be built. “I want this team to be a leader in the country and an enduring brand like Apple,” Fever President Kelly Krauskopf has said. The President sees the Fever team becoming ‘America’s Team.’ She had data to back that claim, which seems a faraway dream on the outset. “Only about 5% of our attendees went to a Pacers game, for instance. A third of our attendees were from outside the state of Indiana. We’ve got national reach,” she said.

Their marketing team is taking no risks. Earlier in June, the Indiana Fever and its parent organization, Pacers Sports & Entertainment (PS&E), collaborated with Agentforce, Salesforce’s digital labor platform and AI CRM. Reason? It will autonomously scale more personalised connections with its fans.  “As PS&E’s database continues to grow, Data Cloud will help the organization to unify customer data across all properties — including the Indiana Fever, the Indiana Pacers, the Gainbridge Fieldhouse event venue, online stores, multiple POS systems and ticketing platforms, and more.” Sales Force wrote in their press release. 

While it was not exclusively mentioned in the release, the tool would likely help them differentiate sole Caitlin Clark-related traffic from the overall Indiana Fever traffic. It would also help them target and convert Clark fans to Indiana Fever fans. There is a grey area between both, as Clark fans are Fever fans, to some extent. That extent is where the doubt creeps in, and analysing the data better will help them differentiate between the two. “We want to make sure this isn’t just one moment, that there’s sustainability to the growth.” Krausopf has said. While Caitlin Clark drives the spotlight, the Indiana Fever is making sure it builds a revenue model that doesn’t suffer massive drop-offs in her absence.