It’s woman vs. woman in the WNBA right now. Caitlin Clark accomplishing a feat only LeBron James has accomplished in basketball – being named TIME Athlete of the Year – came as a surprise to many. Where some applauded her, there are of course dissenters discrediting the reigning league ROTY as the sole achiever of the award. One of them is Washington Mystics co-owner Sheila Johnson. The question is, do her comments hold water?

“This year, something clicked with the WNBA and it’s because of the draft of players that came in. It’s not just Caitlin Clark, it’s [Angel] Reese,” Johnson told CNN in a recent interview. “We have so much talent out there that has been unrecognized. And I don’t think we can just pin it on one player.”

“[On Tuesday], you read Time Magazine, where Caitlin Clark was named Athlete of the Year,” Johnson continued. “Why couldn’t they have put the whole WNBA on that cover and said ‘The WNBA is the League of the Year’, because of all the talent we have? Because when you just keep singling out one player, it creates hard feelings. We have got to… respect everybody that’s playing and their talents.”

Except for the fact that viewership numbers paint a completely different picture.

Replying to CNN’s post on X, a user posted a picture of game audiences across the league, comparing numbers of the teams’ average viewership with the numbers when they played against the Indiana Fever. Specifically for the Mystics, their games show an average audience of 4,988 whereas when they play against Clark, the number skyrockets to 20,522.

Overall, if one adds all the numbers on both sides, the difference comes out to be 75.5k. Which means Sheila Johnson might need to re-evaluate her comments. It’s undeniable that the league has existed even before Clark was born and there have been talented players before her and also play alongside her.

But her moment of arrival is what has made an impact. “It’s just the structure of the way that media plays out race… I’ve seen so many players of color that are equally as talented, and they never got the recognition that they should have. And I think right now, it is time for that to happen,” Johnson says.

Interestingly, the Mystics had a sold-out arena with 20,674 fans back in 1999 vs the Charlotte Sting in the MCI Center, 25 years ago. On the other hand, Clark had three games with 20,000+ people in attendance in her rookie year itself. Not to mention, Indiana impacted the ticket prices and the number of fans that showed up in almost every game that they played, only showcasing the impact of the Des Moines born.

Records show that ‘the Caitlin Clark effect’ helped increase the league’s overall attendance by 48%, per CNN, the highest in over 20 years. While Johnson might not agree, Sue Bird definitely does.

Sue Bird believes Caitlin Clark is helping WNBA grow in more aspects than just audience numbers

It might be because she’s now retired and not playing alongside Caitlin Clark anymore, but Sue Bird seems pro-Caitlin Clark. While Bird is definitely one of those veterans who are considered the best in the league, her era was still not as popular as what 2024 in the W has been like. And Bird knows.

On her A Touch More podcast, she tells partner Megan Rapinoe, “To me, it’s like for a league to hit it, for a league to be successful, for a league to have longevity and now to see for a player in a league to be able to garner money off the court in this way, some of it is just because it’s Caitlin Clark.”

“You can’t remove that from the equation, but she’s a little bit of a catalyst because now that you’re seeing brands invest in her, they know that she’s going to be seen in the WNBA and so those brands are now also going to invest in the WNBA. And it’s going to just break the door open for all this investment to come in and that’s ultimately how the league will grow.”

The league already has the new media rights deal and we’ve already seen the viewership numbers affected by her. It also helps that Clark was named to the Forbes World’s 100 Most Powerful Women, the only other athlete in the last two decades being Serena Williams. The legend has only just begun to grow into myth!