The Caitlin Clark Effect has been a net positive for the WNBA and all its teams. But with the star guard expected to miss a minimum of two weeks, the league will see the flip side of her impact. And there are already initial data points.
The Indiana Fever will play two road games during the coming two-week stretch—both of which were moved by their opponents to arenas with a larger capacity—and the ticket prices have drastically dropped for both games since Clark’s injury was announced Monday.
Wednesday’s Fever game vs. the Washington Mystics at CFG Bank Arena in Baltimore has a get-in price of $22, down 47% from the $41 minimum ticket price before the announcement, according to TickPick. CFG Bank Arena holds about 14,000 fans, significantly more than the around 4,000 that fit the CareFirst Arena, the Mystics’ usual home.
A Mystics spokesperson told Front Office Sports on Monday that the team is “not planning to make changes to tickets.”
Get-in tickets for the Fever’s rivalry game against the Chicago Sky on June 7 are down 71% from $86 to $25. The game will be played at United Center, the home of the NBA’s Bulls, which seats close to 21,000, the largest capacity of any NBA team. The Sky typically play their games at the Wintrust Arena, which seats about 10,400.
Clark, who has yet to miss a WNBA regular-season game and played in all her college games at Iowa, could potentially miss more than two weeks. The Fever’s next game is a June 10 road matchup against the Atlanta Dream, which will be 15 days after Monday’s injury announcement. The average purchase price for the five Fever games until June 10—including two Indiana home dates—is $80, down from $137 before Monday.
The get-in price for the Fever’s game vs. the Dream remains high at $147, though the game will be held at the Dream’s Gateway Center Arena, which has the smallest capacity in the WNBA at 3,500 seats.
The Fever have five remaining road games in June after the two-week mark of Clark’s injury, including the Dream game on June 10, and the get-in price for each game still exceeds $100 on TickPick. Those games include a pair of milestones: the Fever’s first game at the Chase Center against the Golden State Valkyries on June 19 and the first game between Clark and Paige Bueckers and the Dallas Wings on June 27.
