Caitlin Clark makes surprise appearance as Fever receive Visit Indy's top tourism award
Fever attracted thousands of fans, which helped pour millions of dollars into the Indy economy. Every game - home and away - was nearly sold out and on national TV. For that, they were celebrated
It was a record year for the Indiana Fever.
No matter the category, whatever the record was before 2024, this past season surpassed it.
Fan interest, attendance, viewership, merchandise sales, corporate partnerships, concessions, media requests, etc. You name it, they beat it. Easily.
Indianapolis experienced great success alongside.
At the center of it was Caitlin Clark, the 23-year-old guard who was both Rookie of the Year and All-WNBA First Team in her first year. She took the league by storm, as we all expected, and helped the Fever back to the postseason for the first time since 2016.
Clark has been in at least three states already this week. After seeing her No. 22 jersey hung in the rafters during a postgame jersey retirement ceremony at the University of Iowa, she went to Kansas City, Missouri on Tuesday to be the featured speaker at the KC Women’s Sports Awards.
Then on Wednesday, she was part of a large contingent from the Fever on hand at the Indiana Convention Center to accept the city’s highest tourism award.
The Fever — which shattered WNBA attendance records and recorded a total home attendance record of 340,715 over 20 games — were celebrated around 4:40 p.m. Wednesday as the recipient of Visit Indy’s Bill McGowan Leadership Award, which annually recognizes an individual or organization who has significantly helped advocate and promote Indy in support of driving tourism and enhancing the city’s image.
This was part of Visit Indy’s State of Tourism event.
“I'm proud to see Indianapolis at the very epicenter of this success,” Mayor Joe Hogsett said. “Records are made to be broken, so let’s break them (again).”
More than one thousand business and community leaders gathered inside the Sagamore Ballroom for this annual event and they each received a red “Fever Rising” t-shirt at their chair, along with Fever boomsticks to smack together.
Clark’s entrance into the WNBA led to an all-time record of more than 54 million viewers on national networks, including 22 games with at least one million viewers. Every network that aired a WNBA game set a viewership record.
League attendance was up 48% from the 2023 season, and the Fever went from averaging less than 4,000 fans per home game to more than 17,000 this season.
The Fever’s game at Washington inside Capital One Arena set a WNBA single-game attendance record with 20,711.
That’s the Caitlin Clark Effect.
And so is this award.
It was appropriate that the award was presented by Fever legend and Hall of Famer Tamika Catchings. The Fever had not reached the postseason since her retirement in 2016. Then Clark was drafted No. 1 overall and changed that.
“It's only fitting that today, not only do we get the opportunity to give away this award, but we also get to celebrate National Girls and Women in Sports Day,” said Catchings, the award winner in 2022. “This year's honoree isn't an individual, it's a team. A group of leaders both on and off the court. A team that has raised the profile of not only women's basketball, but also the profile of Indiana.”