Caitlin Clark: More Than Just a Basketball Star, a Cultural Phenomenon

Of course he has broken all possible records for points, assists or triples scored, but you have to look beyond mere statistics to understand his impact. For example: his matches garner audience figures never seen before on television, growing up to 60% on average in one year. Tickets to see one of his impossible shots live can cost more than 3,000 euros. Before signing her first professional contract, she has already pocketed three million dollars in sponsorships alone, with multinationals such as Nike, Gatorade or Bose fighting for the young woman to wear their sneakers, drink her isotonics or use her wireless headphones. . Her shirt with her number 22 is sold out in stores, traditionally non-sports media publish chronicles about her milestones and the hordes of her fans now have an official name, the clarkies, a la swifties. And the comparison of her with Taylor Swift is not trivial, because the madness that she has sparked in the United States in the last year is only comparable to that generated by the singer. Basketball player Caitlin Clark is the protagonist of an unusual cultural phenomenon: a student at the University of Iowa, only 22 years old and 180 centimeters tall, who has managed to take women’s sports to the highest levels in its history.

“Caitlin Clark has made it so that I, an avowed detractor of team sports, am appreciating women’s basketball for the first time.” These words, written by journalist Emma Specter in the American edition of Vogue magazine, perfectly summarize the sensation of supernova that a shameless young woman exudes on the hardwood, but discreet off of it. This “Kobe Bryant with a ponytail” is the event of the year, the fashionable woman, the obligatory photo on the Instagram board and the unavoidable event to attend to be able to boast of being up to date with the latest trends, even if the name is unknown. meaning of the expression ‘free kick’. Not even her two consecutive defeats in the university league finals manage to diminish the emotion that arouses around her and that transcends beyond a basketball court. “I’ll be able to sleep all night, even if I haven’t won a national championship. There is too much to be proud of. “I don’t sit back and regret things that have never happened,” she said after her last game in Iowa, her home state.

Born into a family of athletes – both her father and her two brothers were also professional athletes – she boasts a talent for basketball so precocious that at the age of five she was already standing out in her city, Des Moines. However, due to the lack of women’s competitions, her father enrolled her in the men’s league where she had to compete against boys bigger and stronger than her – and parents angered by the presence of a girl on the court – showing an unusual competitive fierceness. . That same charisma, added to rarely seen shooting skills, has made it so that 17 years after her, the characteristic of her ponytail obsesses an entire country despite barely offering interviews or free smiles to the camera.

“Her attitude makes her an archetypal rare role model. It counteracts the pressure often placed on female athletes to project a sweet, eternally positive image,” says Louisa Thomas in The New Yorker. For her, and for the buoyant business around her, that public image has only brought joy. Each of her home games results in new records of tickets sold and the WNBA teams (the women’s division of the NBA) rub their hands at the imminent arrival of the player to the competition after finishing her university career. . The effect, now coined as “Clarkonomics” – a play on words between her last name and ‘economics’ – has meant that all teams have already multiplied the number of season tickets sold for the next season.

“If we take into account the impact she is having off the court, there has only been one player like her: Michael Jordan,” says journalist Nancy Armor in USA Today. In Forbes, on the contrary, they reiterate the similarity of her case with that of Taylor Swift: “She has achieved for women’s basketball what Swift did in the world of music (…) The two are taking their respective industries to a new level” .

The match that revealed the madness for her took place on April 1. The match against LSU in the play-offs of the university championship, corresponding to the quarterfinals, became the most watched game in the history of university basketball – both men’s and women’s – with more than 12 million viewers on average. . That figure exceeds what was harvested by the finals of global competitions such as those of baseball leagues, ice hockey or even the almighty NBA. The audience base supported by Clark’s triples is such that she already plays an important role in the direction of the US election campaign. As confirmed by the specialized media Politico, President Joe Biden himself is trying to “get on his train” by placing advertisements to achieve re-election during the broadcast of his games and thus win over a good part of the “young and female” electorate that tunes in to women’s basketball. more than other sports.” Candidates Nikki Haley and Ron DeSanctis also tried – without success – to bring their names closer to Clark’s to beat Trump in the Republican primaries, and a fully disguised fight is expected to get his media support ahead of the election. If Taylor Swift’s support is already considered one of the most important sources of mobilization when deciding the electoral result, will Caitlin Clark and her Clarkies also be able to influence decisively?

2024-04-10 04:01:57
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