On a late Sunday night in October at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, the New York Liberty won the WNBA Championship 67-62 in an overtime game over the Minnesota Lynx. As millions viewed the game at home and thousands of fans stood screaming in the stands, the game underscored the skyrocketing popularity of women’s basketball.
Women’s basketball has exploded in popularity in America compared to previous years. The final game in the series, airing on ESPN, attracted an average of 2.2 million viewers, setting a record as the most-watched WNBA Finals game in 25 years. Even before the WNBA Finals, the entry of superstar Caitlin Clark to the league sparked off-the-chart attendance and viewership for the Indiana Fever. The team had the highest average attendance rate of home games in all of the WNBA. The viewership rates on TV are equivalent to the at home rates. According to the New York Post, “During the regular season, games featuring Clark and the Fever nearly tripled other WNBA games in TV viewership, averaging 1.178 million viewers compared to 394,000.” The Liberty and the Fever have the two highest average attendance rates this season.
Liberty fans have been proud to flaunt their support for the team all over Brooklyn. This season the average attendance at Liberty games was 12,700 people with ticket pricing at an average of $55+ per seat. One of those diehard fans is Millennium’s girl’s basketball coach, Coach McCarthy. The Phoenix spoke to him and learned that he and his wife are passionate members of the larger Brooklyn fanbase of the New York Liberty. McCarthy expresses his interest in the Liberty, “I’ve been watching the NY Liberty for a long time, I am a big WNBA fan.” Coach McCarthy was so excited by the Liberty’s win that he purchased season tickets for next year.
At Millennium Brooklyn, it remains to be seen if passion around the WNBA and the NY Liberty will translate into more students trying out for girls basketball or more fans in attendance at games. Girls basketball at Millennium is not new. The girls basketball program began “well before” Coach McCarthy started coaching here in 2011. According to Coach McCarthy, the growth rate of female students trying out and playing basketball has grown exponentially in the past few years due to the merging of Millennium’s sports program with the schools across the John Jay campus in 2021. McCarthy affirms that boys teams still command the lion share of fans, but things are changing. “I feel like there [are] definitely more fans that go to the boys games than the girls games here,” says McCarthy. But he adds, “Our important girls games do get packed, so that’s not a huge discrepancy.”
Still, boys continue to outpace girls in try-outs for sports. Says McCarthy, “as for the number of people that try out….there are many more boys that try out for the team than there are girls.” According to McCarthy, track is the largest women’s sport at Millennium. However, McCarthy added that girls volleyball and basketball remain the most popular sports to attend.
When asked about the girls’ season and his hopes of a potential increase in attendance at games McCarthy proclaimed, “That would be an interesting correlation and I hope it does. The more people we get the better to come out and support our girls.” The first league game for girls basketball is November 26th. Will the John Jay Jaguars end up with their own Catlin Clark effect?
