Caitlin Clark has brought so much attention and popularity to the Indiana Fever, that the team's new president has big ambitions for its brand.
The Fever's new president of basketball and business operations, Kelly Krauskopf, said she wants to make the Fever's brand like the tech company Apple, during her introductory press conference on Tuesday.
"We have a foundational player in Caitlin Clark, and we're going to continue to add to that. But I want this team to be a leader in the country and an enduring brand like Apple. We have a real opportunity here," Krauskopf said.
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For Krauskopf, Clark's presence on the team gives the organization a chance to reach a new generation of fans. She plans to be very forward-thinking in terms of who the team will be marketing itself too. She suggested the team will look to move on to focusing on a new demographic, compared to the fans that it appealed to when it won its only WNBA championship in 2012.
"This is the moment where it takes a generation some time to get to that level," Krauskopf said. "I would tell our players, ‘Look, we’re building this for someone else. We're building this for someone's 10-year-old daughter now,' because that's what you do. We wanted to keep moving it forward, pushing it forward and paying it forward."
"I know what kind of support we have and we have it and that's where I feel empowered and very confident in the direction that we're going because we have that level of support."
Krauskopf also pointed out that Clark was 10 years old when the Fever won its first title. Now she believes that Clark will give the team a distinct recruiting advantage as it looks to evolve its brand and grow its fan base.
"If you're a smart basketball player and you watch the way [Caitlin Clark] plays, you would want to play with her," Krauskopf said.
However, Krauskopf will be looking to give the Fever this reputation after a season in which multiple WNBA players have criticized the Fever fans and accused them of being "racist."
After the team's loss to the Connecticut Sun in the first round of the playoffs, multiple Sun players spoke out against Fever fans and alleged they used racist language against them.
"Honestly, it's been a lot of nonsense. I think in my 11-year career, I've never experienced the racial comments [like I have] from the Indiana Fever fan base," Sun player Alyssa Thomas said after the Sun won the series on Sept. 25. "It's unacceptable, honestly. There's no place for it."
Thomas went so far as to say the Fever must intervene to halt their fans' actions.
"We don't want fans that are going to degrade us and call us racial names," Thomas said. "We already see what's happening in the world and what we have to deal with in that aspect. We come to play basketball for our job, and it's fun, but we don't want to go to work every day and have social media blown up over things like that. It's uncalled for and something needs to be done, whether it's [the Fever] checking their fans or this league checking. There's no time for it anymore."
Fellow Sun player DiJonai Carrington, who gave Clark a black eye in Game 1 of the playoff series, insulted the Fever fan base after Indiana defeated Connecticut 84-80 on Aug. 28.
"The Indiana Fever have the nastiest fans in the [WNBA]. Ew," Carrington wrote in a post on X that night.
INSIDE CAITLIN CLARK'S IMPACT ON MEN'S BASKETBALL
Meanwhile, Clark's longtime rival and Chicago Sky rookie Angel Reese has accused Clark's fans, both for the Fever and her fans during Clark's college career at Iowa, of racism, death threats and even sending explicitly AI-generated images of Reese to her family members.
"I think it's really just the fans, her fans, the Iowa fans, now the Indiana fans, that are really just, they ride for her, and I respect that, respectfully. But sometimes it's very disrespectful. I think there's a lot of racism when it comes to it," Reese said during the first episode of her podcast on Sept. 5.
"People have come down to my address, followed me home, it's come down to that… Multiple occasions, people have made AI-images of me naked. They have sent it to my family members. My family members are like uncles, sending it to me like, ‘Are you naked on Instagram?’"
Clark herself addressed the allegations of racism against Fever fans during the team's exit interview. However, Clark did not acknowledge that the individuals accused of racism are fans of her or her team.
"Those aren't fans. Those are trolls," Clark said.
Regardless, the influx of followers Clark brought to Indiana and the WNBA as a whole is undeniable.
The WNBA broke viewership and attendance records this year, spearheaded by Clark's presence on the team. The 14 most-watched WNBA games this year all included the Fever, and the team's season finale against the Washington Mystics on Sept. 19 broke the record for most-attended game in WNBA history with 20,711 attendees after it was moved to a larger arena.
Clark drew a WNBA record 1.84 million viewers to her first playoff game against the Connecticut Sun on Sept. 22, while competing with NFL Sunday. She followed it up with another record audience of 2.54 million viewers for Game 2. Clark and the Indiana Fever lost both those games, however, sending Clark home for the offseason.
However, once Clark and the Fever were eliminated from the playoffs, viewership plummeted. The first game between the Aces and Liberty, a rematch of last year's WNBA finals between two of the league's most popular and successful teams, drew an audience of 929,000, ESPN announced, which is 50% less than the Fever's Game 1 against the Sun.
Now Krauskopf will look to use that ammunition to build up the team's brand, all while accusations of racism against the fan base by other players may potentially continue.
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