Is Caitlin Clark leaving money on the table?

For women's college basketball players, timing when to go pro can be tricky.

4/8/24 4:35PM

For most collegiate athletes, getting drafted by a professional team offers opportunities for money and fame that were inaccessible in college. For a few athletes, especially female players, the decision to go pro isn’t as straightforward, as their potential college earnings might be higher than what they’ll make in the pros.

Caitlin Clark electrified college basketball this season, and her on-court abilities contributed to lucrative off-court earnings. Since 2021, collegiate athletes have been able to profit from their own Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL), allowing them to sign endorsement deals with different brands. According to on3, Clark’s NIL valuation is now $3.4M, and she has already signed deals with premium brands such as Nike, Gatorade, and State Farm.

However, in February, Clark announced that she was forgoing her last season of college eligibility to enter the WNBA draft, where she is projected to be the first overall pick. Her expected rookie salary? $76,535.

WNBA players sign endorsement deals as well: WNBA star Candance Parker, for example, made $8.1M in 2023, and virtually all of her pay came from endorsement deals (her 2023 WNBA salary was just $100,000).

But the WNBA’s audience pales in comparison to women’s college basketball, and Clark was the catalyst for the two most watched games ever in women’s college basketball. Iowa’s Final Four matchup against UConn had 14.2M viewers, breaking the previous record of 12.3M viewers for Iowa’s game against LSU just days before. Meanwhile, the most-watched WNBA game ever, Game 4 of the 2023 finals, drew an average of just 889,000 viewers, peaking at 1.3M viewers for 14 minutes of the game.

Yes, Clark will be one of the most sought-after sponsorship partners in the WNBA, but when you consider league viewership numbers, it’s easy to argue that she would command a higher market value by playing one more season for Iowa — she will almost certainly earn less in her rookie season as a professional.

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In less than three weeks, Disney’s “Zootopia 2” becomes the second billion-dollar film of 2025

The global film industry officially has its second billion-dollar film of the year, as Disney’s “Zootopia 2” surged past the $1 billion box office mark in just 17 days. The other billion-dollar film this year, the live-action “Lilo & Stitch,” was also made by Disney.

“Zootopia” was the fastest to reach 10 figures of any animated film. The animated hit, which had the highest-grossing global debut of the year over Thanksgiving weekend, has benefited from massive numbers in China.

Disney also logged two billion-dollar films last year with “Inside Out 2” and “Moana 2.” (The latter also came out over the Thanksgiving holiday.) The only other film to cross the mark in 2024 was “Deadpool and Wolverine,” which featured Disney’s IP.

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Charlie Kirk’s Wikipedia page was the top English-language article on the site in 2025

The day after his assassination in September, Charlie Kirk’s Wikipedia page was viewed over 170 times per second, or almost 15 million times, according to figures from the Wikimedia Foundation.

Like with most other years, the top entries of the year reflected the fact that millions flock to the platform to learn more about political figures, films, and fatalities.

Though there’s been much talk about the impact of AI-generated search summaries and chatbots on Wikipedia — not least from the platform itself — it’s still clearly a major go-to resource for anyone looking to learn a little about a lot online, especially if this week’s year-end figures are anything to go by.