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  • The Caitlin Clark Effect Began in College—And We Have the Ticket Data to Prove It

The Caitlin Clark Effect Began in College—And We Have the Ticket Data to Prove It

Plus: A revealing look at college hockey revenue and a must-read book on college sports business.

August 04, 2025

Hello there and thank you for taking time out of your day for the NILnomics newsletter.

In this issue, I jump into the Caitlin Clark discourse with a retrospective on her college days. There’s also our first official book review (with a special bonus for my readers!) And of course hockey. Here’s the rundown:

  • 💰️ Caitlin Clark 💰️ - I look back at the ticket revenue of Iowa before and during Clark’s collegiate run

  • NIL 101 - a review of the new book covering all things college athletics in the post House world from an expert in the field

  • College hockey - a broad look at revenue in men’s hockey from an often unused data source

Pour a drink. Get comfortable. Let’s get into it.

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Caitlin Clark Was Always Box Office Gold — Here's the Data to Prove It

If you’re reading this then I presume you’re at least sports-adjacent enough to hear the name Caitlin Clark. She’s a shooting guard in the WNBA playing for the Indiana Fever. Her star rose during her college career at the University of Iowa after several deep runs in the March Madness tournament. Her dominance of the sports talk world the last 3 years has also seen an impressive rookie and sophomore seasons in the WNBA. The #1 overall pick has set all types of records, including ticket sales, attendance, scoring, and even trading card sales.

But has anyone seen just how much business she was doing in college? While I’ve seen her ticket sales reported elsewhere, I don’t think anyone has done a good job putting the numbers in context. Allow me.

 

Quick Takeaways:

  • In 3 months of doing this newsletter I never had to stop, pull out the actual financial report, and double check the data manually like I did here. I almost made that page the banner for this week’s issue. Yes - Iowa raked in $3.3 million in ticket revenue in Clark’s senior season.

  • Not sure why I pulled LSU out from the other women’s teams to compare to Iowa. Can’t think of a reason to do that.

  • The 2023 National Champions shouldn’t let anyone forget they sold more tickets than Iowa in 2022.

  • The problem with the graph is it’s so zoomed out to display Iowa’s massive success that you can’t see how much women’s college basketball has grown. It looks like a flat line. The average team sold over $260k in ticket sales in 2017 and has grown to $430k in 2024. Women’s basketball has clearly increased its popularity.

 

Analyst’s Desk

This data comes from the year/school/team specific data I’ve scraped from all the public school financial reports I’ve received (and that you can access here). So while I excluded LSU and Iowa from the ‘All P4 Womens Teams’ group, that doesn’t actually capture every team you may think it does. As I’ve mentioned before, southern schools requiring legal residency, those that charge high reproduction fees, schools with weird business policies, or private schools aren’t in the data set. I excluded the 2021 fiscal year because of COVID.

📖 Our First Book Review! 📖 

I was scrolling Twitter a few weeks ago (which I do too much, admittedly) when I stumbled across this tweet:

If you don’t know, Blake Lawrence is co-founder and President of Opendorse, the prominent NIL platform that facilitates deals between athletes and businesses. He’s well positioned to write up an overview of the NIL space, particularly in the post-House world. I reached out to Blake to see if I could review the book and he provided both me and my readers a discount on the book. Just to be transparent, I’m not getting any type of kickback here but Blake has allowed me to offer the first 25 of my readers who use the code “NILNOMICS25” at checkout to receive $25 off the retail price. Thank you Blake for your support. Now, onto the review.

First off - what is this book and who is it for? NIL 101: The House Settlement is a 129 page, electronic-format overview of college athletics that touches on every level of the space. From the House settlement itself, to how the spending cap is calculated, transfer portal, College Sports Commission, and more. Each of these major topics is covered in an FAQ fashion, with simple questions like, “Who is Grant House and why is the settlement named after him” receiving a full page treatment. This is clearly no legal analysis, policy document, scholarly literature, or in-depth review of these topics. Blake writes both clearly and simply, peppering each topic with plenty of fun Fallout style cartoons (IYKYK) and key takeaway statements on each page to make the conten to the broadest audience.

I may be entrenched in the college sports finance space, but you may be wondering - did I learn anything? Yes! There were some nuggets throughout this book that peaked my interest. Specifically, that Opendorse was subpoenaed during the House trial to help calculate the backpay formula. Or that schools with sports in multiple divisions can leverage NIL payments only for those Division I sports. And I had no idea schools could do NIL deals with former student-athletes, which the book explains creates some shady grey-area for enforcement. Plenty of other topics had information I didn’t know previously.

You may be wondering what the drawbacks of this book are.

  • Anything written about college sports, especially now, is going to be outdated quickly. For example, the book doesn’t reflect the CSC’s latest change in policy in allowing collective payments to student athletes. There’s nothing to be done about it, but it should be noted.

  • I think the book speaks a bit too confidently about Title IX’s impact on the House settlement - considering the uncertainty around the subject.

  • Sometimes I wish there was more of a deep-dive on topics. I have read economist Daniel Rascher’s testimony in the House settlement and would love to have more details about the sports economics - but that may not be of interest to everyone else. This book clearly favors breadth over depth.

And finally, what’s my verdict? I read this book in just about 3 hours - it’s an easy read. Despite being in the college sports space, I learned alot I didn’t know. The book has plenty of other uses. First, it’s a great reference manual. I can see myself cracking it open in the future to quickly find some piece of information I may need. I also let my wife read a few pages. She’s outside of college sports and is always thrown into the mix when I start ranting on what’s happening any given day. But I had her read a few pages (specifically around the salary cap) and she was quickly up to speed. Maybe now she’ll understand me 😆 My verdict is the book does what it sets out to do - inform even the most knowledgeable among us while helping bring the everyman up to speed. A worthwhile investment for anyone adjacent to college sports.

🏒 College Hockey Corner 🏒 

Quick Takeaways:

  • No one will be surprised by the top 4 schools, but this is the first time (thanks to the EADA data) that we can see where the privates (Notre Dame, Denver, BU, BC) stand.

  • I have to take a moment to say how much it warms my hear to see my alma maters Northeastern and Bowling Green ranked so high on here. Sorry, back to your normally scheduled analysis.

  • The regionality is so clear in this chart. We have those Appalachian schools like ND, Minnesota, and Michigan at the top. Then basically all of Hockey East is at #11 - 20. The Ivy Leagues are all bundled 2/3 of the way down. The 3 NH schools at the very bottom is a cute touch.

Analyst’s Desk

Data for this graph comes from the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act data. It has some great data on schools and, much like the MFRS data I use all the time, is reported to the NCAA annually. Importantly, it has all the private schools in the data set. So for some analysis, it’s a great data source.

📖 What I’m Reading/Listening To 🔉 

I’m always on the lookout for anyone breaking down college sports and especially the business side of the industry. Here’s this week’s best listens:

  • Highway to NIL - this lawyer podcast is the best source of understanding NCAA compliance issues. This week they went over the latest CSC, collective related guidance.

  • Next Play: The Business of Sports - this episode dove into the Big East and basketball with some great insight into the issues P4 schools will face

Final Thoughts

Thanks for reading this week’s issue!

I hope to get more work done on scraping athletic department staff directories so I can do some in-depth analysis on that data. Look out for that in the future. This week’s topic came to me from a reader who asked me about Caitlin Clark and Iowa basketball’s finances. I love when readers prompt me to research! Don’t be afraid to reach out if you have thoughts, questions, or feedback.

Lastly, thanks again to Blake Lawrence, co-founder and President of Opendorse for giving my readers $25 off his new book (use code “NILNOMICS25” at checkout), NIL 101: The House Settlement.

Until next time,

Greg Chick, PhD

Data Analyst

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NILnomics is an independent data-driven newsletter uncovering the real numbers behind college sports finances with sharp insights, clear visuals, and exclusive datasets. Please send any thoughts, questions, or feedback to me at [email protected] and please follow me on X @NILnomics. Don’t forget all our data is available on Kaggle, code on GitHub, and FOIA documents on GoogleDrive. See you next week!

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