Fox intends to fully commit to celebrating Caitlin Clark’s last collegiate basketball game: According to people with direct knowledge of the plan, Fox will livestream her postgame Senior Night celebrations on YouTube, TikTok, FoxSports.com, and the Fox Sports app following the network’s broadcast of her final regular-season game at Iowa against Ohio State on Sunday afternoon.
Fox is aiming for the greatest possible viewership by broadcasting the game nationwide at 1 p.m. ET to over 100 million TV households in the United States via its broadcast network. The Fox Sports app and FoxSports.com are additional places to watch the game. Fox will webcast the emotional postgame interviews and rituals surrounding the great guard’s final game at Carver-Hawkeye after the game, and the network will then turn to NASCAR coverage Arena.
The postgame platform was created since Clark could have a lot of issues to resolve. She announced her intention to enter the WNBA draft on Thursday. It is anticipated that on Sunday, she will surpass the late Pete Maravich to become the all-time leader in NCAA men’s or women’s basketball scoring.
Fox’s decision to air Clark’s home finale on its fictitious “Big Fox” broadcast network was obvious. With 1.77 million viewers, Fox’s nationally aired coverage of Iowa vs. Nebraska on Super Bowl Sunday was the network’s highest viewed women’s basketball match. That was more than twice as many people as saw the Iowa-Illinois cable simulcast on February 25 on FS1. Women’s college basketball on Fox has had an increase in viewership this season of 18%, with an average of 784,000 viewers.
The sport has seen a 27% increase in viewers on the FS1 cable network so far this season, with an average of 146,000 viewers.
The most recent development in Fox’s coverage of Clark pertains to the Senior Night streaming approach. Fox provided fans with a “Caitlin Clark Cam” via TikTok for Iowa’s games earlier this year against Maryland and Nebraska. When she was playing defense or sitting on the bench, the other ISO Cam switched to game action and tracked her every move. Over 150,000 people watched the Iowa-Maryland live stream on TikTok’s “Caitlin Cam,” and an additional 800,000 people saw the highlights on the social media platform.
Fox aired live game material for the first time on TikTok at that point.
Similar to this, during its exclusive broadcast of three Hawkeyes games in February—against Michigan, Indiana, and Minnesota—NBC’s streaming service Peacock provided fans with a State Farm-sponsored “Caitlin Cast.” According to a spokesperson, NBCUniversal’s most-streamed women’s college basketball game was the Peacock broadcast of Iowa-Michigan, where Clark broke Kelsey Plum’s record for collegiate women’s scoring. However, the choice to air the game on Peacock rather than NBC proper infuriated many in the college basketball community. (Notably, Fox does not now provide a streaming service that is on par with Peacock.)
The 22-year-old Clark made her WNBA announcement on social media on Thursday.
She had the option to play one more season at Iowa by using her COVID-19 pandemic-related one-year eligibility, but she ultimately made the decision to go pro. “Caitlin, be my final one at Iowa,” Clark wrote.
On Sunday, Clark will need just eighteen points to surpass Maravich as the NCAA’s all-time leading scorer. The former National Player of the Year is presently guiding the Hawkeyes to a 25–4 record and a top-10 ranking while averaging 32.2 points, 8.7 assists, and 7.4 rebounds per game.
The “Caitlin Clark effect,” on the other hand, has been raising ticket costs all season long. It is likely that Clark’s Senior Night game versus Ohio State will go down as the most expensive ticket in WNBA or collegiate women’s basketball history. The astounding $491 gets you in to see her No. 6 Hawkeyes play the No. 2 Buckeyes, according to information provided to Front Office Sports by ticket marketplace TickPick. That’s better than Iowa-Michigan’s $337.
