Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark just can’t get away from the injury bug this year.
The former Iowa Hawkeye standout and current WNBA star was known as a bit of an iron-woman prior to this year’s WNBA season. But a quad injury earlier in the year forced her to sit out 5 games, and a groin injury not long after also cost her a handful of contests. Clark’s most recent injury to her right groin is the costliest of them all.
The timing of the injury has caused her to miss out on WNBA All-Star weekend, which is taking place in the home of the Indiana Fever in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Clark was supposed to compete in the 3-point contest on July 18, and then play in the All-Star game on July 19. Now, she’ll sit out of both as she tries to heal up, and it’s a real shame. The Fever guard absolutely ran away with the most votes when it came to All-Star fan voting. In fact, she set a new record for WNBA All-Star voting by receiving 1.29 million votes.
For reference, here is the top fan-vote getter in the WNBA for the past three years, and how many votes they received:
-2023: A’ja Wilson (Las Vegas Aces) – 95,860 votes
-2024: Caitlin Clark (Indiana Fever) – 700,735 votes
-2025: Caitlin Clark (Indiana Fever) – 1,293,526 votes
Pretty wild, eh? What’s even wilder is that her fellow WNBA players voted her the 9th best guard in the league.
If one believed in karma, they might put two and two together and say that the WNBA being ungrateful for Caitlin Clark led to her not being available for the league’s All-Star weekend. Obviously, Caitlin Clark isn’t purposefully sitting out of the weekend’s festivities. The timing of her latest injury just so happened to be ill-timed. There’s no doubt that Clark would love to lace them up as an All-Star in front of her home crowd if she could.
Because she isn’t available, the “Caitlin Clark Effect” is on display in a more unfortunate way. Just as ticket sales and league ratings have dropped anytime Clark has been injured previously, the WNBA All-Star game is feeling the negative effect of Caitlin Clark no longer being a part of it. TickPick reports that ticket prices for the pinnacle event of the WNBA’s All-Star weekend have plummeted almost 50% since she was ruled out with her groin injury.
Needless to say, Caitlin Clark isn’t a player in the WNBA. She is the WNBA.
Ryan Brewer, an associate professor of finance at Indiana University Columbus, found that of the $200 million in revenue that the WNBA brought in in 2024, Caitlin Clark was single handedly responsible for 26.5% of that revenue. In other words, Caitlin Clark’s success and story is helping cash the checks of others across the WNBA… and that’s proven true time and time again when Caitlin misses time.
Her absence will certainly be noticeable during the WNBA’s 2025 All-Star weekend. There’s no telling how many fans will skip out on tuning in because she’s not there, and as you can see, what was previously touted as one of the hottest tickets in town this weekend in Indianapolis has now lost half of it’s value just because Clark is no longer playing.
