How Caitlin Clark fueled the rise of betting on women's college basketball

Iowa’s Caitlin Clark was already a star in women’s college basketball, but a run to the 2023 NCAA tournament title game established her as a superstar in the wider basketball world. Despite falling 102-85 to LSU in the championship game, Clark (and her 41 points) led Iowa to a memorable upset of South Carolina 77-73 in the Final Four with the Hawkeyes as massive 11.5-point underdogs.

We’ve seen Clark appear in State Farm commercials, and there are near nightly videos of incredibly long lines of fans waiting to get into Big Ten games this year. She broke both Kelsey Plum’s all-time women’s college basketball scoring leader (3,527 points) and Pete Maravich’s all-time Division I scoring mark (3,667 points) en route to another Big Ten title.

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Clark has also led to an increase in betting interest across the 38 legal U.S. betting states, both on Clark and on women’s college basketball writ large. For several sportsbooks, that’s meant offering individual game props (e.g. Clark over/under total points) on women’s college basketball games for the first time, as well as an expanded menu of women’s games to wager on.

“We’ve seen a huge increase in overall handle,” Station Casinos sportsbook director Chuck Esposito told For The Win. “Last year, it started a bit with Clark’s popularity. This year, with South Carolina, LSU, the success of the UNLV Lady Rebels — all of those are contributing factors. We’ve been putting up most of the top-25 games all year, and from what I can remember, this is the first time we’ve had individual player props in women’s college basketball. Watching the women’s game, it’s really entertaining and a good product.”

DraftKings Sportsbook told For The Win that betting on NCAA women’s basketball is up 14 times year-over-year by handle and 13 times year-over-year by total bets placed. Jeffrey Benson, the director of operations at Circa Sports, told FTW they are seeing two-to-five times as much action in both volume and handle on women’s college basketball.

“She’s the primary reason why handle has gone up,” Johnny Avello, sportsbook director at DraftKings said. “We’ve done props on her scoring in individual games, breaking Pistol Pete’s record. All of it has added to the women’s handle.”

Avello noted an increase in interest in live wagering of women’s NCAA basketball games and an expanded slate of offerings in the women’s college game. At DraftKings, they had offered individual game props in the women’s game “sparingly” in the past but have done a lot more this season.

“Betting on the live action has been really strong all year long, which is part of why we’re seeing increases [year-over-year],” Avello said. “On the home section of the DraftKings app, if it’s a women’s game, they’ve been clicking and betting it. Plus, these games are all TV accessible. There are more games streaming and on major networks, and it’s a better game. Before, we would take a couple of games on the top teams; now, we’re doing so much more than that. We’ve had an expanded slate for sure.”

The betting interest has also led sportsbooks to look for new markets, which are even being requested internally.

“We’ve definitely seen a higher handle, and in the five years I’ve been here, this is the most requests for women’s markets that I’ve seen,” said Seamus Magee, a trader at BetMGM. “The women’s college game has a lot of really good characters and stories, which has definitely helped the rise of betting on the game. The storylines in women’s college basketball are overshadowing the men’s game.”

Magee also pointed to a rise in live offerings for women’s college basketball this season that have helped with the overall handle and noted that the Iowa-Nebraska Big Ten title game — a 94-89 Iowa win in overtime — saw a “really big handle for us, one we’re not used to seeing.”

Magee compared it to a big-time Big 12 men’s college basketball matchup during the week, “like if Kansas played Iowa State on a Thursday night.”

Clark has said this will be her final season at Iowa and declared for the WNBA Draft, where she’s the presumed No. 1 pick of the Indiana Fever. Already, there are markets up on Caitlin Clark, including -310 at FanDuel to lead the Fever in scoring. Clark is also tied for the eighth-best WNBA MVP odds at 21-1 at FanDuel before even being drafted.

Regardless of how Iowa does in this year’s women’s NCAA tournament, Clark has changed the perception of the women’s game both from an entertainment and betting perspective.

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