Buying season tickets to go to one game? That’s the Caitlin Clark Effect

EVANSTON, Ill. − Greg Mittelman just wanted to see Caitlin Clark play. As a University of Iowa alum living in Chicago, his best chance was the NCAA runner-up Hawkeyes’ Jan. 31 game at Northwestern. He tried to snag single-game tickets. But when they sold out in October – just days after becoming available – he found another option.

“I am a season-ticket holder for Northwestern women’s basketball,” Mittelman said.

He has yet to attend a game, but the investment was more than worth it. He purchased four season tickets for $150 total. For Wednesday’s game, general-admission seats like Mittelman’s were listed at an average price of $230 on SeatGeek. Each.

“I tried to get my friends to do it, but they’re all like, ‘You’re an idiot,’” Mittelman said. “But I think I’m the smart guy now.”

He’s not alone. Despite coming off a 9-21 campaign in 2022-23, Northwestern sold the most season tickets in program history this year.

The Wildcats have the lowest home-attendance average in the Big Ten, at 1,670 per game. On Jan. 25 vs. Penn State, Northwestern's last home game before Iowa, the crowd consisted of a smattering of fans in the lower bowl with the upper sections completely empty.

But for one night, all of Welsh-Ryan Arena’s 7,039 seats will be filled with fans eager to witness the biggest star in women’s college basketball. It will be the first sellout in Northwestern women’s basketball history.

“(Clark is) a great player, great kid, really good for our game,” said Northwestern coach Joe McKeown. “It’s just an opportunity to showcase women’s basketball, and we’re excited about that.

“The bittersweet part is that you wish it were like that all the time.”

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Northwestern is just the latest Big Ten campus transformed by the “Caitlin Clark Effect.” All six of the Hawkeyes’ true road games have been sellouts – with opposing arenas seeing their attendance increase by an average of about 150%. The cheapest tickets on the secondary market for Wednesday's game will cost nearly $200. For the Wildcats’ four other remaining home games, the lowest available price is $1.25 on average.

“The spotlight she’s put on the sport is amazing,” said Northwestern’s senior captain, Jasmine McWilliams.

In Iowa’s most recent road game, a 100-92 overtime loss at Ohio State, the frenzy grew to unprecedented heights. A program-record 18,660 fans packed Value City Arena, the largest indoor women’s basketball crowd in the country this season (Ohio State has averaged 5,668 fans for its other home games this year). What happened after the game – when a court-storming fan knocked Clark to the ground – stole the spotlight from an otherwise sterling moment for women’s basketball.

“That crowd, I would say, is probably the first hostile crowd Iowa played in front of,” said color commentator Meghan McKeown, who called the game for NBC.

The Northwestern-Iowa game is not likely to be so thrilling – or hostile. The Hawkeyes sit atop the Big Ten standings. The Wildcats are second-to-last. Yet that won’t stop the pregame ticket prices and in-game environment from reaching a fever pitch.

“It’ll be kind of like a home crowd for Iowa,” said Patience Vanderbush, a Northwestern women’s basketball alum. “But it’s wonderful for women’s basketball because that’s happening everywhere.”

Vanderbush and her spouse, Rosalie Dominik – also a former Northwestern women’s basketball player – bought season tickets despite living thousands of miles away in North Carolina.

“We had in mind that we wanted to see Caitlin Clark play basketball,” Vanderbush said.

They bought season tickets along the sideline for $99 each. Seats in their section for Wednesday’s game are listed for a minimum of $600 on the secondary market, with some sellers asking for more than $2,000.

“I would say we might continue buying season tickets now even though we can’t make it very often,” Dominik said.

Mittelman’s season tickets cost about $2 per game each. He could potentially sell them for more than a hundred times that. But he won’t be joining the scalpers.

“For me as an Iowa fan, this is a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing,” Mittelman said.

He is bringing his 3-year-old daughter Sunny to the game and said she’ll wear headphones to protect against the thunderous roars accompanying each Clark 3-pointer. Though she won’t be able to appreciate it now, Mittelman said, he knows what it will mean to her for the rest of her life.

“I'm able to say I saw (Michael Jordan) play live,” Mittelman said. “She'll say she got to see Caitlin Clark play live.”