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.
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.”
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