Clarkonomics: Caitlin Clark’s rising star brings economic jolt to Iowa

CLEVELAND — Almost everything Caitlin Clark did this month at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse during the NCAA’s Final Four had a number to it.

In the semifinals, 21 points, nine rebounds and seven assists. The next day, more than 11,000 fans attended the pre-championship open practices — not all to see Clark, but a sizable portion had an obvious interest in the Iowa star’s every move. The day after that, a record-breaking 18.9 million TV viewers watched her in the national championship game.

More than 500 miles away, Clark was making a big impact with different numbers: Economic impact for the Iowa City area.

“It’s been pretty easy to see what’s been going on here from our standpoint over the last couple years with the increase in visitation, hotels, restaurants, dining,” said Josh Schamberger, president of Think Iowa City, the area’s convention and visitor’s bureau. “It’s nothing short of substantial.”

The Iowa branch of the Common Sense Institute, a research organization “dedicated to the protection and promotion of Iowa’s economy,” tried to quantify the economic impact of Clark’s stardom.

The report estimated that attendance from Iowa women’s basketball games during Clark’s tenure has contributed between $14.4 and $52.3 million to the state’s economy. The wide range in the estimate accounts for whether the money spent by residents on Iowa women’s basketball would otherwise have been spent elsewhere in the state’s economy.

The $14.4 million number assumes all of the spending by residents “is simply a reallocation of money game attendees would have spent on something else within Iowa.” The $52.3 million figure assumes the opposite — “all resident spending is new spending.”

“The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle,” the report said.

  Buy Photo

The study used estimates from Think Iowa City that out-of-town attendees who need lodging spend $227.50 on average in the Iowa economy when seeing an Iowa women’s basketball game. If a visitor does not need lodging, that average goes down to $133.75.

As Clark has soared in popularity across the country, so had the percentage of people coming in from out of state to see the Hawkeyes at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

Think Iowa City estimated the proportion of out-of-state attendees rose from 10.3 percent in 2018-19 to 14.8 percent in 2023-24. The percentage increase is especially impressive considering it happened all while overall attendance more than doubled.

  Buy Photo

The Common Sense Institute report specifically is focused on games attendance and its economic impact. But the local economy has benefited in other ways. Take what happened April 1 — a Monday — when the Hawkeyes played LSU in the Elite Eight.

“Monday usually is the slowest day of the week in bars and restaurants, and it was just packed everywhere,” said Brian Flynn, who owns Joe’s Place in Iowa City, as well as Tin Roost and Field Day Brewing in North Liberty and other area restaurants and bars.

Fellow local restaurateur Matt Swift said Big Grove Brewery in Iowa City would, on a typical Monday night, see “maybe had 100 guests come through, or 50 guests come through.”

“And there’s 500 people there to watch the game, all united and freaking out and so fun,” Swift said of the Elite Eight crowd in the brewery. “It’s just been the most incredible thing.”

It has reached the point where Flynn’s restaurants and bars sometimes “have to schedule and staff up and be prepared basically like it’s a football game.”

Restaurants and bars also saw an opportunity to potentially convert customers who come for Iowa women’s basketball into customers who will return (even when Iowa is not playing).

“It’s a chance for exposure all the time,” Flynn said. “Somebody goes there for the first time, and you want their first time to be amazing. You want them to go, ‘That’s on my route,’ as you will with a lot of people.”

It has not always been like this for Iowa women’s basketball games.

Swift said three years ago, there might have been “one to three tables” of people specifically there to see the Iowa women’s basketball game. The game typically would be on Big Grove’s projector screen, but the “interaction was pretty low.”

Now, it’s a full house.

"It’s a massive difference,“ Swift said.

Clark will be off to the WNBA this summer, but Swift and others have plenty of optimism that the energy around Iowa women’s basketball — and consequently the economic impact — is here to stay.

“I think the buzz is going to continue,” Swift said. “It might not be fever pitch, but I think these teams are going to be good for a long time.”

Comments: john.steppe@thegazette.com