The name Caitlin Clark has appeared so often in the Wall Street Journal this year that regular subscribers might be tempted to think of her as a new crypto currency or artificial intelligence product. Like them, she is suddenly worth phenomenal sums of money.

In April, the month the University of Iowa women’s basketball team finished its season, Clark’s name appeared in 22 Journal articles, as she collected a slew of career records and national awards on her way to being the top pick of this year’s WNBA draft.

The 22 April articles – yes, the number matches her coveted jersey number – were 11 more than featured Warren Buffett during the same month.

Clark began appearing in the Journal last October under a headline that explained “Why Caitlin Clark and Iowa are playing basketball in a football stadium.”

Since then, the nation’s premier business journal has published 42 articles or podcasts that mention her, sometimes as a side dish in stories about golf or soccer, but mostly as the main course.

For example, a Jan. 5 story explained how growing interest in Clark and women’s sports in general was driving up the value of ESPN broadcasts. 

Articles in February and March focused on how Clark was changing women’s basketball with her three-point shooting and unbelievable passing proficiency.

A March 28 article was headlined: “Before Caitlin Clark dominated women’s basketball, she dominated these boys.”

“When Clark’s father couldn’t find a suitable girls program for her, he signed her up for a boys’ league,” the story explained, adding: “The boys who shared the court with her from around kindergarten to third grade saw her as a fiery, long-shooting curiosity.” 

Payton Sandfort, an opponent from those early days whom we now know as the leading scorer on the 2023-24 Iowa men’s basketball team, “recalled being ‘devastated’ after a loss to Clark’s squad.”

“Clark was as intense then as she is now,” the Journal reported. “She often cried when her team lost. She was the best dribbler on the team and one of the fastest runners.”

In April, after the dust settled and Iowa lost to South Carolina in the NCAA Women’s final, the Journal summed up the state of women’s basketball in a story headlined: “NCAA women beat men in finals’ ratings for first time – but got 99% less money.”

After the tournaments, Journal stories about Clark shifted from her on-court performance to her other skill: marketing.

Clark was an honors student in Iowa’s Tippie College of Business, not surprising for the daughter of two marketing professionals.

Father Brent Clark is an executive at Concentric International, an export-import business started in 1983 by the late John Ruan.

Mother Anne Nizzi-Clark studied marketing at Creighton University and worked for Des Moines-area businesses, including Wells Fargo, Delta Dental and American Enterprise Group, before heading up the family’s CC22 Ventures LLC, created in 2021 to take advantage of new rules allowing college athletes to profit off their names, images and likenesses.

CC22’s first notable deal was with Hy-Vee Food Stores in November 2021. Since then, it has signed deals with H&R Block (March 2022); Nike Basketball (October 2022); Buick and Goldman Sachs (March 2023), State Farm (October 2023) and Gatorade (December 2023), according to the Corridor Business Journal, a North Liberty-based business weekly.

Last October, Clark also signed with Excel Sports Management, a New-York based firm that represents athletes worldwide in basketball, baseball, golf and football.

On April 19, the Journal headlined: “How Nike won the battle for Caitlin Clark,” telling how Nike outbid Adidas, Under Armour and Puma with an eight-year contract worth $28 million and a signature “Caitlin Clark” shoe.

On May 13, a Journal headline said: “Caitlin Clark is already the GOAT of TV ratings.” (GOAT is sports speak for the Greatest Of All Time.)

The point was that Clark’s impact on TV viewership by some measures has been greater than Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods or a U.S. Open tennis women’s final between sisters Venus and Serena Williams.

All of which makes the Clark brand more durable than crypto or AI.