WNBA Called Out for Shunning Caitlin Clark in Promotional Image and Instead Showing Photo of a Bench Player

(Photo credits: Brian Spurlock/Icon Sportswire and the WNBA’s X account)

The WNBA is getting dunked on for promoting a game featuring Caitlin Clark — but failing to actually use the league’s biggest star in its promo ad.

Instead, the league teased Clark’s Indiana Fever playing the Seattle Storm on Sunday with a split picture of her teammate Raven Johnson and Seattle’s Zia Cooke; the WNBA’s X post also showed a promo for the Las Vegas Aces versus Atlanta Dream game that had Aces star A’Ja Wilson and Angel Reese from Atlanta. So that’s four players… and none of them were Clark.

To be fair, Johnson was a well-known college player drafted in the first round by the Fever in 2026. Still, three games into the season, she’s hardly getting on the court — averaging just 7 minutes per game in the early part of her rookie campaign, and just 1.3 points in each of those contests. So the decision to feature her over the league’s most popular player seems like a PR airball if there ever was one.

As sports writer Ethan Strauss wrote in his newsletter last week, Clark “remains the WNBA’s main show, to a ludicrous degree.” He pointed to last week’s ratings on ABC, where Clark’s Fever game pulled in 2.49 million viewers, while the Mercury-Aces game that aired immediately after only grabbed 1.15 million viewers.

Her absence from the WNBA’s promo post was noticed by a lot of X users and sports commentators on Sunday.

Outkick ‘s Bobby Burack said it was “marketing suicide” by the WNBA. He said the league opted to use a bench player from the Fever rather than Clark so that the league could “ensure the graphic includes four black women.”

Sports reporter Jason Whitlock called out the league as well, saying it was promoting the game with a bench player “rather than The Reason for The Season, Caitlan Clark.”

And Barstool founder Dave Portnoy went off on the WNBA in a video posted to X.

“Caitlan Clark is the face of your league, and she’s not on the [promo] from the WNBA account,” a baffled Portnoy said.

“That is so intentional by whoever did that on the WNBA whose running their account,” he continued. “You have to fire them. You’re openly saying ‘We hate Caitlin Clark, we hate our fans, we don’t want you.'”

Clark — for those unfamiliar with women’s hoops — dazzled fans with her long-range shooting and creative passing in her 2024 rookie season, in which she won the Rookie of the Year award and finished fourth in MVP voting. The View’s Sunny Hostin argued at the time that Clark’s “white privilege” also played a big role in her resonating with fans.

She was injured for much of last year, but she is playing excellent ball so far this season — averaging 25 points per game and 8 assists.

Plenty of others ripped the WNBA’s promo, with one critic calling it a “fireable offense.”

There’s other examples you can find on X, but you get the idea.

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