On June 17, Indiana Fever faced Connecticut Sun in a WNBA game full of hard fouls. A Sun player pushed the fever star Caitlin Clark. Another, Jacy Sheldon, had poked her eye. The provocations enraged one of Clark’s teammates: the temperamental Sophie Cunningham.
For Cunningham, Clark was not being properly protected by the US Basketball League referees. She wanted to send a message.
Then, less than a remaining minute in the game, when Sheldon stole the ball and ran down the court, Cunningham wrapped his arms around Sheldon and knocked it to the ground, making a free kick. Sheldon and another Sun player, Lindsay Allen, advanced toward her, and she reacted. The three were expelled from the game.
Cunningham became a sensation.
In a few days, she had over one million followers on Instagram and Tiktok, an increase over a few hundred thousand previous ones. People who saw her as Clark’s protector applauded her in the games. Adversary fans booed her enthusiastically.
“I didn’t do that to earn clicks. I defend my mates,” said the 29 -year -old.
His motivations may not have been self -interest, but that day created a tremendous financial opportunity for Cunningham. She has also experienced greater attention from a conservative ecosystem that has been showing interest in women’s basketball lately.
Clark’s treatment by other players has become a famous cause for directive tendency commentators, who see him as a racial issue. The Wall Street Journal published an opinion article saying that Clark’s civil rights were being violated, arguing without evidence that she was being targeted for being white.
And although Cunningham said it was “right in the middle”, it didn’t escape the attention of conservative vehicles that women’s basketball fans caught her “Maga Barbie”, a reference to President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan and his appearance.
Injuries dismissed Cunningham, who underwent knee surgery, but his cultural influence persisted.
The day after the incident with Sun, a PRP executive, the agency that represents it, called the Ring CEO, the residential security company best known for its campaigns equipped with cameras.
“He said, ‘Hey, Sophie is known as a kind of protector,'” said Rishi Daulat, president of PRP. Less than two weeks later, Cunningham posted a paid ring from her tiktok. It was one of the seven new agreements she got in the weeks after the incident.
She also started a podcast in July with West Wilson, her friend in high school and star of the reality show “Summer House” of the Bravo channel.
“I think this will open perhaps what I want to do when the ball stops quicking,” said Cunningham, who has done some broadcast work for NBA games.
Although Cunningham has refused to offer specific numbers, the money she earns from these agreements will far surpass her wage in WNBA. His most recent contract, one year old, earned him $ 100,000 (R $ 543,000 at the current quotation).
Women’s athletes are “having to support” on social media “because they are not receiving so much promotion,” said Cara Hawkins-Jedlicka, professor at Washington State University who studies women’s sports communication and influencers culture. While talking, she opened ESPN’s homepage and noted that the articles were mainly about baseball and football except one, about Cunningham.
“This is the only headline about women on ESPN’s homepage now,” she said.
Cunningham’s Tiktok is a mixture of dance trends and photos of clothes. She also embraced the physicality of the game and showed her chipped front tooth and a deformed finger, resulting from contact during the games.
In late July, when people played sex toys on the WNBA courts during various games, Cunningham posted in X, “stop playing vibrators on the court … You’ll hurt one of us.” A few days later, during a game in Los Angeles, a sex toy hit his foot when he was thrown on the court.
“She is clearly interested in the kind of thing that drives audience and ignites people,” said Spain.
Sophie grew up in Columbia, the state of Missouri, and defended the University of Missouri. It was in university basketball that his style of play, with many pushes and grab, began to bother.
South Carolina University was a rival, and The State, the South Carolina newspaper, had the following headline: “Sophie Cunningham is a dirty player? It’s not just South Carolina who is asking.” ESPN also debated the issue.
It was around this time that fans started calling her “Maga Barbie”.
“I’m clearly white and Missouri, so I think there was a lot of assumption there,” said Cunningham, noting that in the latest presidential election Trump had a big advantage over Democratic candidate Kamala Harris: 58.49% to 40.08%.
She doesn’t talk much about her policy, but follows some conservative accounts on social networks, including commentator Candace Owens and the Daily Wire media conglomerate, and has already interacted with politically conservative posts.
“All I have to say is that I really am in the middle, and I think much of America is like this,” she said. “In our current culture, you have to choose and have to be an extremist, and it’s just not me. So I agree with things on both sides; I disagree with things on both sides.”
