Sophie Cunningham's Fever-Sun Antics Create 'Unprecedented' $1 Million Value Boom

Indiana Fever standout guard Sophie Cunningham has been the talk of the basketball world ever since she grabbed Connecticut Sun player Jacy Sheldon by the neck and threw her down in the final minute of their June 17 game, which was presumably a retaliation act for Marina Mabrey shoving Caitlin Clark to the ground one quarter prior. Both Sheldon and Cunningham were ejected as a result.

Cunningham was ultimately fined $400 for what she did to Sheldon. However, in a June 20 article from Sportico's Jacob Feldman, Cunningham's value skyrocketed in the wake of this ejection heard around the world.

"In the following three days [since the June 17 game], close to a million fans seem to have taken Cunningham’s side," Feldman wrote. "The sixth-year vet from Missouri has added 700,000 followers on TikTok and more than 244,000 newcomers on Instagram, according to social media analytics platform Social Blade.

"Cunningham now has more than 1 million followers on TikTok and 730,000 on Instagram, with some fans dubbing her 'the Enforcer' in various online comment sections. As of Friday, her jerseys on the team’s store were listed as unavailable until July 8."

Feldman then continued, "If a brand wanted to add that many new followers on Instagram and TikTok, it could easily spend more than $1 million doing so, according to marketing agency STN Digital’s calculations."

Senior director at sports management agency PRP, Addison Abdo, was quoted in the article as saying, “It’s unprecedented growth. We work with some pretty big athletes that have gone viral for some pretty big things, but this has been something that I haven’t seen before—this type of growth in this short amount of time... was very new territory.”