Allie Schneider couldn't believe it.
Schneider, a four-year season ticket holder, was at Target Center on Friday for the Lynx's preseason opener against Chicago.
It was a promising start to the season for the Lynx, and also marked the professional debut of three players taken in the top eight of the WNBA draft: Chicago's Angel Reese and Camila Cardoso, and Minnesota's Alyssa Pirri.
It was also a litmus test of how rapidly interest in women's basketball, and women's sports, is growing.
Unlike Caitlin Clark's preseason debut against Dallas that night, this game was not televised or available for streaming.
So Schneider decided to show it to his X number of followers on their phones.
“I started it,” Schneider, 27, said Monday. “And the numbers kept growing and growing and growing.”
Go to her profile at X — @heyheyitsalli — and we get it. More than 200,000 people watched it live. As of Monday afternoon, the post had been viewed more than 2.5 million times.
“It doesn't seem real,” said Schneider, who lives in the Twin Cities area.
And to some, it doesn't seem like the WNBA is taking full advantage of the burgeoning interest in the sport.
Lynx president of basketball operations and head coach Cheryl Reeve (who will also coach Team USA in this summer's Olympics) tweeted in response to the league's post promoting Friday's Indiana-Dallas game: I wrote this.
“There's another game tonight – @minnesotalynx vs @chicagosky… Fans won't be able to watch, but #Lynx fans can access the Lynx app to follow play by play.”
She ended her tweet with two hashtags: #12teams and #theWismorethanoneplayer.
Many took it as Clark being a little bitter about the attention he was getting. But Reeve stressed that he has no reservations about Clark and is excited about what the former Iowa State star has done for the sport (and what he might do for the WNBA as well). . No, Reeve just said there's more interest than there is to capitalize on.
After the game, Reeve joked that everyone who watched the broadcast should send Schneider $3. She said fan interest has increased exponentially and business as usual can no longer work.
“There was a hunger for this,” she said. “They'll say what you have to consider is the cost of producing a preseason game.”
However, the popularity of Schneider's stream may suggest otherwise.
“People want to see it,” Reeve said. “Certainly they were going to judge Kaitlyn's first game. I'm all for it. I get that. People want to see it. There's a general excitement like never before, and we've got more excitement than ever.''Taking advantage of these things, this is a movement. ”
Reeve joked that Reese and Pili should have streamed the game themselves.
Schneider? The numbers didn't seem real. She tried the same thing during last year's preseason game and gained about 100 followers. On Friday, she just watched her viewership grow as the game progressed.
Schneider, who grew up in Minnesota, has been a Lynx fan since Lindsey Whalen joined the team in 2010. However, she attended college in Western North Carolina during the team's title game. However, upon her return, after the pandemic subsided, she dove into owning season tickets and often went to games with her sister.
And it doesn't stop at Lynx. She is also a fan of other women's sports. “It’s fun that Minnesota has so many women’s sports teams,” she said. “It's unusual, in a good way.”
So will she try streaming preseason games again next year?
“I hope I don’t have to do that,” she said.
