By Richard Deitsch, Scott Dochterman and Lauren Merola

Caitlin Clark is a meager eight points shy of the NCAA women’s all-time scoring record. The senior guard has 3,520 career points after scoring 31 in Iowa’s most recent game Sunday, putting her on the cusp of breaking former Washington star Kelsey Plum’s record of 3,527.

Coincidently, the eight points Clark needs would match her career low in points scored in a college basketball game. Her only single-digit performance in 125 career games came as a freshman against Northwestern on Jan. 9, 2021. Barring any abnormalities, then, Clark will break the record at some point during Thursday’s game, when No. 4 Iowa plays Michigan.

The game tips at 8 p.m. ET at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. And it will be streamed exclusively on Peacock, the NBC streaming app.

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Caitlin Clark, Lisa Bluder prepare for record-breaking moment: ‘It should be a historic day’

Clark’s performances have become appointment viewing: Iowa’s game against Ohio State, broadcast on NBC on Jan. 21, was the most-watched regular-season women’s basketball game since 2010 (1.93 million viewers). Fox’s Super Bowl Sunday telecast of Iowa-Nebraska garnered 1.77 million viewers, making it the most-watched women’s basketball game in the history of Fox Sports and the second-most-watched game of the 2023-24 season. More than one million viewers tuned in to see games against Maryland and Indiana, too.

Iowa has played in four of the six most-watched women’s college basketball games this season. With Iowa’s popularity and Clark’s pending record, why wouldn’t NBC capitalize on the network viewership?

Despite the likelihood of the record falling Thursday, the game will only be broadcast on Peacock as part of NBC Sports’ Big Ten package. More than 50 Big Ten men’s and women’s basketball games will stream exclusively on Peacock this season, NBC Sports told The Athletic. Thursday’s game just happens to be one.

Clark’s record chase only aids in NBC’s pursuit of making Peacock become a necessary expense for sports fans, despite how viewers may feel about it.

It won’t be the first big moment to air on Peacock in the last year.

On Jan. 13, Peacock aired the first streaming-only NFL playoff game when the Miami Dolphins and Kansas City Chiefs met in an AFC wild-card matchup. Fans, pundits and even Chiefs defensive end Charles Omenihu voiced their displeasure, but the game registered more than 23 million viewers and became the most-streamed live event ever.

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Michigan football’s season opener against East Carolina was a Peacock exclusive, as was Notre Dame–Central Michigan, Ohio State-Purdue and Iowa-Northwestern at Wrigley Field. Peacock also streams the Premier League and Olympics, among other sports.

NBC officials highlighted Peacock’s importance to its position during media rights negotiations with the Big Ten. That mostly included football, of which Peacock aired nine games in the fall of 2023, but it also included many men’s and women’s basketball games for the 2023-24 season.

Iowa was the only women’s basketball program to have every Big Ten game appear on a major network or streaming service.

“As the cable ecosystem has changed, and more and more people are moving away from cable and moving to a streaming opportunity,” Jon Miller, president of partnerships and acquisitions for NBC Sports, told The Athletic before the football season, “Peacock is the one place where you can get live premium sports, and we made that point very clear to the Big Ten early on that it was a critical part of our bid process and fortunately for us, they understood it. They saw the same trends that we were seeing, and they also saw how strong Peacock had become in terms of the quality of the content and delivery mechanism and how easy it was.”

Those who subscribe to Peacock will have access to an alternate feed, “Caitlin Cast,” that follows Clark’s every move as she looks to break the scoring record, NBC Sports said. Fox Sports debuted a similar feature, “Caitlin Cam,” live on its TikTok channel when Iowa played Maryland on Feb. 3.

Clark has demanded attention for the better part of her career, averaging 26.6 points per game as a freshman and increasing her output every season. But there’s an argument to be made something shifted in Iowa’s game against then-No. 6 Michigan on Feb. 6, 2022. The then-sophomore was already a heavy lifter on the stat sheet, but Iowa hadn’t yet defeated the best competition at that time, as it would against South Carolina in last year’s Final Four.

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Caitlin Clark’s green-light range made her the gold standard in women’s college basketball

Clark started that Iowa-Michigan game with a step-back jumper and pull-up 3. She dazzled on drives and drained more mid-range jumpers, but flashed brightest when she started sinking logo 3s during the fourth quarter. In one 92-second span, she hit three 3s before finishing with 46 points. For Iowa coach Lisa Bluder, it was the game that erased any boundaries for Clark. The green light was on for good.

“There was a shift in my mind,” Bluder said. “At that point, it was like, ‘OK, we’re going to go with this.’”

Required reading

(Photo: Michael Reaves / Getty Images)