Sophie Cunningham has stepped into the spotlight.During last week’s physical game between the Indiana Fever and Connecticut Sun, the WNBA‘s newest ‘enforcer’ scrapped her way to stardom with a fiery defense of teammate Caitlin Clark. The league’s biggest name has long been targeted by her opponents on the court, and was seen picking herself up off the floor plenty of times throughout her Rookie of the Year campaign.Clark has continued to face rough treatment in the early weeks of her second season, and against the Sun, she had a run in with rival Jacy Sheldon.In the third quarter, Sheldon appeared to poke Clark in the eye, and as the two faced-off, Marina Mabrey bumped the Fever star to the floor.Mabrey was not ejected from the game for her actions, and that led to Cunningham handing out some payback of her own later on.With Indiana cruising to a win, Sheldon was driving to the basket in the final minute when the Fever’s newest enforcer wrapped her up around her neck area and dragged her down to the ground.That incident caused a shoving match under the basket, with players eventually separated by staff members.Cunningham, Sheldon and another Sun player, Lindsay Allen, were all ejected from the game.Indiana’s star also picked up two fines for her behavior. The first was a reported $400 penalty for her flagrant foul on Sheldon, and she will also pay an additional, undisclosed fine for her role in the brawl that followed.But her misconduct has already started to pay serious dividends off the court.Cunningham stepped in as Clark’s enforcer during the Fever’s win over the SunGettyShe was fined for her actions, but saw her popularity explode in the days sinceGettyCunningham’s popularity has exploded in the days since, and she has added around a million followers across her social media accounts.Her following has grown by more than 700,000 on TikTok, and nearly 300,000 on Instagram.Fans across X have dubbed the sixth-year star, who arrived in Indiana in January, as the ‘enforcer’ that Clark desperately needed.As of Sunday, her Fever jerseys have been listed as the ‘most popular’ on the team’s store, suggesting they are selling like hotcakes.Thanks to her explosion in popularity, it’s estimated that Cunningham could bank an impressive payday too.According to a report from Sportico, if a brand wanted to add as many new followers on Instagram and TikTok as the Fever star has done in such a short space of time, it could easily spend more than $1million doing so.Cunningham’s social media following has grown by nearly one million in a weekGettyShe is expected to make a lot of money thanks to her newfound popularityGettyIn the past, Cunningham has also offered to post sponsored content on her pages starting at $10,000 via OpenSponsorship.But her price has surely gone up, with OpenSponsorship CEO Ishveen Jolly suggesting that ‘having 500,000 more Instagram followers alone could help net an additional $20,000 per post.’“It’s unprecedented growth,” Addison Abdo, who represents Cunningham as a senior director at sports management agency PRP, told Sportico.“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.”Cunningham joined the Fever on a one-year, $100,000 deal earlier this year.Now, she is now reaping the benefits of playing alongside a star like Clark on a team constantly in the spotlight, and is set to make an awful lot of money as the WNBA’s newest enforcer. That role has been born out of necessity, too, with Cunningham suggesting the league hasn’t been protecting its star. Cunningham has accused the WNBA of failing to protect ClarkGetty“I’m not focused on the extracurricular activities,” Cunningham said on Saturday of her recent actions.“During that, it was just part of the game. I think the refs had a lot to do with that. It was a build up for a couple years now of them just not protecting the star player of the WNBA.“And so at the end of the day, I’m going to protect my teammates, that’s what I do and I’m a team player.”