The Caitlin Clark effect has made its way to Fox Sports.
Fox’s broadcast of Clark and Iowa’s win over Maryland on Saturday night averaged 1.578 million viewers, the network’s most-watched women’s college basketball game ever.
https://twitter.com/FOXSportsPR/status/1754922701981127006
Fox also notes that its “Caitlin Clark cam” on TikTok “earned over 800K viewers,” though I have no idea how long a user needs to watch a TikTok video for it to be counted as a view.
Fox is the second network that Clark has powered to a record-high for women’s college basketball viewership this season. A couple of weeks ago, an Iowa-Ohio State game on NBC and Peacock averaged 1.93 million viewers, the most-watched regular season women’s game since 2010.
Clark and Iowa weren’t involved in ESPN’s top audience of this regular season, South Carolina’s win over LSU two weeks ago. That game averaged 1.555 million viewers, topping an NBA on TNT doubleheader on the night.
Showing the power of the Hawkeyes and Clark this season, Fox aired another women’s game in primetime two Saturdays ago. The matchup between traditional powers Notre Dame and UConn averaged 779,000 viewers, less than half what the Iowa-Maryland game drew.
Other top women’s matchups on the schedule that could draw strong viewership include UConn-South Carolina on Sunday, February 11 on ESPN and the Iowa-Ohio State rematch on Sunday, March 3 on Fox.
About Joe Lucia
I hate your favorite team. I also sort of hate most of my favorite teams.