The WNBA drew its fifth audience of at least one million viewers this past weekend after not drawing one in 16 years.
Saturday’s Chicago Sky-Indiana Fever game averaged 1.53 million viewers on ESPN, the league’s fourth-largest audience of the last 22 years. All four of those games have come this season, and all have involved the Fever and Caitlin Clark.
There have been some diminishing returns for those games however, with viewership peaking for Clark’s debut on May 14 with 2.12 million viewers. Viewership slipped to 1.71 million on May 18 and 1.56 million on May 20. However, the silver lining for Saturday was that the game aired on ESPN at noon, compared to airing either in primetime or on ABC like the three other games.
A day later, NBA TV set another viewership record for the WNBA. The Fever’s loss to the New York Liberty on Sunday averaged 430,000 viewers, comfortably breaking the previous record set a week earlier for the Fever’s loss to the Las Vegas Aces (333,000).
Without Clark playing on Friday night, Ion’s WNBA viewership couldn’t hit the record heights of May 24, but the league still drew impressive audiences. In the early half of the doubleheader, regional games averaged 398,000 viewers, while a Phoenix Mercury-Minnesota Lynx game averaged 398,000 later in the evening.
While Saturday’s game drew strong viewership, reaction to the game itself in the following 48 hours was perhaps more emblematic of where the WNBA is right now. Discussion about a hard foul on Clark by Chennady Carter spilled over into postgame coverage Saturday and generated numerous takes from throughout the sports media (and general media) universe on Sunday and Monday. The fervor was capped by Pat McAfee’s comments about Clark on Monday, resulting in plenty of backlash and an apology.
[Data via Sports Media Watch]
