The WNBA set another record high for viewership on Ion this past Friday.
Per Sports Media Watch, Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever’s win over the Washington Mystics on Friday night averaged 1.02 million viewers on Ion, the network’s first audience of over one million viewers for the WNBA and far and away a record. The previous top mark was 724,000, set two weeks ago for Clark and the Fever’s win over the LA Sparks.
In other positive news for the WNBA on Ion, the second half of Friday’s doubleheader, a regional window, averaged 528,000 viewers. That’s a record for an Ion game not involving Clark and the Fever.
On Saturday, ABC aired a New York Liberty-Connecticut Sun game without Clark and the Fever on the schedule at all. New York’s win averaged 962,000 viewers, the seventh-largest of the WNBA season and second-largest for a game not involving the Fever. The only non-Fever game ahead of it, the LA Sparks-Las Vegas game on May 18, aired immediately after a Fever-Liberty game on ABC.
To date, the WNBA is averaging 667,000 viewers on ABC, CBS, ESPN, ESPN2, Ion, and NBA TV. Last year, the league averaged 505,000 viewers on ABC, CBS, ESPN, and ESPN2. NBA TV has been the straggler of the bunch, averaging just 46,000 viewers per game last season. If NBA TV is stripped out of the WNBA’s 2024 viewership, the league is averaging 925,000 per game across ABC, CBS, ESPN, ESPN2, and Ion. While Clark has clearly had an impact on the WNBA, the league’s games not involving the Fever are averaging 414,000 viewers across all networks and 582,000 viewers on networks aside from NBA TV.
WNBA games also air on Prime Video, which is not Nielsen-rated. Amazon has not released viewership information for its WNBA games.
On Thursday, the WNBA returns with Seattle-Dallas on ESPN and Las Vegas-Phoenix on Prime Video. Chicago-Washington and LA-Minnesota air on Ion Friday. This weekend, Connecticut-Dallas airs on CBS and New York-Las Vegas airs on ABC Saturday, while Chicago-Indiana airs on CBS and Seattle-Phoenix airs on ABC Sunday.
