The biggest upset in the WNBA this season might not come on the court, but in the television ratings.
Despite the league’s biggest television draw, Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark, missing large portions of the season due to injury, the WNBA still beat out its record-setting 2024 season in television viewership.
According to a report by Austin Karp in Sports Business Journal, the WNBA regular season finished with a year-over-year viewership increase across ABC, ESPN, CBS, and NBA TV.
ABC and ESPN saw a 6% increase versus 2024, averaging 1.3 million viewers across 25 games, up from 1.19 million viewers last season. ABC’s opening game, a Sky-Fever game that did feature Clark, set a network record of 2.7 million viewers. Per Karp, ESPN secured eight of the 10 most-watched WNBA contests this season. WNBA Countdown, the network’s studio show covering the league, saw an increase of 7% versus last season as well.
The one network not to see a year-over-year increase was Ion. The Scripps-owned channel saw a slight decline for its Friday night doubleheaders, averaging 627,000 viewers per game, down 6% versus 2024. However, that figure still compares very favorably to the network’s WNBA viewership from 2023, marking a 118% increase from Ion’s average WNBA audience two years ago.
Unfortunately for Ion, seven of the eight Indiana Fever games scheduled for the network did not feature Clark, creating unfavorable comparisons to last year when Clark appeared in eight games. The one game this season that did feature the Fever star averaged 1.25 million viewers, while the seven that didn’t clocked in at 954,000 viewers. When excluding Fever games from this season and last, Ion’s WNBA viewership increased by 15%.
Over on NBA TV, WNBA games saw a 16% bump from last season, averaging 283,000 viewers per game, up from 244,000.
Given the circumstances surrounding the league’s biggest star, securing any type of increase reflects well on the WNBA. Time and again, the league is proving it has seen growth outside of Clark.
That’s encouraging, especially if Clark struggles to stay healthy throughout her career. The WNBA will need to sustain an audience interested in the league’s product as a whole, not just one player.
The favorable viewership figures without Clark should also bode well for the players as they enter into key negotiations with the league this offseason for a new collective bargaining agreement.
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.