With Sunday Night Baseball on hiatus for the All-Star Break, NBC turned to the WNBA last weekend and delivered the league’s most-watched game of the season.
On Sunday, Indiana Fever-Las Vegas Aces averaged 2.64 million viewers on NBC and Peacock, the most-watched WNBA game this season and the second-most-watched regular-season WNBA game since 2000. The game averaged 2.46 million viewers on NBC alone. It was also the first-ever WNBA regular-season Sunday game in primetime on a broadcast network.
The audience peaked at 2.8 million viewers from 10:30-10:45 p.m. ET.
Fever-Aces viewership was competitive with the Major League Baseball games that normally air in the slot. Of the eight Sunday Night Baseball games to air on NBC this season, only two—New York Mets-Philadelphia Phillies and New York Yankees-Boston Red Sox—have averaged more viewers.
Major League Baseball still beats the WNBA in terms of overall viewership. Through four games, the WNBA on NBC is averaging 1.5 million viewers, compared to 2.5 million for 11 MLB games so far this season.
Unsurprisingly, Caitlin Clark is still providing a significant boost for WNBA viewership, and it is not limited to NBC. Earlier in the week, Fever-Sparks averaged 1.04 million viewers on USA Network, the largest WNBA audience so far for USA. The game started after 10 p.m. ET and became the first WNBA game to begin after 10 p.m. and draw more than 1 million viewers, according to Sports Business Journal.
NBC will have another opportunity to capitalize on Clark’s drawing power later this summer. On Sunday, August 23, Sunday Night Baseball will return to ESPN as part of a tie-in with the Little League World Series. To replace MLB, NBC will air a second primetime WNBA game, this time featuring the Fever against the Chicago Sky.
About Manny Soloway
Manny Soloway is a Iowa based writer focusing on TV ratings. He is also the founder of the TV Media Blog substack.