Recent reports highlighting viewership challenges by the NBA shed light over the contrasting trajectory it is on compared to its sister league, the WNBA.
According to Sports Media Watch, the NBA saw a 19% decrease in TV ratings in its first months, while the WNBA saw 185.7% more people watching their games from the preseason through early June.
The upward trend that the WNBA has experienced, especially in 2024, can be credited to several factors, such as the introduction of the latest draft class led by No. 1 pick Caitlin Clark, and it goes back almost a decade. Viewership has increased exponentially since 2015, with only two dips over the last 10 years, one of them being the shortened COVID season.
Clark’s popularity from her college days at Iowa rolled right over to the professional level, and the quick transition from the NCAA Final Four to the WNBA contributed to fan adherence, resulting in higher game attendance and viewership. The Iowa versus South Carolina final on April 7, 2024, drew an average of 18.7 million viewers, peaking at 24 million, as announced by the NCAA. Less than a month later, the Indiana Fever played a preseason game.
“The WNBA has this added advantage in that their season starts right when the NCAA season ends, which means Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese are in the news. A week later, they’re in the draft. A week later, they’re in the WNBA games,” said David Berri, professor of economics at Southern Utah University and co-author of Slaying the Trolls. “So, there’s no pausing, and the fans’ interest just keeps going.”
The growth spurt of the WNBA comes at the tail end of years of struggles and failed attempts to gain relevance in popular culture, leading to significant increases as it rises in prominence. Up until 2022, viewership had never surpassed the half-million mark. This milestone was finally achieved in 2023, with an average of 505,000 viewers—representing a 33% improvement from the previous year. In 2024, the league set a new record with 1.19 million viewers across ESPN platforms, 170% more than the last season.
“You have this awakening of women’s sports as an attractive, entertaining, and inspiring product not only for girls and women, but all demographics. This is something that was not true three or four years ago,” said Guilherme Buso, vice president of Genius Sports for Brazil. “It’s much easier to see a spike when you are coming from low numbers.”
The timeframe described by Buso traces back to 2021, when Sedona Prince, then playing for the Oregon Ducks, sparked nationwide outrage by documenting on social media the stark disparities in how the NCAA treated men’s and women’s teams during the Final Four tournaments. Her videos went viral, forcing the NCAA to open an investigation on its handling of the Final Four tournament and completely changing the way the competition was marketed.
“That video sparks a legal review, and that legal review suddenly leads to the coverage of NCAA women’s basketball increasing. Suddenly, NCAA women’s basketball is moved to bigger platforms,” remembered Berri. “It’s on ABC, it’s on CBS, it’s on ESPN. It’s on more often. The beneficiaries of that, the ones who benefit from all that coverage, are Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese because they’re the stars of the moment when the coverage suddenly increases.”
As a result of the increased airtime, more sports fans were impacted by WNBA games on ESPN, CBS, and ABC. At a time when the NBA is undergoing significant playstyle changes, the WNBA has become a favorite among basketball enthusiasts who seek more competitive contests to watch.
“A highly competitive league is much more interesting than one that, when you turn on the TV, one of the teams has already opened a 50-point lead,” recognized Buso. “That is not the case in women’s basketball. There is a level of competitiveness … It’s not just about their social stances, it’s about their game. They play high-quality basketball.”
In the 2023-2024 NBA season, the average defensive rating was 114.5, while in the WNBA that same statistic was just slightly over the three-digit mark, at 101.3, meaning that defense in the WNBA allows 13.2 fewer points per 100 possessions. The number of blowouts is also a significant element that deters fans from tuning in.
Three of the 10 biggest victory margins in the NBA happened in the last four years, whereas the WNBA had only one, per Across the Timeline. According to Buso, who also played basketball overseas, three-pointers are not necessarily to blame. Instead, he points out a low effort on the defensive end.
“It’s not the amount of three-pointers, because that has increased throughout the whole world. I think it is the lack of interest in the game and the competitiveness. The physical exhaustion makes teams not defend as hard. So much so that when you put the regular season and the playoffs side-by-side, the defensive and technical level, as well as the way teams prepare for games, is completely different. That’s when things get interesting.”
Although the WNBA has been steadily growing, one can’t help but wonder if that level of growth is sustainable. The NBA peaked at 3.10 million viewers during the 1998-1999 season but has since ebbed and flowed, failing to reach the 2 million mark since the 2013-2014 edition. In contrast, the women’s league experienced only two dips in viewership over the last 10 years, whereas its counterpart had only three seasons with increased viewership compared to the previous one.
“I believe it will stagnate at some point. It is something natural that happens to every business,” said Buso. “I imagine that today, Caitlin Clark’s games are the most watched, but you can’t sustain a global audience with only one player. You need several players and rivalries. In that sense, the NBA is a really good example.”
“The WNBA situation is complicated. It was growing at the same pace as the NBA. It was doing exactly what you’d expect the league to do in its third decade. The leap that Bloomberg identified from $100 million to $200 million [in revenue] was again mirrored in the NBA data. So that’s nothing unusual,” analyzed Berri. “Now they are entering into [the same level of growth as] the end of the NBA fifth decade. They jump from the third decade to the fifth decade in two years. And so that means that the WNBA sprinted way ahead of the NBA. Now they’re past the NBA in terms of their growth pace.”
The truth of the matter is that the WNBA growth was a long time coming, and the league is taking advantage of this momentum to maximize business opportunities. It has just signed a new media deal that will bring $200 million per year in revenue, merchandising sales have spiked and players are banking big with individual sponsorship. Perhaps, the NBA has some lessons to learn from its sister league.
“We are rapidly approaching the point where women’s sports fans get to say ‘I told you so’ over and over again for the rest of our lives.”
Roberta F. Rodrigues is a Brazilian-American professional in the sports industry. With a journalism degree from Universidade Anhembi Morumbi and an MBA in Sport and Entertainment Management from Seattle University, she combines a passion for storytelling with her strategic insight. Her work with the WNBA and deep understanding of the dynamic sports industry reflect her commitment to advancing equity in professional sports.
