Caitlin Clark's Iowa Finale Beat Out All But Football in 2024 Sports Broadcasts
It's no secret by now that Indiana Fever superstar Caitlin Clark is a generational talent both on the court and when it comes to attracting attention.
This is proven by the unprecedented TV ratings that Clark drew not only during her first WNBA season with the Fever but also during the final season of her college career at the University of Iowa.
In fact, Clark and the Hawkeyes' 2024 NCAA National Championship Game defeat to Dawn Staley's South Carolina Gamecocks drew a bigger audience (18.9 million viewers) than any WNBA game this year.
But it wasn't just the WNBA that Clark's final Iowa game outperformed in terms of TV ratings. In a January 3 article, Sportico's Anthony Crupi revealed that the 2024 NCAA Women's Basketball National Championship drew a bigger broadcast audience than any other sport aside from football.
"Other highlights include South Carolina’s 87-75 victory over Caitlin Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes in the women’s national championship game, a big draw that also happened to be the only college basketball entry for 2024," Crupi wrote.
This game came in at No. 76 in the Top 100 Broadcasts of 2024. Only football (both NFL and college, with the vast majority being NFL), political programming, the Thanksgiving Day parade, and the Academy Awards performed better than Clark's Iowa finale, as conveyed by a nifty graphic that Sportico posted on X January 3.
Football fans cast their eyes on Patrick Mahomes more often in 2024 than they saw their own faces - the Top 100 Broadcasts of 2024 ⤵️
— Sportico (@Sportico) January 3, 2025
Read the full story from @crupicrupicrupi below. 📊 from @LevAkabas https://t.co/hvo1qpdvIr pic.twitter.com/hd3wkkeuOh
It will be interesting to see if any of Clark's future games can compete with the 2024 NCAA title contest. We imagine that if her Fever team played Angel Reese's Chicago Sky squad in some future WNBA Finals, it would have a good chance.
Grant Young covers Women’s Basketball, the New York Yankees, and the New York Mets for Sports Illustrated’s ‘On SI’ sites. He holds an MFA degree in creative writing from the University of San Francisco (USF), where he also graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing and played on USF’s Division I baseball team for five years. However, he now prefers Angel Reese to Angels in the Outfield.