Caitlin Clark's Playoff Absence Prompts WNBA Ratings to Pleasantly Plummet
It should come as no surprise that WNBA playoff viewership has declined since Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever were eliminated by the Connecticut Sun last week.
Check any viewership metric this season and you'll see that Clark's Fever squad commanded an unprecedented amount of attention. The 22-year-old sensation brought a massive fanbase from her time at Iowa while also attracting an entirely new audience to the sport of women's basketball during her first professional season.
This is proven by an October 1 article from Sports Media Watch's Jon Lewis that discloses the WNBA Playoffs' viewership numbers thus far.
Lewis wrote that Clark and Indiana's Game 1 of the WNBA Playoffs first round against the Sun drew 1.84 million viewers (while competing directly with the NFL). Game 2 drew a whopping 2.5 million average viewers according to SportsPro Media.com, and peaked at 3.4 million on ESPN.
None of the other WNBA playoff games have come remotely close to that. Although they're still performing extremely well when compared to years past.
"Sunday’s Aces-Liberty WNBA semifinal Game 1 averaged 929,000 viewers on ABC, up 27% from Game 1 of last year’s WNBA Finals between the same two teams, which aired in the same Sunday ABC timeslot (729K)," Lewis wrote. "New York’s win, which peaked with 1.2 million viewers, outdrew all four games of last year’s Finals — the most-watched of which was Game 4 at 889,000 viewers.
WNBA playoff viewership has seen a massive decrease since Caitlin Clark’s elimination:
— Guru (@DrGuru_) October 1, 2024
Fever’s last game - 2.54M viewers
Most-watched game since - 929,000 viewers pic.twitter.com/Tn6tOiG6jo
"Viewership soared 60% over last year’s semifinal game on ABC (Liberty-Sun Game 4: 579K) to rank as the highest for the round in 22 years," Lewis added.
"Later in the day, Game 1 of the Sun-Lynx series averaged 654,000 viewers on ESPN — the largest semifinal audience on cable since 2000."
So while Clark's absence has been clearly felt, these metrics illustrate that the entire sport is growing. How much of that can be attributed to Clark is unknown, but the bottom line is that the WNBA is booming right now.
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.