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Expect Caitlin Clark’s Ratings Dominance to Be on Full Display This Weekend

How high will Caitlin Clark take the WNBA All-Star Game ratings?

Jimmy Traina

Clark and the WNBA’s other top players will take the court this weekend in Phoenix for the leagues’s All-Star festivities.
Clark and the WNBA’s other top players will take the court this weekend in Phoenix for the leagues’s All-Star festivities. / Grace Hollars/IndyStar / USA TODAY
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1. There has not been a single athlete responsible for growing a sport’s viewership like Caitlin Clark since Tiger Woods.

What the Indiana Fever rookie has done for the WNBA’s ratings is nothing short of astounding. So far this season, 16 WNBA games have topped 1 million viewers. Clark’s Indiana Fever were featured in 14 of those games.

Wednesday’s Fever-Wings game, in which Clark dished out a WNBA all-time record 19 assists, drew 1.7 million viewers. That made it the seventh-most watched WNBA of the season. It also gave Clark and the Fever the 11 most-watched games of the season.

Now comes another test for Clark: the WNBA All-Star Game.

Last year’s game drew 850,000 viewers on ABC. It was the most-watched WNBA All-Star Game since 2007.

This year’s game airs Saturday at 8:30 p.m. ET on ABC, as well.

With Clark in the mix, it wouldn’t be surprising if ABC more than doubled the viewership number from a year ago, despite the game airing during the worst time slot imaginable, a summer Saturday night.

If there is one athlete today who can overcome a dead-time slot, it’s Clark and Clark alone.

2. Puck’s John Ourand reported Thursdsay that Warner Bros. Discovery’s deadline to use its matching rights in the new NBA TV deals is end-of-day Monday. Even if WBD decides to match either NBC’s or Amazon’s offer, keep in mind that the entire thing will likely end up in the courts since there is uncertainty about what “matching” means, exactly. WBD will argue matching means the money offered. The NBA will argue that matching means platforms and distribution in addition to money.

3. The bizarre IT outage that took place Friday morning not only affected flights, banks and hospitals, but it also affected ESPN, which couldn’t air SportsCenter and had to have Get Up use a dry-erase board instead of graphics.

4. It’s totally MLB to have something called “Rivalry Week” where less than half the matchups are actually rivals.

5. As SI Media Podcast listeners know, WWE’s Cody Rhodes is one of my favorite guests.

There are a lot reasons to like Rhodes. Among them is that Cody just seems like a regular dude. He showed this side of himself during a recent interview he did with fellow WWE superstar LA Knight. Rhodes revealed that he left The Undertaker a rambling, drunken SEVEN-minute audio message the night he beat Roman Reigns for the WWE championship at WrestleMania 40.

A seven-minute message under any circumstances is absurd, but it’s hard to totally fault Cody after The Undertaker had just given us this amazing moment.

6. The latest SI Media With Jimmy Traina podcast features a conversation with NBC play-by-play voice Noah Eagle.

Eagle talks about calling the U.S. men’s and women’s basketball games at the upcoming Summer Olympics in Paris, his extensive resume at just 27 years old, getting into the broadcasting business, the sport he hasn’t yet called that he would like to call and what it was like to call an NFL playoff game.

Eagle also explains his desire as a kid to become a TV dentist and shares stories about the legendary Bill Raftery, who he has known his entire life.

Following Eagle, Sal Licata from WFAN and SNY joins me for our weekly “Traina Thoughts” segment. This week’s topics include the offseason version of Hard Knocks being a must-watch, Major League Baseball embarrassing itself by putting games on Roku and the Home Run Derby. We also pay tribute to Dr. Ruth, Richard Simmons and Shannen Doherty, who all passed away in recent days.

You can listen to the SI Media With Jimmy Traina below or on Apple and Spotify.

You can also watch SI Media With Jimmy Traina on Sports Illustrated‘s YouTube channel.

7. RANDOM VIDEO OF THE DAY: Terrible job by me yesterday not acknowledging Joe Torre’s 84th birthday. Not only did I fail as a Yankees fan who would still like to have Torre as manager, but this video should always be shared on Torre’s birthday.

Be sure to catch up on past editions of Traina Thoughts and check out the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast hosted by Jimmy Traina on Apple, Spotify or Google. You can also follow Jimmy on Twitter and Instagram.

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Jimmy Traina
JIMMY TRAINA

Jimmy Traina is a staff writer and podcast host for Sports Illustrated. A 20-year veteran in the industry, he’s been covering the sports media landscape for seven years and writes a daily column, Traina Thoughts. Traina has hosted the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast since 2018, a show known for interviews with some of the most important and powerful people in sports media. He also was the creator and writer of SI’s Hot Clicks feature from 2007 to '13.

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