It is perhaps appropriate that Caitlin Clark was drafted by a team named the “Fever.” Few athletes in recent history have generated the kind of following that Clark did in her collegiate career, taking women’s college basketball to viewership heights that few could have foreseen two years ago. Now, Clark embarks on a professional career that could well transform the WNBA in much the same way Magic Johnson and Larry Bird revived the flatlining NBA in the 1980s.
For years, the story went that nobody watches women’s basketball. While that barb was typically aimed at the sport generally, the WNBA bore the brunt of it. Even in the days before Caitlin Clark, the college game was drawing acceptably well, delivering audiences in the three-to-five million range for the Final Four and National Championship. While those viewing levels were not close to the men’s, they were also far beyond the category of ‘nobody.’
The WNBA on the other hand has not scratched the million viewer mark since 2008, two million since 2001 or three million since 1999. The league was never able to recapture the audience that sampled the opening games in 1997, when more than five million viewers tuned in for the first game and 3.6 million tuned in the following day. Last season’s Finals was the most-watched in 20 years and not a single game averaged even 900,000 viewers.
There has been no shortage of newcomers expected to carry the fate of the league on their shoulders. Diana Taurasi, Candace Parker and Brittney Griner come to mind, and while each had a Hall of Fame career with championships won, none were able to meaningfully raise the league’s profile. Then again, none ever drew the kind of audience in college that Clark did at Iowa. Clark does not have to bring her entire Iowa-era fanbase along with her into the pros; even just a fraction of her collegiate drawing power will translate into the kind of audience the WNBA has not enjoyed since the league’s first few years.
There has been some umbrage taken about the exclusive focus on Clark. On the court, the WNBA has its own well-established stars and Clark’s draft class includes players who won national championships. Even in the ratings, WNBA viewership was already growing before Clark’s arrival — if nowhere even close to the level of the college game — and Clark was far from the only college player with a national following. In the alternate reality where Clark remained at Iowa for another season and all else remained the same, it is likely that the WNBA would be in line for another season of growth, perhaps fueled in part by well-known rookies Angel Reese or Cameron Brink.
The difference that Clark makes is between incremental growth and rising to another level entirely.
It remains to be seen just how high Clark can take the WNBA. It is not as if she began her college career delivering audiences in the tens of millions. She will need to regularly appear in important games with high stakes, as she did in making back-to-back runs to the NCAA national championship. Her most-watched regular season games settled in the low three million range, and while those figures were historic for women’s games — and among the highest of the season regardless of gender — they were a far cry from the viewership her games in the tournament drew. There will likely be some outsized tune in for her first regular season games, but once the rhythm of the 40-game campaign is established, can one really expect viewership records for games on NBA TV and ION in early July?
Those questions can be answered as the summer rolls along. In the meantime, expect a milestone audience for her debut game Tuesday night. Clark boosted the WNBA Draft to 2.45 million viewers last month, the biggest WNBA audience of any kind since 2000 and the kind of figure that would have been unimaginable for the event in any other year. The Draft aired on a quiet night on the ESPN flagship with no competing NBA games.
The competition for Clark’s debut Tuesday night is less than ideal, as not only is the game airing on ESPN2 opposite the NBA and NHL playoffs, but one of those NBA games features the Indiana Pacers in a pivotal Game 5 against the Knicks. The NBA and WNBA figure to cannibalize each other both locally and nationally Tuesday night – in all probability the first time that the WNBA has ever pulled viewers away from a competing NBA game. Do not expect Clark’s debut to outdraw the NBA, but it has a decent shot of outdrawing the NHL, and should more than hold its own either way.
— WNBA regular season: Fever – Sun (7:30p Tue ESPN2). Prediction: 1.74 million viewers.
— NHL playoffs: Bruins-Panthers Game 5 (7p Tue ESPN). Prediction: 1.69 million.
— NBA playoffs: Pacers-Knicks Game 5 (8p Tue TNT/truTV). Prediction: 3.96 million.
