Caitlin Clark continues to be the WNBA’s biggest draw, but the league is drawing some of its best numbers in years even without her on the court.
Sunday’s Fever-Lynx WNBA regular season game averaged 1.57 million viewers on ESPN, marking the seventh-largest WNBA audience since 2002. The ten largest audiences since 2002 have come this season, all for games involving Caitlin Clark and the Fever.
Indiana’s win was the most-watched WNBA game to ever involve the Minnesota Lynx, a four-time champion and six-time finalist that dominated the 2010s under star Maya Moore. Indiana and Minnesota played against each other in two WNBA Finals (nine total games), with the most-watched of those being Game 2 of their 2012 matchup at 778,000.
Fever-Lynx was the second WNBA game that day and the third in 72 hours to top the million viewer mark. Earlier in the day, ABC averaged 1.02 million for Mercury-Sun, marking the second time this season that a WNBA game has topped the million mark without Clark on the court. Unlike the first such game — Sparks-Aces on May 18 (1.34M) — Connecticut’s blowout win did not air directly adjacent to Clark and the Fever. The game aired at 1 PM ET on ABC, concluding more than an hour earlier than Fever-Lynx began on ESPN.
The other million viewer game did involve Clark, as ION averaged 1.34 million million for Mercury-Fever on Friday night — the network’s largest WNBA audience yet, surpassing the previous high of 1.18 million for Fever-Dream in June.
In total, 15 WNBA games this season have averaged at least one million viewers — tied as the most in any WNBA season.
WNBA games with at least one million viewers this season
Rounding out the weekend slate, ABC averaged 961,000 for Liberty-Sky on Saturday afternoon — the 18th game this season to average at least 900,000 viewers. The ESPN networks are now averaging 1.22 million viewers for WNBA games this season, up 177% from last year’s full-season average.
CBS scored 676,000 for a battle of cellar-dwellers between the Sparks and Wings later in the day. ION scored 460,000 for Lynx-Storm in the second half of its Friday doubleheader.
Going back to last week, NBA TV averaged 238,000 for a Mystics-Fever game last Wednesday that began at Noon ET — the seventh-largest audience on the network this season. As one would expect given the Noon weekday timeslot, it was the least-watched Clark game this season.
