Continuing a trend, the WNBA Draft came nowhere close to last year’s Caitlin Clark-fueled heights, but still delivered one of the biggest audiences yet for the event.
Monday’s WNBA Draft, in which former UConn G Paige Bueckers was selected first overall, averaged 1.25 million viewers on ESPN — down nearly 50 percent from the all-time record set last year, when Clark was the #1 pick (2.45M), but dramatically higher than any other draft in league history. The previous record prior to last year was 601,000 in 2004, when Diana Taurasi was the #1 pick and ESPN only carried first round coverage.
The Draft, which peaked with 1.46 million viewers, was the 33rd WNBA telecast in the past year to average at least one million viewers — and the eighth to do so without Clark being involved. Prior to last year, no WNBA telecast had crossed the million viewer threshold since 2008.
Draft viewership was in line with the post-Clark trend in women’s college basketball, with viewership down dramatically from the record heights of a year ago, but well above the pre-Clark norm. The NCAA women’s basketball national title game plunged more than 50 percent from Clark and Iowa’s loss last year, but still outpaced all other editions in the Nielsen people-meter era.
Compared to other sports drafts, the WNBA was of course no match for the three-day NFL Draft (5.9M) or two-day NBA Draft (2.7M) but clocked in ahead of the opening rounds of the MLB Draft (863K) and NHL Draft (502K). (Subsequent rounds of the MLB and NHL drafts were not Nielsen rated.)
For the night, the draft was television’s most-watched program among adults under 35, men under 35 and men under 50.
