The Fever shows no sign of easing as the WNBA continues to deliver some of its largest audiences in the past quarter-century.
Tuesday’s Fever-Liberty WNBA regular season game averaged 2.01 million viewers on ESPN, marking the fourth-largest WNBA audience ever on cable, trailing only three games in 2024 — Caitlin Clark’s career debut against Connecticut (2.11M), her second career meeting with Angel Reese (2.30M), and the winner-take-all Game 5 of the WNBA Finals (2.15M). Each of those games aired on ESPN or ESPN2.
Indiana’s win, which peaked with 2.35 million viewers in the 9 PM ET quarter-hour, delivered the eighth-largest audience of the WNBA season. With the exception of the All-Star Game, each have involved the Fever.
That list also includes last Saturday’s matchup of the Fever and Sky, which averaged a 1.5 rating and 2.56 million viewers on ABC — tied as the fourth-largest audience of the season, matching Fever-Liberty on CBS in June. The only games to place higher were another matchup of the Liberty and Fever on CBS (2.58M), Fever-Aces on NBC’s “Sunday Night Basketball” (2.64M) and the All-Star Game on ABC (3.15M).
Going back further, Indiana’s win tied the sixth-largest WNBA audience of any kind since 2000 — behind the aforementioned games, Sky-Fever on the opening weekend of last season (2.70M) and the 2024 All-Star Game (3.44M). Each of the 11 most-watched games since 2000 have involved Caitlin Clark in some way, including eight Fever games, her two All-Star appearances, and the 2024 WNBA Draft in which she was picked first overall.
Earlier in the day, CBS averaged a 0.8 and 1.31 million for Aces-Lynx, the first game of a nationally televised back-to-back for Las Vegas. The Aces rested their starters for the second game, a 40-point loss to New York that averaged a 0.8 and 1.29 million on ABC.
The Lynx also played back-to-back nationally televised games last weekend, with the back half against Dallas averaging 1.6 million on NBC across a Nielsen-estimated linear audience (0.8 rating, 1.465M viewers) and Adobe Analytics.
Rounding out the weekend slate, ESPN averaged a 0.45 and 805,000 for Valkyries-Sparks on “Women’s Sports Sundays.”
To put the numbers in perspective, the same weekend last year featured only two nationally televised games, both on ABC. Fever-Storm — without an injured Caitlin Clark — averaged 1.60 million, and a 53-point rout of the Aces by the Lynx averaged 822,000.
(Figures for the August 6 Aces-Fever game on Prime Video were delayed and are not expected until next week. Given the teams involved and the result — Las Vegas tied the game at the end of regulation and then won at the buzzer in overtime thanks to a pair of threes by Chelsea Gray — the game seems likely to rank among the most-watched on the streamer this season.)
