The WNBA hit viewership highs on three different networks over the holiday weekend, and not solely because of Caitlin Clark.
If not the seven-figure audiences that marked her first week in the league, Clark provided a noticeable boost to some of the WNBA’s lower-profile broadcast partners over the weekend. Friday’s Fever-Sparks WNBA regular season game averaged a 0.46 rating and 724,000 viewers on ION, marking easily the largest WNBA audience on the Scripps-owned “netlet,” which began carrying games last season.
By comparison, neither of ION’s two previous games this season hit the 300,000 mark. Mystics-Sun drew 290,000 and Storm-Lynx 266,000 the prior week. As for ION’s other sports property, the NWSL, the most-watched match so far this season delivered 219,000 on May 4 (North Carolina-NJ/NY).
Indiana’s win, the first in Clark’s professional career, delivered the fifth-largest audience of the WNBA season. Indiana has played in four of the top five — also including Clark’s May 14 pro debut on ESPN2 (Fever-Sun: 2.12M), Fever-Liberty on ABC May 18 (1.71M) and Sun-Fever on ESPN May 20 (1.56M) — and led into the fifth (5/18 Sparks-Aces: 1.34M). (Clark’s home debut on May 16 aired on Amazon Prime and was not Nielsen-rated.)
The following night, Fever-Aces averaged a 0.16 and 333,000 on NBA TV — the most-watched WNBA game ever on the network, which has been Nielsen rated since 2010. As one would reasonably expect, given NBA TV is in fewer homes than other networks, it was Clark’s least-watched game on Nielsen-rated television since her Iowa Hawkeyes played Rutgers on BTN January 5 (315K).
While Clark’s impact on the ratings remains outsized, the WNBA scored another viewership high last weekend without her in the lineup. Sunday’s Liberty-Lynx game on CBS averaged a 0.43 and 704,000 — surpassing Mercury-Liberty last season (694K) as the most-watched WNBA game ever on the network.
