The first professional matchup of Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese delivered another seven-figure audience, if not a record.
Saturday’s Sky-Fever WNBA regular season game averaged a 0.9 rating and 1.53 million viewers on ESPN, marking the fourth-largest WNBA audience in the past 22 years. The top four have each involved Clark and the Fever, with her May 14 debut on ESPN2 placing first (Fever-Sun: 2.12M), May 18 against the Liberty on ABC second (1.71M) and May 20 against Connecticut on ESPN third (1.56M).
Indiana’s contentious win was Clark’s least-watched WNBA game on the ESPN networks this season, though it was the first of those to air neither on broadcast television nor in primetime.
After the WNBA went nearly sixteen years without a single seven-figure audience, five games this season have crossed that threshold. (A Sparks-Aces game that followed Fever-Liberty on May 18 averaged 1.34 million.)
The game ranked fourth for the day among sportscasts behind the UEFA Champions League Final (1.4, 3.62M), a primetime NHL playoff game on ABC (Rangers-Panthers: 1.5, 3.02M), and regional Major League Baseball on FOX (1.1, 2.07M). It comfortably outdrew the Premier Lacrosse League match that aired on ABC in the competing timeslot (0.25, 420K).
The following day, Clark played in yet another game that set a network record as Fever-Liberty averaged a 0.23 and 430,000 on NBA TV — the most-watched WNBA game ever on the network. NBA TV has set three WNBA viewership records this season, all for games involving Clark.
On Friday, ION averaged a 0.25 and 389,000 for regional WNBA action and a 0.23 and 368,000 for Mercury-Lynx.
