Even opposite an NFL game, Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever played to another seven-figure audience Friday night.
Friday’s Lynx-Fever WNBA regular season game averaged 1.26 million viewers on ION, marking the 22nd WNBA telecast this season to hit the million viewer threshold (23rd including the WNBA Draft). All-but-three of those telecasts have featured Clark. (Figures include viewership for Aces-Sun and Wings-Dream, which aired on ION in their respective home markets.)
The telecast, which peaked at 1.52 million, hit seven figures despite competition from the Packers-Eagles NFL International Series game on Peacock, which averaged north of 14 million. It was the first Nielsen-rated WNBA window this season to air opposite regular season NFL, and the most-watched WNBA game to air opposite the NFL in more than 20 years — since Game 2 of the 2003 WNBA Finals on ABC (1.28M).
One fifth of all WNBA games to hit the million viewer mark have come this season. Prior to this season, none had hit that mark since 2008.
ION — the Scripps-owned “netlet” that started carrying WNBA games last season — has now had six games this season average more than a million viewers, all involving Clark and the Fever. Friday’s telecast was the network’s third-most watched, behind coverage featuring Fever-Sky the previous week (1.60M) and coverage featuring Mercury-Fever in July (1.34M).
Later in the night, a fully national Sparks-Sky game averaged 514,000. That game ended up being the season finale for Angel Reese, who said over the weekend that she will miss the rest of the season with a wrist injury.
