The WNBA better hope the Indiana Fever has some magic left and can extend their playoff series against the Connecticut Sun. Maybe send some of those 2-year-olds at the Sun’s practice to throw some dodgeballs at them or something.
Cause man, they are going to have a serious problem with drawing viewers if Wednesday happens to be Caitlin Clark’s last game of the season.
By all accounts, Game 1 between the Fever and the Sun had some strikes against them that took away from their ratings.
One, the 3 pm start had them competing against early NFL games in the latter, game-defining stages. And it was unlikely many football fans switched to watching the WNBA instead of just diving into the late afternoon games.
Two, the game was a blowout. The Sun trounced Indiana 93-69 following a well-placed finger to Clark’s eye.
And yet, the game still managed to draw 1.84 million viewers, making it the most-watched playoff game in WNBA history.
More Viewers Watched Caitlin Clark’s Playoff Debut Than All Other Games Combined
To demonstrate just how vital Caitlin Clark is to drawing viewer’s eyeballs to their television sets, let’s analyze the other three WNBA playoff games on Sunday.
Numbers provided by ‘Sports TV Ratings‘ on X show the following breakdown:
- Seattle Storm-Las Vegas Aces: 461,000
- Phoenix Mercury-Minnesota Lynx: 403,000
- Atlanta Dream-New York Liberty: 410,000
The first game featured the WNBA’s Most Valuable Player A’Ja Wilson. The second game in that list featured the league’s MVP runner-up Napheesa Collier. The third game in that list featured the third-place vote-getter for MVP, Breanna Stewart.
The Numbers Are Remarkable
Those other games clearly featured some star-studded lineups.
What they didn’t have was the fourth-place vote-getter for MVP and unanimous Rookie of the Year, Caitlin Clark. That’s why they weren’t drawing viewers.
Go ahead and pull up the calculator app on your phone. Add up all the viewers for those three games. Now compare them to the Fever-Sun matchup.
The final score is Fever-Sun – 1,840,000, rest of the playoff teams – 1,274,000.
In fact, you could have tossed in a whole other extra playoff game and – even if it outdrew the Aces-Storm matchup by 100,000 extra people – you’d still have fewer viewers.
Amazing. Like Shannon Sharpe said, giving credit to Caitlin Clark doesn’t take away from the other stars. The number of people in the seats, the number of viewers at home – it’s just reality.
Caitlin Clark is the WNBA at this stage of her career. Let’s hope we get to see her in the playoffs for at least one more game after tonight.
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