Caitlin Clark Sets One Last Viewership Record on Her Way Out

It’s hard to believe Caitlin Clark’s WNBA rookie season is over. She has played a basketball game in each of the past 12 months, providing ample highlight-worthy plays to set viewership records all year long.

It’s no surprise, then, that her last game also set a TV record.

Game 2 of the first-round series between the Sun and Fever drew 2.5 million viewers on ESPN, the most-watched WNBA game on cable, according to the network. The game peaked at 3.4 million viewers. Not bad for a Wednesday night.

The second game of the evening, during which the Lynx knocked out the Mercury in potentially the final game of Diana Taurasi’s career, got 1.2 million viewers, peaking at 2.1 million. It was the network’s third-most watched WNBA playoff game of all time.

The Fever’s second playoff game outdrew its first, most certainly due to it being an elimination game for Indiana, and because it wasn’t competing against a Sunday NFL game broadcast. 

Game 1 averaged 1.8 million viewers on ABC. Of course, these are far lower than some of Clark’s biggest games in college, but many of those record-shattering viewership numbers—like the 18.9 million viewers for this year’s national title game—were much higher-stakes and farther along into the postseason.

Indiana-Connecticut Game 2 viewership was 507% higher than ESPN’s Round 1 average in 2023. This year’s All-Star game still holds the crown for the season’s most-watched broadcast with an average of 3.44 million viewers, the third highest for a WNBA game. The Fever held many of the network’s most-watched games this regular season, including ABC, ESPN 2, CBS, and NBA TV. ESPN and CBS both recorded their most-watched WNBA regular seasons ever this year.

None of the other Game 1’s topped an average of 500,000 viewers, so the strong Game 2 viewership for Lynx-Mercury is a positive sign for the league as it heads into post-Clark playoffs. So are the Game 2 ratings for Aces-Storm (988,000 average viewers, the largest WNBA playoff audience on cable since 1999) and Liberty-Dream (863,000 average viewers).

The WNBA playoffs resume Sunday with an afternoon Finals rematch between the Aces and Liberty. The game will tip off at 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time on ABC, conflicting with the end of NFL games like Saints-Falcons and Eagles-Bucs (another playoff rematch) and the start of ones like Chiefs-Chargers. 

The other WNBA semifinal between the Sun and Lynx starts at 8:30 p.m. Eastern Time on ESPN, 10 minutes after the scheduled kickoff for Bills-Ravens Sunday Night Football.