Media

WNBA Viewership Dips Without Clark, but Still Setting Records

Sunday’s game between the Las Vegas Aces and New York Liberty averaged 929,000 viewers.
The number is down significantly from last Sunday’s game featuring Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever, but up over last year’s WNBA Finals.

Oct 01, 2024 | 06:37 pm

UPDATED Oct 01, 2024 | 06:51 pm

Gregory Fisher-Imagn Images

The WNBA is feeling the effects of Caitlin Clark’s elimination—but the league is still clearly growing.

ESPN announced that Sunday’s semifinal game between the Las Vegas Aces and New York Liberty, a rematch of the 2023 WNBA Finals, drew 929,000 viewers during the 3 p.m. ET time slot on ABC, the league’s most-watched semifinal game in 22 years. While the figure is only half of the 1.8 million viewers the Indiana Fever and Connecticut Sun drew during the previous Sunday’s playoff opener, it’s still more than any Finals game from last year.

Game 1 between the Sun and Minnesota Lynx garnered 654,000 viewers at 7:30 p.m. ET on ESPN. That’s a stark improvement over the non-Fever games from last Sunday, which aired on ESPN and averaged around 425,000 viewers. It’s also 39% more than the average viewership of the 2023 WNBA playoffs.

The NFL Effect

Sunday’s viewership numbers highlight the cannibalization of viewers driven by the NFL. Game 2 of the Fever-Sun first-round series Wednesday averaged 2.5 million viewers on ESPN, a WNBA playoff record for cable viewership. The second game of the other three WNBA first-round series—which was played on weekdays without an NFL game on-air—more than doubled its viewership compared to Game 1.

The second game of both semifinals series finished last night. However, the trend may not continue this time around as both games were bumped to ESPN2 to make room for the MLB playoffs.

WNBA Expansion Draft

While the playoffs are in full swing, the league announced Monday details to the 2025 expansion draft as it welcomes the Golden State Valkyries next season.

The expansion draft, scheduled on Dec. 6, will allow the Valkyries to select from a pool of players who are on one of the other 12 teams. Each team can designate a maximum of six “protected players” who the Valkyries cannot select.

The WNBA last had an expansion draft in 2008, when the Atlanta Dream were added as the league’s 14th team. Back then, opposing teams were also able to protect six players from being drafted.