If there was any question whether the Caitlin Clark effect would continue into her WNBA career, they may have been answered Monday night.
The 2024 WNBA Draft, in which Clark was picked first overall by the Indiana Fever, averaged 2.45 million viewers on ESPN — the largest WNBA audience of any kind since 2000, when a Memorial Day Liberty-Comets game averaged 2.74 million on NBC.
No other WNBA telecast, including the playoffs and finals, has managed even one million viewers since 2008. The top telecast over that span was the deciding Game 5 of the 2017 WNBA Finals between the Sparks and Lynx at 913,000.
Viewership increased more-than-fourfold over last year’s draft, which averaged 572,000 on ESPN. The previous record for the draft was 601,000 in 2004, when Diana Taurasi was picked first overall.
While Monday’s audience was the largest for any WNBA event in nearly 24 years, it remains well below the all-time record for the league. The inaugural game in 1997 — Liberty-Sparks on NBC — averaged 5.04 million, and the league regularly attracted seven figure audiences during the NBC era of 1997-2002.
Compared to other draft telecasts, the WNBA edition still trailed last year’s NBA Draft on ABC and ESPN, in which Victor Wembanyama was selected first overall (3.74M), to say nothing of the NFL Draft at a three-day average of 6.0 million across ABC, ESPN and NFL Network. It did outdraw the record-setting first round of last year’s NHL Draft on ESPN, in which Connor Bedard was picked first (681K), and the first round last year’s MLB Draft on ESPN and MLB Network (744K).
Few athletes in recent memory have had as big an impact on the ratings as Clark. Her final collegiate game earlier this month, a loss in the national championship to South Carolina, averaged nearly 19 million viewers to become the most-watched basketball game — men or women’s, college or pro — in five years. It was her third-straight game to set the all-time record for women’s college basketball, coming off of 14.4 million for Iowa’s national semifinal against UConn and 12.3 million for the team’s regional final against LSU.
While Clark is not the sole draw in her draft class, her impact on the ratings has been outsized. The NCAA women’s basketball tournament averaged 2.05 million viewers per game on the ESPN family of networks (2.18 million excluding the “First Four”) — more-than-doubling last year and the highest since ESPN began carrying the event exclusively in 1996. While viewership for non-Iowa games increased a massive 76% from 613,000 last year to 1.06 million, Iowa games shot up nearly threefold — 171% — from 3.78 to 10.24 million.
Jon,
Has any demographic data come out for the Caitlyn Clark tournament games? I’m curious which demographics were the reason why the game hit 19 Million viewers. Did she have an outsized impact on female viewers? Young viewers?
I haven’t seen that info myself, but I know I’ve seen some reference to younger demos — 2-11 — posting disproportionately big increases for the title game on Michael Mulvihill’s Twitter feed.
NBC in general just did a whole lot more better job by a million miles in promoting and producing NBA and WNBA broadcasts back then. Millions of longtime basketball fans are hoping and wishing that the NBA and WNBA returns to NBC in 2025
Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese doing for the WNBA what Magic and Bird did for the NBA
We don’t know the impact Clark will have on WNBA. That’s wait and see. The draft over performed for sure – but I don’t see her as the Bird of the WNBA. Time will tell.
That is huge for the WNBA and surprising too because I wasn’t even sure what number the draft would draw. I had a feeling it would be over a million at least based on last night’s interest in the draft event on social media. I even had a friend who never even really watched the WNBA before call me up to talk to me about all of the college girls that have been drafted and even asked me why Paige Bueckers was there.
I really think Caitlin Clark and I would even give Angel Reese some credit as well for really getting the interest in the women’s game up. This looks like it’s going to actually carryover interest into the WNBA as a lot of people are interested in the WNBA this summer.
The key to growing any league is names and the WNBA finally has names and interest. If you think about the NBA coming out of the 70s into the 80s with Bird & Magic and eventually MJ, that rivalry between a white baller and a black baller playing in huge media markets made the league. Caitlin Clark may have officially saved the WNBA.
Getting this type of number for an NBA Draft is huge, they weren’t that far off from catching the NBA’s draft either. WNBA had way more competition as we’re still inside of the broadcast television season on the big 4-5 networks and you got the usual competition from WWE Raw on USA Network as well, so this is way more impressive than what number the NBA got from the Wemby draft.
That Chicago-Indiana rivalry will need to be marketed by the league because they got a matchup that can draw there. I do expect some big numbers from the WNBA this year and a number of games to be over 1 million viewers.
Looking back on history, I do wish both the NBA and WNBA were back on NBC. I think when NBC had the WNBA in those late Saturday and Sunday slots that was great for the league. They need to make sure a lot of these nationally television Caitlin Clark games are on at a good times.
As for you people wanting either the NBA or WNBA on NBC, no way. I am 100 percent against it, why because look at what they did with baseball, they show all their games on peacock, big ten basketball, all on peacock. So where will they put these? Maybe a few a broadcast tv , the rest streaming, so no way.
This is more shocking than any of the woman’s tournament games. I thought 1-1.5 million would have been a huge number. But, 2.5 million for a WNBA draft is incredible. Jon, I was surprised to see in your post that the WNBA had decent numbers during the NBC years (you noted the league regularly attracted seven figure audiences). Curious, why was it so much more successful then? Was it scheduling on broadcast? The numbers are so low now, I was surprised to see that it ever reached more than a million on a consistent basis.
A consistent slot on broadcast television really made the difference. You knew that most weeks in the summer, there would be a game on at 4 PM on NBC Saturday and/or Sunday.