Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever have set all sorts of WNBA viewership records, and now her team is shattering milestones that are nearly three decades old.
The Fever‘s game against the Chicago Sky on NBC Sunday averaged 3.31 million viewers across NBC and Peacock. The broadcast is the third-most-watched WNBA regular-season game ever, behind two games from the league’s inaugural opening weekend in 1997.
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In that weekend in 1997, which also was on NBC, New York Liberty-Los Angeles Sparks averaged 5.04 million viewers, while Charlotte Sting-Phoenix Mercury averaged 3.59 million viewers. In the 29 years since, not a single WNBA regular-season game has averaged more viewers.
Viewership for the game peaked at 3.82 million viewers.
Viewership for Fever-Sky on NBC outdrew IndyCar’s Freedom 250 on Fox (3.28 million), Baseball Night in America on Fox (3.08 million), the NASCAR Cup Series race at New Hampshire (2 million), and the Premier League opening weekend on NBC (Brentford-Spurs, 2 million). It appears only final-round action of the PGA Tour’s BMW Championship (3.85 million) averaged more viewers.
While Clark certainly played a large role in the viewership (she has set viewership records this season on ESPN, Ion, USA Network, Prime Video, and CBS), the game also became embroiled in the WNBA’s ongoing culture-war controversy.
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In the third quarter of the Fever-Sky game, former NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom, who was seated courtside, got into an altercation with Sky guard Natasha Cloud. Kanter was wearing a shirt that said “WOMAN noun. adult human female.” Kanter was subsequently ejected from the arena.
Because that incident occurred late in the third quarter, and NBC did not release a specific time for its viewership peak, it is possible that it factored into the WNBA’s extremely strong viewership.
So even if this viewership record wasn’t all on Clark, she has been an incredible draw for the WNBA this season, no matter the platform. On Amazon Prime Video, a Fever-Dallas Wings matchup averaged 1.07 million viewers, on par with the streaming service’s NBA viewership average. Fever-Atlanta Dream on ESPN earlier this season averaged 2.58 million viewers, the most-watched WNBA broadcast on cable ever. A previous Fever-Wings matchup this season, this time on Ion, averaged 1.62 million viewers, which was that network’s most-watched broadcast of any kind since Aug. 30, 2022.
Until the playoffs, this is likely to be the Fever’s last major regular-season viewership milestone. With the sports schedule starting to get much more competitive with the start of the NFL and college football seasons, the WNBA will be featured much less on national television. There are only two more over-the-air broadcasts remaining this season, both on CBS, and ESPN will also only air two more regular-season games. No matter what the rest of the season holds, though, it has been an incredible viewership season for the WNBA.
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