Caitlin Clark’s Poor Playoff Debut Still Holds Its Own vs. NFL

Against the usual Sunday NFL juggernaut, the WNBA’s marquee television draw managed to pull in a solid viewership number despite a bad day on the court.

The Connecticut Sun’s 93-69 blowout Game 1 win over Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever averaged 1.84 million viewers on ABC. It was the highest postseason delivery for the league since Game 2 of the 2000 WNBA Finals, when 2.12 million saw the Houston Comets defeat the New York Liberty en route to their fourth and final title.

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In keeping with the regular-season trends, the non-Clark games didn’t put up anywhere near the numbers Indiana’s loss did. Defending champion Las Vegas’ win over Seattle averaged 461,000 viewers in ESPN’s post-Sunday Night Baseball window. New York’s own demolition of Atlanta, which was the first playoff game of the day in the early afternoon, pulled in 410,000 viewers on ESPN. Finally, the Minnesota Lynx’s win over Phoenix drew 403,000 viewers in a game that aired on ESPN after Fever/Sun.

During the 40-game regular season, an average of 1.18 million viewers tuned in for the multiple nationally televised Fever games, while all other WNBA outings averaged 394,000. (Clark was in 19 games that broke the 1 million viewer mark, versus three for all other teams. Before the Rookie of the Year’s arrival, the last time any WNBA game topped seven figures was in 2008.)

Although Indiana was a much different team after the Olympic break than the discombobulated group that began the season, Connecticut is favored to take the series over the young Fever squad. As the first round is a best-of-three affair, the Sun are looking to break out the brooms on Wednesday night, a game that’ll be in primetime on ABC. Should Clark, Aliyah Boston and Kelsey Mitchell stave off defeat, ESPN2 will air Game 3 from Indianapolis on Friday night.

However, as is customary for any postseason in sports, the later rounds tend to grow in ratings and viewership. While competing directly against the NFL has angered WNBA fans for years, fewer games in the semifinals and finals will be consumed by the gargantuan presence of football.

Speaking of the NFL, Fox’s late national window averaged 27.3 million viewers opposite the WNBA blowout. Baltimore-Dallas aired in 84% of markets, plus regionalized coverage of San Francisco-L.A.Rams and Detroit-Arizona.

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