No Caitlin Clark, no rating history.
NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament Final Four saw a steep pass in TV assessments from last year’s record-breaking viewing. Without Clark in the tournament the average broadcasts of Uconn vs. UCLA and South Carolina against Texas only 3.9 million viewers for ESPN. It marked a decrease of 64% from the record settings of 10.8 million viewers by 2024, according to front office sports.
Even without Clark, this year’s Final Four was the second most seen in history and was even an improvement from the 2023 edition, which also contained Clark.
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University of Iowa Hawkeyes Guard Caitlin Clark Cheers as with teammates under the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers game at Big Ten Women’s Basketball Championship at Target Center on March 10, 2024 in Minneapolis. (Angelina Katsanis/Star Tribune via Getty Images)
But Clark’s popularity as a college player helped the sport to peak with such historical consciousness last year that the women’s championship between her Iowa team and Dawn Staley’s South Carolina had better ratings than the Lord’s championship game for the first time ever.
With Clark in WNBA, Pro League distributed this increase in popularity in 2024.
Clark made the fever of the most set team in wnba at a landslide in Her rookie yearWhen the 14 most watched WNBA games in the season all included the fever. On top of that, she broke the record for most all-star voices for any player in the WNBA story.
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Indiana Fever Guard Caitlin Clark plays against Dallas Wings in Indianapolis, September 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy, File)
In early September, Clark’s Indiana Fever played in front of a TV audience of 1.26 million viewers in a game against Minnesota Lynx, played at the same time as a week-1 Friday night NFL games between Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers.
In Clark’s first final in regular season against Washington Mystics on September 19, the 20,711 fans appeared at Capital One Arena, a new record for the highest visited WNBA season competition.
Clark pulled a wnba record 1.84 million viewers for her first playoffs against Connecticut Sun on September 22 while competing with an NFL Sunday. She followed it up with another record audience of 2.54 million viewers for games 2.
Caitlin Clark from Indiana Fever talks with the media during an initial press conference on April 17, 2024 at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. (Ron Hoskins/NBAE via Getty Images)
But after Clark’s fever season ended, WNBA playoffs also saw a steep pass of viewers.
The first game between ACES and LIBERY, a new match for last year’s WNBA final between two of the league’s most popular and successful team, drew an audience of only 929,000, which was 50% less than Fevers Game 1 against Sun.
