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The Indiana Fever’s season-opening road game Tuesday night against the Connecticut Sun—featuring the debut of Caitlin Clark—was the most-watched WNBA game on ESPN platforms of all time, the Fever announced Wednesday.
The game drew an average of 2.1 million viewers across ESPN2, ESPN+ and Disney+, making it the most-watched WNBA game since 2001, when a contest between the Houston Comets and the Los Angeles on NBC drew 2.44 million viewers.
ESPN’s previous mark for a WNBA game was nearly 1.5 million viewers for a Phoenix Mercury-Connecticut Sun game on May 22, 2004, in Diana Taurasi’s rookie season.
The Fever-Sun game, which wasn’t shown on the main ESPN channel, peaked at 2.3 million viewers in the 7:45 p.m.-7:59 p.m. window. Even the pregame show averaged 680,000 viewers.
The game ratings topped those of the Boston Bruins-Florida Panthers NHL playoff game on the main ESPN channel, which averaged just under 2 million viewers during roughly the same time period.
Tuesday night’s second WNBA game, between the Phoenix Mercury and Las Vegas Aces, averaged 464,000 viewers on the same platforms. Combined, the two games averaged 1.28 million viewers, up 192 percent when compared with last year’s WNBA regular-season average on ESPN platforms.
Tuesday night’s top-rated sporting event was the Indiana Pacers’ road playoff loss to the New York Knicks, which averaged a combined 4.88 million viewers on TNT and truTV.
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We can only hope that those in authority and influence had a serious talk with the WNBA referees for calling frivolous and unwarranted fouls against the woman that sold out the stadium and set viewing records on tv! The fans and folks didn’t show up to see Caitlin on the bench for most of first quarter.!!
The rules are only for the average players???