WNBA playoff ratings plummet after Caitlin Clark goes home

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Posted on 10/01/2024 8:20:09 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican

The first weekend of the WNBA playoffs without rookie phenom Caitlin Clark were a bit quieter in terms of attention and viewership.

After Clark drew a WNBA record 1.84 million viewers to her first playoff game against the Connecticut Sun on Sept. 22, while competing with an NFL Sunday, she followed it up with another record audience of 2.54 million viewers for Game 2. Clark and the Indiana Fever lost both those games, however, sending Clark home for the offseason.

Now, the remaining teams contending for the WNBA title are the New York Liberty, the defending champion Las Vegas Aces and MVP A'ja Wilson, the Sun and the Minnesota Lynx.

The first game between the Aces and Liberty, a rematch of last year's WNBA finals between two of the league's most popular and successful teams, drew an audience of 929,000, ESPN announced, which is 50% less than the Fever's Game 1 against the Sun. Still, it was historically good for any WNBA playoff game that doesn't involve Clark, as it was better than any of the TV numbers for the finals games between the two teams last year.

Meanwhile, Game 1 of the Sun-Lynx series had an audience of just around 650,000.

Both of those games have also fallen well behind some of Clark's regular season games in terms of viewership as well. In early September, Clark’s Indiana Fever played in front of a TV audience of 1.26 million viewers, in a game against the Minnesota Lynx that was played at the same time as a Week-1 Friday night NFL game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers.

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