WNBA viewership hits high largely without Clark, but with caveats

The WNBA had its most-watched regular season since 1998 on its primary networks, with Nielsen’s “Big Data” helping to overcome an injury-wracked season for Caitlin Clark.

WNBA regular season games averaged 969,000 viewers across the league’s primary Nielsen-rated networks — ABC, ESPN, CBS and ION — up 3% from last year and the highest average since 1998, when games aired on NBC, ESPN and Lifetime. (An average including NBA TV was not immediately available.)

Keep in mind that the viewership figures are based on Nielsen’s new “Big Data + Panel” measurement, which combines the existing panel-only viewership with data from smart TVs and set-top boxes. Under Nielsen policy, networks are to compare this year’s “Big Data + Panel” figures to last year’s panel-only data. That alone could account for this year’s slight increase.

Given Caitlin Clark missed more than 70 percent of her games this season, it is no small feat that WNBA viewership was close enough to last year for methodological changes to matter. Clark played only 13 of Indiana’s 45 total games (44 regular season games and the Commissioner’s Cup Final) and missed three of four against the rival Sky. Two of the Fever-Sky games were played without Clark or Chicago’s Angel Reese.

It should be noted that both ABC and CBS had completed their most-watched regular seasons on record even before Nielsen rolled out “Big Data + Panel” as its official currency on September 1. On a panel-only basis, ABC averaged 1.43 million viewers (+13%) and CBS 1.17 million (+6%).

On a “Big Data + Panel” basis — which will go down as the official average for this season — ABC and ESPN combined to average 1.3 million viewers during the regular season, up 6% from last year and the highest average on record for the networks. CBS averaged 1.28 million and ION pulled 627,000.

While ABC and CBS were minimally affected by Clark’s absence — CBS aired one less Clark game than last season and ABC actually aired one more — ION was significantly impacted. Clark missed seven of the eight Fever games scheduled for ION, which posted a six percent decline from last season.

Clark’s lone ION game averaged 1.25 million viewers, compared to 954,000 for the seven Fever games she missed on the network. Last season, her eight games on ION averaged 1.19 million (panel only). ION posted a 15 percent increase for its non-Fever games this season (from 440K to 505K).