Despite Indiana Fever superstar Caitlin Clark sitting out of the festivities due to injury, the WNBA 3-Point Contest and Skills Challenge delivered a massive audience on Friday.
According to Douglas Pucci of Programming Insider, ESPN averaged 1.32 million viewers for Friday’s WNBA All-Star festivities. That figure is up a whopping 90% compared to last year’s audience, which clocked in at 695,000 viewers. In the advertiser-coveted adults age 18-49 demographic, viewership increased by 72% year-over-year from about 237,000 viewers last season to about 415,000 viewers this season. The 3-Point Contest and Skills Challenge also won the night among females age 18-34.
Given that Clark was originally slated to compete in the 3-Point Contest but ultimately did not, ESPN must be thrilled nearly doubling its audience from last year. It was not long ago when the WNBA hadn’t captured a single television audience over one million viewers since the mid-2000s. Now, seven-figure audiences have become regular occurrences, oftentimes without Caitlin Clark.
Would viewership likely have been higher with Clark participating? No doubt. But 1.32 million viewers on a Friday night in the middle of July is a strong audience regardless of sport. It continues an undeniable trend across the WNBA.
And for the league’s players, this year’s viewership is as important as ever. WNBA players are in active negotiations with the league over a new collective bargaining agreement. The players will heavily rely on viewership trends to leverage a larger share of the league’s revenue, especially as the WNBA enters into several new (and lucrative) media rights agreements next season. Every strong audience is another data point in the players’ favor, and Friday certainly helped their cause.
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.