The rise in popularity of the WNBA – thanks in part to players like Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese turning pro – has led to success on the court and in the boardroom as record viewership is helping to boost the league.
According to ESPN, the network reported an average of 1.2million viewers across the regular season games that they showed.
That number is up 170 percent from the average regular season viewership from the 2023 season.
Additionally, the Worldwide Leader in Sports announced that their pre-game show, WNBA Countdown, was averaging 508,000 viewers each episode.
Similarly to the games, that viewership number is a triple-digit increase from the season prior – up 113 percent to be exact.
ESPN has reported record viewership for their slate of WNBA regular season contests this year
Players like Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese have boosted the league’s popularity to new heights
Numbers for the league’s other rights holders – Ion Television, NBA TV, Amazon Prime Video, and CBS – have not been released yet.
Ion still has a five-game slate to broadcast this Friday, Amazon has one more game broadcast nationally, NBA TV has five more, and CBS Sports Network has two more.
The playoffs are all but locked up – with just one final playoff spot up for grabs among three teams.
Amongst those three include Reese’s Chicago Sky, who will be playing without their star rookie after she picked up a wrist injury.
Chicago is a game-and-a-half ahead of the Atlanta Dream and two games ahead of the Washington Mystics for the final spot.
Clark and the Indiana Fever have already secured themselves a playoff spot and are currently the six-seed with three games left in their season.
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