Caitlin Clark's Debut Gives WNBA Best Season Opener in 23 Years

On a crowded Tuesday night full of pivotal NBA and NHL playoff games, the WNBA carved out a sizeable piece of the national television pie with its opening night doubleheader.

Caitlin Clark’s regular-season debut with the Indiana Fever against the Connecticut Sun pulled in an average audience of 2.12 million viewers on ESPN2, giving the league its most-watched game since 2001 when NBC featured the Los Angeles Sparks and Houston Comets on Memorial Day. Clark had an uneven game despite leading her team in scoring with 20 points, but the millions who wanted to see the former college supernova shine also witnessed a league legend, DeWanna Bonner, continue her ascent up the WNBA’s all-time scoring leaderboard, and star Alyssa Thomas notch her 12th career triple-double.

Despite throwing every promotional and distribution egg in the Clark basket, it was going to be a tall task to eclipse the league’s all-time viewership record of 5.04 million viewers for its first-ever game—the Rebecca Lobo-led New York Liberty’s win over Lisa Leslie and the Los Angeles Sparks on June 21, 1997. Even reaching the best-viewed WNBA game of the 21st century, when 2.73 million watched the Liberty face the dynastic Houston Comets on Memorial Day in 2000, would have needed a much clearer runway without at least the NBA in the way. Both games aired on NBC during a time when the W served as a complement to the broadcaster’s NBA on NBC coverage, rather than its own televised being, until 2002.

The Indiana-Connecticut game held its own against tough televised competition. The leaders in the ratings clubhouse on Tuesday night were at Madison Square Garden as the New York Knicks routed the Indiana Pacers in Game 5 of the NBA Eastern Conference semifinals. The critical game, in which the Knicks took at 3-2 series lead, grabbed 4.88 million viewers. TNT Sports’ doubleheader continued as the NBA champion Denver Nuggets shellshocked the Minnesota Timberwolves for their own 3-2 series lead. That game garnered 4.51 million total viewers.

The main ESPN channel had its own Stanley Cup Playoffs double feature, starting with the Boston Bruins staving off elimination against the Florida Panthers and nabbing 1.99 million viewers in the process. Edmonton tying its series with Vancouver pulled in under one million (989,000) for the NHL’s nightcap. The Clark game topped both in viewership.

Clark’s debut may have gotten the superstar treatment, but an actual team of superstars in the Las Vegas Aces were starting their defense of another title. On the back end of the doubleheader, just 464,000 viewers saw the two-time defending WNBA champions get their rings and pull out an 89-80 win over the Phoenix Mercury. Despite the huge lead-in from Connecticut, this was a 47% year-over-year decline versus the comparable 2023 Mercury-Sparks opener that saw Brittney Griner return to the league after missing the 2022 season while being detained in Russia. At the time, Griner’s return, which had 683,000 viewers long after prime time on the East Coast, was the most-watched WNBA game on cable since June 1999.

In addition to the typical authenticated stream on ESPN+, both WNBA games were streamed live on Disney+, making them the first and second non-animated live sporting events to be shown on the service since it launched in 2019. Those totals were not made available as of publish time.