There is one guarantee when Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese meet on a basketball court: People will watch.
The Indiana Fever’s 93-58 win over the Chicago Sky last Saturday drew 2.7 million viewers on ABC. That set a record for the most-viewed WNBA regular-season game across ESPN networks and is believed to be the most-viewed WNBA regular-season game in 25 years, since the era when NBC aired the WNBA. The game peaked at 3.1 million viewers.
Saturday’s contest continued the trend from last year when the WNBA had 22 regular-season games that averaged more than one million viewers — the first time since 2008 that a WNBA game topped one million viewers.
Since 12.3 million people watched LSU defeat Iowa in the 2023 national championship game, viewers have flocked to watch Resse and Clark go head to head. At the time, the title game set a record for the most-watched women’s college basketball game in history.
Last June, the Fever and Sky drew 2.25 million viewers for a CBS game, which at the time marked the WNBA’s most-watched game in 23 years. A Friday night game last September on ION between the two teams averaged 1.6 million viewers.
The earlier game Saturday between the defending champion Las Vegas Aces and New York Liberty averaged 1.3 million viewers on ABC, so add another one million-plus game to the WNBA ledger.
The CBS broadcast network will be the beneficiary of the attention of this rivalry. The network will air two primetime matchups between the teams, the first on June 7 and the second on Aug. 9 (both Saturdays). It has a legit shot at averaging three million viewers, which would be a massive number for the league.
(Photo: Jeff Haynes / NBAE via Getty Images)