Caitlin Clark helps WNBA hit historic late-night cable number despite limited return in LA
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The WNBA has another Caitlin Clark television number to celebrate.
And that might be more impressive than some of the big ones.
Clark and the Indiana Fever helped generate an average audience of 1.04 million viewers for Wednesday night’s game against the Los Angeles Sparks, according to USA Sports PR.
WNBA viewership reached a milestone on cable as Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever drew 1.04 million viewers against the Los Angeles Sparks on Wednesday at 10 p.m. ET. (Tyler Ross/NBAE via Getty Images)
The Fever lost 106-92, and Clark played just 16 minutes in his return from a back injury that had kept him out for the previous two weeks. But that feels secondary to the bigger story here.
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A million viewers is a huge number for the WNBA under almost any circumstances.
However, these were not very favorable conditions.
The game was broadcast on USA Network and CNBC. Clark achieved much larger numbers on broadcast television, but that was only on cable.
Also, this wasn’t a weekend exhibition game. It wasn’t even released in a friendly weekday window. The match played in Los Angeles started at 22:00 on Wednesday night.
And it was still averaging over a million viewers.
According to USA Sports PR, Fever-Sparks was the network’s most-watched WNBA game, up 149% over the 2025 cable average, according to Nielsen Big Data + Panel data. The network also noted that it was the first time in WNBA history that a game starting at 10 p.m. averaged at least one million viewers.
This is a pretty big deal.
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Indiana’s opening weekend game against the Dallas Wings averaged 2.49 million viewers on ABC, making it the league’s fourth-largest audience since 2000, including the playoffs and All-Star Games. Clark and the Fever then averaged 2.56 million viewers for a CBS game against the New York Liberty, the WNBA’s third-largest audience since 2000.
Frankly, these were huge numbers and reflect Clark’s enormous popularity.
Caitlin Clark is by far the most popular player in the WNBA. (Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
Although the Fever-Sparks number says something different, it should not be considered any less important. In some ways, it is more impressive than the previous highs.
This data suggests that Clark can propel the WNBA to a seven-figure TV audience in the middle of the week, even in cable’s brutal East Coast television window.
Before Clark arrived, the WNBA went nearly 16 years without a single game reaching an average of one million viewers. The previous seven-figure hit was in 2008, when Candace Parker made her professional debut on ABC, averaging 1.07 million viewers.
That was the old ceiling, necessitating a highly anticipated rookie debut airing Saturday afternoon at 3:30 PM ET on a major broadcast network.
Now, with Clark involved, it looks like a million viewers will be at the game at 10pm ET on cable.
The game itself wasn’t great, even for Clark or the Fever. The star guard returned from a back injury that was aggravated in a game against the Phoenix Mercury on June 24 and scored just nine points in 16 minutes. Indiana trailed the entire second half and never got closer than a nine-point lead in the fourth quarter.
The WNBA and its media supporters are trying to sell the league’s rise as a broader women’s basketball story. There is some truth in this. The league is clearly in a better position now than it was a few years ago. The product has more visibility than ever before.
But the biggest numbers in television continue to point to Clark.
Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever drew 1.04 million viewers on cable at 10 p.m. ET on Wednesday, a historic first for the WNBA. (Andy Lyons/Getty Images)
Sports Media Watch stated that Indiana was involved in all five of the most watched WNBA games this season.
There’s an interesting wrinkle there too. The Fever started putting up strong numbers even when Clark wasn’t playing.
Indiana’s July 5 game against the Las Vegas Aces without Clark averaged 1.55 million viewers on ESPN’s “Women’s Sports Sundays” program, making it the largest cable or broadcast WNBA audience of the season at the time.
But this is not the anti-Clark argument that some people think.
Actually, quite the opposite.
Clark transformed the Fever into the WNBA’s flagship television brand. The team now has more national attention than it ever had before his arrival. If anything, this is more of a pro-Clark argument. He has sparked so much interest in Fever that people are willing to watch him even when he’s not playing.
Fever games without Clark also reach bigger numbers than non-Fever games. So it’s not just a case of the WNBA as a whole attracting larger audiences.
The 1.55 million viewers on July 5 were more viewers than the previous two “Women’s Sports Sundays” on ESPN combined. Neither of those games included Liberty-Valkyries (743,000 viewers) and Liberty-Sparks (778,000) Fever.
The WNBA is growing. Even non-Fever games drawing more than 700,000 viewers is a huge increase from pre-Clark levels.
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But every time the league achieves another historic TV rating, a common denominator emerges.
Her name is Caitlin Clark.
