Caitlin Clark helps WNBA hit historic late-night cable number despite limited return in LA

The WNBA has another Caitlin Clark television number to celebrate.

And this one might be even more impressive than some of the bigger ones.

Clark and the Indiana Fever helped deliver an average audience of 1.04 million viewers for Wednesday night’s game against the Los Angeles Sparks, according to USA Sports PR.

The Fever lost, 106-92, and Clark played just 16 minutes in her return from a back injury that had kept her out for the previous two weeks. But that feels secondary to the bigger story here.

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One million viewers is a monster number for the WNBA under almost any circumstance.

But these weren't exactly favorable circumstances.

The game aired across USA Network and CNBC. Clark has drawn much bigger numbers on broadcast television, but this was cable-only.

Additionally, this was not a weekend showcase game. It didn't even air in a friendly weeknight window. The game, played in Los Angeles, started on a Wednesday night at 10 p.m. ET.

And it still averaged more than one million viewers.

According to USA Sports PR, citing Nielsen Big Data + Panel data, Fever-Sparks was the network’s most-watched WNBA game on record, up 149% compared to the 2025 cable average. The network also said it marked the first time in WNBA history that a game with a 10 p.m. ET start averaged at least one million viewers.

That’s 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, including playoffs and All-Star Games, since 2000. Clark and the Fever later averaged 2.56 million viewers for a CBS game against the New York Liberty, the third-largest WNBA audience of any kind since 2000.

Those were massive numbers, obviously, and they speak to Clark's immense popularity.

While the Fever-Sparks number says something different, it shouldn't be considered any less important. In a way, it's more impressive than those previous highs.

This data shows that Clark can drag the WNBA to a seven-figure TV audience even in a brutal East Coast television window, on cable, in the middle of the week.

Before Clark arrived, the WNBA went nearly 16 years without a single game averaging a million viewers. The previous seven-figure game came in 2008, when Candace Parker’s professional debut averaged 1.07 million viewers on ABC.

That was the old ceiling, and it took a highly-anticipated rookie debut airing at 3:30 p.m. ET on a Saturday afternoon on a major broadcast network.

Now, when Clark is involved, one million viewers on cable at 10 p.m. ET is apparently in play.

The game itself wasn't even great for Clark or the Fever. The star guard returned from a back injury aggravated during the June 24 game against the Phoenix Mercury and scored just nine points in 16 minutes. Indiana trailed the entire second half and never got closer than a nine-point deficit in the fourth quarter.

The WNBA and its media supporters continue trying to sell the league’s boom as a broader women’s basketball story. There's some truth to that. The league is clearly in a better position now than it was a few years ago. The product has more visibility than ever.

But the biggest television numbers continue to point to Clark.

Sports Media Watch noted that the five most-watched WNBA games this season have all featured Indiana.

There is an interesting wrinkle there, too. The Fever have started to draw strong numbers even when Clark is not 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," making it the biggest cable or streaming WNBA audience of the season at the time.

But that isn't the anti-Clark argument some people seem to think it is.

It’s actually the opposite.

Clark has turned the Fever into the WNBA’s most important television brand. The team now carries national interest in a way it never did before she arrived. If anything, it's more of a pro-Clark argument. She generated so much interest in the Fever that people are willing to watch even when she's not playing.

Fever games without Clark are drawing bigger numbers than non-Fever games, too. So this isn't simply a case of the entire WNBA drawing bigger audiences.

The 1.55 million viewers on July 5 was more viewers than the previous two "Women’s Sports Sundays" on ESPN drew combined. Neither of those games, Liberty-Valkyries (743,000 viewers) and Liberty-Sparks (778,000), included the Fever.

The WNBA is growing. Even drawing over 700,000 viewers for non-Fever games is a massive increase over the pre-Clark era.

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But every time the league gets another historic TV rating, there's a common denominator.

Her name is Caitlin Clark.