New York
CNN
—
The WNBA simply had its highest-attended opening month in 26 years, fueled by a powerhouse rookie class with the likes of Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese.
The league additionally mentioned Monday it had its most-watched begin of the season video games ever throughout all six networks that broadcast matches — ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, CBS, ION and NBA TV.
Ladies’s basketball is experiencing a growth due to the phenomenon round WNBA rookie Clark. The NCAA girls’s basketball Nationwide Championship matchup between Clark’s alma mater the Iowa Hawkeyes and the South Carolina Gamecocks earlier this 12 months drew 18.9 million viewers, smashing tv rankings information. Since then, her entry to the WNBA, along with other players like Reese, has kicked off a new era in the league. Clark’s skilled debut in Might drew the most important WNBA viewers in 20 years.
Individuals of colour and younger persons are turning to the WNBA with curiosity. Viewership grew 60% year-over-year amongst individuals of colour, the WNBA mentioned, with enormous jumps in Hispanic and Black audiences, who symbolize many of the group. The league’s Tip-Off week had a 139% enhance in younger ladies watching.
“What’s taking place now in girls’s basketball is affirmation of what we’ve at all times recognized: The demand is there, and girls’s sports activities is a beneficial funding,” mentioned Chief Development Officer Colie Edison in a press launch.
Outdoors of Clark, who performs for Indiana Fever, and Reese, who performs for Chicago Sky, Los Angeles Sparks’s Cameron Brink and Las Vegas Aces’ Kate Martin are attracting extra followers, who common 1.32 million a sport on the networks. (In distinction, final 12 months averaged 462,000 viewers per sport.)
And although the season has just lately begun, the WNBA mentioned it has had about 400,000 followers who’ve attended video games in its arenas to this point, probably the most first-month attendance in additional than 20 years.
Tick Choose, an internet ticketing web site, reported a 435% enhance 12 months over 12 months in complete tickets bought for WNBA video games in Might, with the common worth of the tickets growing 60%. Indiana Fever had a whopping 4,493% enhance in Might tickets bought.