This week, ESPN’s public relations team sent out a triumphant press release, celebrating a banner year for the WNBA. The headline numbers were impressive: the season averaged a record 1.3 million viewers across ABC and ESPN, up 6% year-over-year. The season’s peak, a May 17th matchup between the Chicago Sky and the Indiana Fever, drew a massive 2.7 million viewers, the most-watched WNBA game on the network in history.
On the surface, it’s a story of a league experiencing a historic, explosive boom. But behind these celebratory, league-approved numbers lies a far more troubling and urgent story—a story of a league in a state of virtual freefall, its popularity vanishing the moment its brightest star was officially sidelined. This isn't a story of sustainable growth; it's the story of a fragile, one-person bubble that has just spectacularly burst.
The truth that the WNBA and its media partners are desperately trying to obscure is this: the league’s success was never a league-wide phenomenon. It was the Caitlin Clark effect, and now that she is gone for the season with a groin injury, the numbers are not just declining; they have been, as one commentator put it, "Thanos snapped" out of existence.
For weeks, as Clark was sidelined, the league and the Indiana Fever offered no concrete timeline for her return. Fans, clinging to the hope that their hero would be back for a championship run, continued to buy tickets and tune into games. But many now believe this was a deliberate strategy of deception, an effort to artificially prop up interest and revenue by hiding the severity of her injury. The fan backlash has been palpable. At a recent Fever game against the Washington Mystics in Baltimore, nearly 3,000 fans who had already paid for their tickets simply didn't show up—a silent, costly protest.
Now that the truth is officially out, the ratings collapse has been swift and brutal, exposing the league’s total dependency on Clark. Let's look at the numbers the league doesn’t want you to see. A recent Sunday game between the Chicago Sky and the Las Vegas Aces—a matchup featuring other top league stars like Angel Reese and A'ja Wilson—drew a pathetic 90,000 viewers. A game between the Dallas Wings and the Los Angeles Sparks drew just 130,000. These aren't just bad numbers; they are a near-total collapse of public interest.
The comparison to the games Clark played in is staggering. The 2.7 million who watched her face off against Angel Reese in May is a universe away from the 90,000 who tuned in for a non-Clark game. The drop-off is even clearer when looking at the same network. That May game was on ESPN. This past Tuesday, a Fever game against the Minnesota Lynx was also on ESPN. Without Clark, it drew just over 1 million viewers—a 1.7 million viewer freefall for the same team on the same network. The numbers don’t lie.
This is WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert’s worst nightmare realized. For years, critics have argued that the league's relevance was hinged on one person, a claim the league has fiercely resisted. Now, that theory has been proven true in the most brutal way imaginable. The massive new audience that Clark brought to the WNBA came for her, and only her. They have not stuck around to watch other stars, as evidenced by the shockingly low ratings and the general media indifference to other league storylines, such as Angel Reese’s rumored trade demands.
The league is now in a state of crisis. The narrative of a booming, ascendant league has been shattered. The truth is that the WNBA had a historic, once-in-a-generation opportunity placed in its lap, and the moment that opportunity was sidelined with an injury, the entire fragile structure came crashing down. The celebratory press releases from ESPN now look less like a report on the league's health and more like a desperate attempt to spin a disaster. The season average is high only because it is being propped up by the handful of outlier games that Clark played in. The current, real-time numbers tell the true story: the WNBA, without Caitlin Clark, is struggling for relevance. The question is no longer whether the league can survive without her, but whether it can ever recover from the exposure of its own profound dependency.
