With the first month of its 2024 season in the books, the WNBA announced that TV ratings reached all-time highs during the month of May and attendance at its highest mark in more than a quarter-century.
As reported by Sports Illustrated, the surge in TV and in-person popularity is attributed to a rookie class that features former college superstars Caitlin Clark, Cameron Brink and Angel Reese.
Karl Rasmussen of SI reported that approximately 400,000 fans attended WNBA games in May, the most the league has recorded since 1998. More than half of the league's games have resulted in sellouts, an increase of 156 percent over last season.
The league also noted that televised WNBA games have logged an average viewership of 1.32 million viewers per game across ESPN, ESPN 2, ABC and CBS — afigure is almost three times more than last season. The season-opening matchup between Clark's Indiana Fever and the Connecticut Sun recorded an average of 2.12 million viewers on ESPN 2, ESPN+ and Disney+, making it the most-watched WNBA game on any Disney platform in history.
Six days later, the Fever's rematch against the Sun on ESPN drew the largest TV audience for any WNBA game on the network with an average of 1.56 millions viewers.
"Furthermore, merchandise sales have skyrocketed," Rasmussen wrote. "The WNBA reports that the WNBAstore website has received a staggering increase in transactions of more than 756 percent compared to this time last year."
