The Caitlin Clark-Angel Reese rivalry continues to be a goldmine for the WNBA and its TV partners.
Sunday’s matchup between the Chicago Sky and Indiana Fever drew 2.302 million viewers on ESPN, the most-watched WNBA telecast in 23 years.
If it feels like this is Groundhog Day, the same two teams also accomplished that feat just last week, with 2.25 million viewers on CBS for last Sunday’s game in Indianapolis.
While CBS is in about 15 million more homes than ESPN, this past week’s game was in a slightly better TV window — 4 p.m. ET compared to noon — and it was a one-point game as the Sky erased a 15-point deficit to win 88-87.
Additionally, the game had the ESPN hype machine behind it all week.
Of the three times the Fever and Sky have played this season, Indiana won the first two matchups while Chicago won the third; neither team has broken serve and beaten the other on the road.
They play for a fourth and final time in the WNBA regular season on Aug. 30 in Chicago.
Monday, Magic Johnson compared the rivalry between Reese and Clark to the storied history he had with Larry Bird.
“When I think about Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese’s impact on the game, they remind me a lot of Larry Bird and me. Our first meeting, Indiana State vs. Michigan State, in the NCAA Championship set the all-time viewership record for men’s basketball. Caitlin and Angel’s 2023 NCAA Championship matchup and their 2024 Elite Eight games were the highest viewership records at the time,” Johnson wrote on X.
“Larry and I heightened the NBA’s overall popularity. The Lakers and Celtics sold out arenas throughout the league and increased television viewership exponentially. The higher viewership numbers led to the NBA signing significantly larger TV contracts which then led to higher salaries for the players,” Johnson continued.
“Caitlin and Angel are now doing the same thing, selling out arenas and increasing the viewership. They have taken women’s basketball by storm and with expiring TV deals on the horizon, the WNBA is now in a position to negotiate higher TV contracts and increase salaries for all of the talented players.”
Clark’s Iowa team famously lost to Reese’s LSU squad in last year’s college basketball national championship game, before avenging the loss in the Elite Eight this year.
The two had previously squared off several times before that, including three games between Iowa and Maryland over the pair’s first two seasons in college, before Reese transferred to LSU, and at least once in AAU ball when they were in high school.
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