Indiana Fever rookie Caitlin Clark signs autographs after a game against the Washington Mystics in front of more than 20,000 fans, the highest attendance for a WNBA game in 17 years.
Greg Fihm/Getty Images
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Greg Fihm/Getty Images
More than 400,000 people attended WNBA games in May, with more than half of them sold out, making it the WNBA’s most-attended month in more than two decades, the league announced Monday.
The WNBA said viewership was also up across all of the league’s broadcast and streaming platforms and across a variety of demographics, including younger viewers.
The WNBA has been able to capitalize on the huge interest in women’s basketball in recent years among the college basketball community, especially former Iowa star Kaitlyn Clark, according to numbers released by the league.
Clark, 22, was drafted No. 1 overall by the Indianapolis in April. The Fever has since drawn about 81,000 fans throughout the 2023 season and surpassed that number in its first five home games of the season.
Clark has also improved attendance at away games. On Friday in Washington, D.C., more than 20,300 people came to Capital One Arena to watch the Fever play the Washington Mystics. According to “Across The Timeline”, no two WNBA teams have lost more games than this, but this game still ranks as the WNBA’s most-watched game since 2007.
The Mystics’ normal home court seats about 4,100 people. But interest in the team’s game against the Fever was so high that officials moved the game to Capital One to accommodate a larger crowd.
New fans at Friday’s game include Jason Smith and his 9-year-old daughter, Autumn. Neither had watched the WNBA before this season, he said, but Autumn’s interest in Clark — especially “her 3-point shot and the beautiful passes she made to other people,” his daughter explained — —allowed them to watch a WNBA game for the first time.
“We’d been following her for the past two years and had a chance to meet her, so the two of us went into town,” Smith said. Right now, he said, he and his daughter are following four teams: Clark’s Fever, the local Mystics, Chicago Sky and the defending champion Las Vegas Aces.
Other teams have seen ratings and attendance increases in part because of their own rookies. Along with Clark, first-year pro Angel Reese of the Chicago Sky and Cameron Brinker of the Los Angeles Sparks rounded out the top five in jersey sales during the first week of the season, the WNBA said.
Overall, WNBA merchandise sales increased 236% year over year, according to league reports.
American professional women’s basketball has never had such high interest since the league’s inception in the late 1990s
The WNBA’s first season took place in 1997, less than a year after the United States women’s national team won a gold medal at the 1996 Summer Olympics; the United States has not lost a game at the Olympics since. (Clark recently confirmed reports that she had been left off the Olympic team at next month’s Paris Games, news that sparked a heated debate online and in the media about whether she should be included.)
The increase in attendance and ratings is expected to continue throughout the season, which ends in October.
“I love that women are finally being recognized in this sport,” said Elizabeth Lee, who watched the Mystic Mania game with her husband and two school-age children.
Lee said that while she and her family have been longtime WNBA fans, they welcome the new support. “The players play so hard and work so hard every season. It’s really exciting to finally get the recognition they deserve,” she said.
