The WNBA sent out a news release Wednesday celebrating its record-setting 2026 season. Television audiences grew, attendance increased and the league had plenty of accomplishments to promote.
But read through the television section and you’ll notice the same team keeps showing up. ABC’s biggest regular-season game featured Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever. So did the biggest games on CBS, ESPN, ION, NBC and Peacock, USA Network and Amazon Prime Video.
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The league highlighted seven platforms and every one had its biggest regular-season audience with the Fever on the court.
I’ve written quite a bit about Clark’s impact on WNBA viewership, including how Indiana’s 10 regular-season games on ABC, CBS and NBC averaged twice the audience of the two semifinal openers. This time, the league supplied a network-by-network breakdown that makes a pretty good case for giving the Fever as many television windows as possible.
Here are the biggest regular-season games on the seven platforms noted in the WNBA’s report:
NBC’s section also included Indiana’s July 12 game against Las Vegas, which drew 2.64 million viewers across NBC and Peacock. That was the second-most-watched regular-season game of the year, behind the Fever’s August matchup with Chicago.
Then there’s ESPN and ABC. The Disney-owned networks had five regular-season games exceed two million viewers and, unsurprisingly, Indiana played in all five.
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Put yourself in the position of someone buying WNBA television rights. You’d want Clark on your schedule as often as you could get her. The people selling advertising around those games probably wouldn’t need much convincing, either.
And fans didn’t need every Fever game handed to them on a major broadcast network. They found Indiana on cable and paid streaming services, too.
The league reported that 51 regular-season telecasts averaged at least one million viewers, up from 19 last year. Nine topped two million, compared with four in 2025.
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Games without Indiana also gained viewers. Non-Fever regular-season broadcasts on ESPN and ABC averaged 984,000 viewers, up 24% from last year, according to Sports Media Watch.
I’ve said before that the WNBA’s opportunity is to turn people who show up for Clark into people who keep watching other teams. I’d be interested to know how many of those additional viewers first started following the league because of her. These numbers don’t answer that question, but a reasonable person might conclude she certainly didn’t hurt overall viewership.
Go back to 2023, the year before Clark entered the league. WNBA regular-season games across ESPN’s networks averaged 440,000 viewers, and that was their best regular-season audience in 17 years. Then Clark arrived in 2024, and the average jumped to 1.2 million, an increase of 170%, according to ESPN.
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That 17-year high wasn’t even half the average audience ESPN drew in Clark’s rookie season. Now, three seasons into her career, the Fever delivered the biggest regular-season audience on all seven platforms in the league’s celebratory press release.
Indiana’s season is over, but the WNBA is still using its games to sell the success of its television business.
