WNBA ratings up 12% from last year. Yet most people don't care
While most of the world still doesn't give a half damn about the WNBA or really any other women's sport, there are apparently a lot of people who care less than zero and I suppose, for the sake of the league itself, this is a good thing.
When Caitlin Clark first started playing for the W, people tuned in like crazy. It was a radical step up for the league that had been losing money every single year for nearly 2 decades. I for one was wondering why they bothered to keep it around and the only thing I could come up with was some sort of tax write-off for the team owners. Rich people function that way but who really knows.
src
The ratings initially surged because of Caitlin Clark exclusively even though all the media would try to convince you otherwise because admitting the obvious would as usual, be racist or something.
But now here we are in her 3rd season and there are some other players that people actually like as well and people have reasons to watch other than just getting to see CC play for Indiana.
src
Paige Bueckers (pronounced "beckers") is a real standout talent who unfortunately plays for a team that can't possibly win the whole thing. Give Dallas a few years, perhaps that can change. And other standouts that pull in crowds are Sophie Cunningham and a handful of others.
src
Even if you don't watch the sport you have probably seen this and she went viral as hell because of it. I don't need to explain why it happened but it was another team's player being rough and getting upset on the court and Sophie just kept pointing over and over again while never saying anything. It's crazy what can bring people fame.
Sophie is quite good looking and I suppose that doesn't hurt.
Something funny about the pointing incident is that the WNBA has decided that this pointing cannot be "sold" or licensed to any particular brand. That's a shame because at these games anytime that Sophie does something, good or bad, the entire crowd starts pointing. She has her own callsign and nobody else has one of those.
Angel Reese manages to hang onto a very popular spot as to why people turn up but since her rivalry with Caitlin has kind of fizzled out since let's be honest here, there isn't much of a rivalry when one person is considerably better than the other.
Angel still manages to maintain a good fanbase though and even though I personally think she isn't a good player, I'm happy for her and Atlanta
src
At the moment the WNBA has a few stars that are around a bunch of different teams and this is good for the league. In years past when Caitlin kind of mixed things up, the only games that had good viewership or attendance were the games that she and Indiana were playing in. This was most evident when home teams would book bigger stadiums only for the games when Indiana was visiting and after that, they would head back to their slightly-larger-than-a-high-school-gym stadium.
But the main factor here is that people are tuning in for the games and not just the games that one player happens to be in.
src
they are extremely proud of this statistic and you hear about it all the time. However, nobody talks about how much total revenue was made from ticket sales for these games. I can assure you, it would be a very different chart if that was the metric they were using for comparison.
The NBA has also become a bit boring in recent years with tons of fans, including myself, noticing that the rules don't really seem to matter anymore with players taking 5 steps on the way to the basket, picking up their dribble and starting again without a whistle, and even walking down the court not bouncing the ball and no call is made. It's kind of a joke really.
WNBA is not without its flaws and the skill difference is very noticeable. I'm not trying to make any sort of skill comparison here and people really shouldn't. The games are quite different but for me, I actually prefer to watch WNBA games than NBA. I am probably in a very small minority here, but I am pleased to see that people are tuning in.