{"id":103730,"date":"2025-06-17T01:55:11","date_gmt":"2025-06-17T01:55:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/103730\/"},"modified":"2025-06-17T01:55:11","modified_gmt":"2025-06-17T01:55:11","slug":"we-know-how-much-caitlin-clark-drives-ratings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/103730\/","title":{"rendered":"‘We know how much Caitlin [Clark] drives ratings’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Caitlin Clark\u2019s return to the WNBA this past weekend was a welcome sight to the Indiana Fever faithful, as well as to those who want to see the league continue to grow.<\/p>\n

While there has been much gnashing of teeth over Clark\u2019s impact on the league and its success, there\u2019s no denying that she\u2019s a driving force when it comes to TV ratings.<\/p>\n

Recent reports indicate that the nationally televised viewership of Fever games decreased by 53%, and overall nationally televised WNBA ratings dropped by<\/a>\u00a055%<\/a>\u00a0since Clark\u00a0suffered a quadriceps injury<\/a> last month. That, of course, led to a fresh round of discourse<\/a> around her value to the league. Regardless, as soon as it was announced that she would be back on the floor on Saturday<\/a> for a nationally televised game against the defending champion New York Liberty, everyone was excited.<\/p>\n

Clark returned in style, tallying 32 points, nine assists, and eight rebounds as the Fever handed the Liberty their first loss of the season<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It was an impressive return for the WNBA\u2019s biggest name, and you can count ESPN\u2019s Rebecca Lobo among those who continue to be blown away by what the former Iowa Hawkeyes star can accomplish.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt means a lot more people are paying attention once again,\u201d Lobo said on Monday\u2019s First Take. \u201cWe know how much Caitlin drives ratings. We know how much Caitlin drives attention on the WNBA. For her to come back and do it in that way was just ridiculous.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sitting there at the end of the first quarter when she had that 38-second stretch where she drained deep three after deep three after deep three. I was just sitting there thinking, I\u2019ve been around this league since 1997. I have never seen that in a WNBA game. Have we seen players go on runs? Of course, we have, but not like that, not where a couple of the three-pointers are from 30-plus feet.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was an exhibition by her after being out for 19 days to recover from an injury. Couple that with the other passes that she made and some of the other plays, it was just ridiculous. It\u2019s not often that you\u2019re watching the WNBA, or that I\u2019m watching it, and I\u2019m like, \u2018Wow, I\u2019ve just never seen this before.’\u201d<\/p>\n

There is little doubt that the ratings numbers for Saturday\u2019s Fever-Liberty game will confirm everything Lobo is saying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Caitlin Clark\u2019s return to the WNBA this past weekend was a welcome sight to the Indiana Fever faithful,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":103731,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3724],"tags":[7,455,21947],"class_list":{"0":"post-103730","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-caitlin-clark","10":"tag-rebecca-lobo"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114696219938303251","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103730\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}