Hoop Hunter wrote:Just since Clark has been hurt this season. The WNBA viewership as a whole is down 55%.
Fever games attracted 1.81 million viewers. Down to just 847,000 viewers, a 53% drop. I guess it didn't drop as much as the league cause you can still see her sitting on the bench.
Tickets that were going for 100's of dollars were 3 bucks at the last Clarkless Fever vs Chicago game. You know with Angel Reese that said she was just as much the reason for the bigger ratings last season.
It's pretty crazy one player has that much draw. The NBA wouldn't lose that many people if SGA "MVP" was out the next game.
The sample size is a huge issue here though. Clark only played 4 games this season before injury, and those included the season opener (2.7M viewers) and the Angel Reese rivalry rematch - both massive outliers that skew that 1.81M average way above normal.
The real baseline should be her 2024 average of 1.18 million viewers for nationally televised games. So the actual drop is from 1.18M to 847K = about 28%, not 53%. Still significant, but not nearly as dramatic when you use her normal baseline instead of this season's inflated small sample.
And just to clarify on tickets - for today's Liberty-Fever game, cheapest seats are $34 with most sections $46-$200+.
You're right about Angel Reese's claims too. She did say she was equally responsible for the ratings boost, but when recently asked about it, she literally said "Next question" and refused to discuss it.
Clark's impact is undeniable, but using cherry-picked numbers from a tiny 4-game sample makes the decline look way more catastrophic than it actually is compared to her normal performance levels
