Posted on 10/01/2024 8:20:09 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
The first weekend of the WNBA playoffs without rookie phenom Caitlin Clark were a bit quieter in terms of attention and viewership.
After Clark drew a WNBA record 1.84 million viewers to her first playoff game against the Connecticut Sun on Sept. 22, while competing with an NFL Sunday, she followed it up with another record audience of 2.54 million viewers for Game 2. Clark and the Indiana Fever lost both those games, however, sending Clark home for the offseason.
Now, the remaining teams contending for the WNBA title are the New York Liberty, the defending champion Las Vegas Aces and MVP A'ja Wilson, the Sun and the Minnesota Lynx.
The first game between the Aces and Liberty, a rematch of last year's WNBA finals between two of the league's most popular and successful teams, drew an audience of 929,000, ESPN announced, which is 50% less than the Fever's Game 1 against the Sun. Still, it was historically good for any WNBA playoff game that doesn't involve Clark, as it was better than any of the TV numbers for the finals games between the two teams last year.
Meanwhile, Game 1 of the Sun-Lynx series had an audience of just around 650,000.
Both of those games have also fallen well behind some of Clark's regular season games in terms of viewership as well. In early September, Clark’s Indiana Fever played in front of a TV audience of 1.26 million viewers, in a game against the Minnesota Lynx that was played at the same time as a Week-1 Friday night NFL game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Slightly smaller and lighter basketball. Rim height is 10 feet. Rim diameter is the same as nba.Same as nba. 3 pt line is same as college...but shorter than nba....
Off topic...I have watched a few highlight reviews of wnba games...
Few things I noticed were the following:
Dribblers “carry-over”, and palm the ball.
Lots of “traveling”
Rebounding is a joke...the players don’t seem to be able to jump upwards very well. Their grip on a rebound seems tenuous.
Layups are very common. Very little defense in the key.
Players with ball seem to be allowed to slightly push the defender away.
Passing is good. Some of the 3 point shots look impressive.
Caitlin and others are good athletes and play very well.
I believe a local (small town or city)male all star high school team if playing full force would beat them easily. Still, it’s an OK game, no worse than an NBA drama and poser fest.
The overt racism towards her from the black players and the leagues and sports media rationalizing it and accusing anyone who mentions it as racist is appalling
And a snapshot into our pathological era
She’s an idiot... not wasting any bandwidth on her.
She should take her sponsorship money and create a new league.
The league could have benefitted and expanded interest. Instead they hate whitey. Cue the price is right fail siren.
How about that!
“From 2.54 million to 0.9.”
As sportscaster Warner Wolf used to say, “You could’ve turned your sets off right there.” Looks like most people did just that.
Agree...it should be an international league...maybe that this whole brouhaha is to publicize the league and get people to watch the soap opera like drama.
New league should have 6 teams in America.two teams in South America, two european teams, 2 Asian teams to start.Womens basketball is big overseas....lots of wnba players go overseas to augment their income.
Of course. Who wants to watch a bunch of street skanks beating up on each other? That isn’t basketball.
My prediction. Clark and at least five other WNBA players go to some European league, and stay there for 3 years....building up significant interest. Some US media company buys into the broadcast rights, and bring Euro-league games to the US audience...beating WNBA ratings.
Clark ends up dumping Nike for Puma.
By 2027, the NBA finally tells the WNBA that they are finished on financially helping the WNBA, and that the WNBA has to rig up some merger of the Euro league and themselves, with the understanding that all this LGBTQ stuff has to dissolve away, and DEI gimmicks must disappear.
You end up with 24 women’s teams between Europe/US.
Nice analysis.....could be...I like Caitlin Clarks game as far as it goes ..but I am not gonna spend much more time watching the games cause I hardly watch other sports...nice to see someone with very good all around skills with game and court savvy...
You forgot about lady wrasslin’? Lady mma? Lady boxing?
The rims are the same size, 18 inches in diameter but the mens basketball is 29.5" circumference vs. 28.5 for the women.
I was joking but I did not know there was an actual difference in basketball size.
Same here. Caitlyn can take a hike.
That would work
“lady wrasslin’”
I watched some jello wrestling long ago.
That woman who poked her in the eye should be kicked out of the league
I am NOT buying her excuse that it was an accident- She missed swatting at the ball but then accelerated deliberately with her fingers pointed right into her face
NO SURPRISE to me.
THE WNBA is not worth my time
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.