![\"Basketball](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/BLANK-Caitlin-Clark-John-Mac-Flickr-WEBP-TD.webp\" "\\"BLANK")
Basketball superstar Caitlin Clark participates in a game between the MN Lynx vs Indiana Fever at the Target Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota on July 14th, 2024. (Photo by John Mac)<\/p>\nBasketball superstar Caitlin Clark participates in a game between the MN Lynx vs Indiana Fever at the Target Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota on July 14th, 2024. (Photo by John Mac)<\/p>\n
The first round of the 2026 WNBA Playoffs averaged 1.3 million viewers across 10 games, making it the league\u2019s most-watched opening playoff round, the WNBA said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The three-game series between the Indiana Fever and Las Vegas Aces generated some of the largest audiences of the opening round, despite Fever star Caitlin Clark being sidelined.<\/p>\n
Game 1 averaged 2.1 million viewers on ABC, making it the network\u2019s most-watched WNBA<\/a> playoff game, according to data cited by the New York Times sports vertical The Athletic<\/a>. Game 2 averaged 1.42 million viewers as an exclusive on Prime Video.<\/p>\n The deciding Game 3 averaged 2.25 million viewers across USA Network and CNBC, peaking at 2.7 million viewers as the Aces eliminated the Fever and advanced to the semifinals.<\/p>\n The audience came despite the game airing opposite the Pittsburgh Steelers-Cleveland Browns \u201cThursday Night Football\u201d matchup.<\/p>\n The first-round average represents a significant increase from recent WNBA postseasons. The opening round in 2024 averaged 944,000 viewers across 11 games.<\/p>\n The 2026 first round also surpassed the 1.1 million viewers averaged across eight WNBA postseason games on ESPN and ABC in 2024.<\/p>\n The Fever have been a major television draw since Clark entered the league in 2024. Her rookie-season playoff series against the Connecticut Sun included a Game 2 audience of 2.5 million viewers, one of the largest WNBA playoff audiences in recent years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Basketball superstar Caitlin Clark participates in a game between the MN Lynx vs Indiana Fever at the Target…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":923849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":["post-923848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=923848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/923849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=923848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=923848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=923848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}