{"id":31228,"date":"2025-07-23T12:56:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-23T12:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/31228\/"},"modified":"2025-07-23T12:56:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T12:56:10","slug":"wnba-all-star-game-ratings-fall-36-without-clark-playing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/31228\/","title":{"rendered":"WNBA All-Star Game Ratings Fall 36% Without Clark Playing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe WNBA<\/a> All-Star Game, hindered by Caitlin Clark<\/a> not playing, pulled in a sizable audience for the second summer in a row.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe midseason exhibition drew 2.19 million viewers for ABC on Saturday night. While the total audience was down 36% versus last year, the event was the second-most watched All-Star Game in WNBA history.<\/p>\n

\n\tLast summer\u2019s contest, an exhibition between Team USA and the league\u2019s best non-Olympians, including Clark, garnered 3.442 million viewers. The game itself was tight, as the WNBA All-Stars pulled out the 117-109 win over the American squad just ahead of the Paris Olympics.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat was in contrast to Saturday\u2019s game, a comfortable 151-131 victory by Team Collier, captained by Napheesa Collier<\/a>, over Team Clark, captained by the injured Indiana Fever star.<\/p>\n

\n\tESPN said this weekend\u2019s game was up 158% versus the 2023 All-Star Game, before Clark\u2019s arrival in the league, which pulled in 850,000 viewers.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tClark did not compete in any of the on-court events in Indianapolis due to her latest injury, suffered in the waning seconds of the Fever\u2019s July 15 win over Connecticut. The second-year guard has missed 10 regular-season games as well as the Commissioner\u2019s Cup final (which the Fever won) during the first half of the season due to several lower body injuries.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe game itself still performed relatively well, but the real uptick came on Friday night. The 3-point Contest and Skills Contest were viewed by 1.318 million viewers, an 89% increase versus last year, when 695,000 people tuned in. There are slight caveats to the bump in the early exhibition; Friday\u2019s event was shorter by 30 minutes (68 in 2025 versus 98 in 2024), and it began a hour later (9 p.m. ET versus 8 p.m. ET last summer).<\/p>\n

\n\tClark\u2019s participation in the 3-point show would have boosted the number even more, especially as she would have gone against New York Liberty guard Sabrina Ionescu, who won her second 3-point crown. Ionescu\u2019s Liberty backcourt mate, Nastasha Cloud, won the skills contest.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe league\u2019s midseason break came in the backdrop of a simmering labor dispute between the owners<\/a> and the players<\/a>. Those tensions don\u2019t seem to be affecting ratings<\/a>, which have been solid despite Clark\u2019s injury absences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The WNBA All-Star Game, hindered by Caitlin Clark not playing, pulled in a sizable audience for the second…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31229,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[1760,26218,3250,99,434],"class_list":["post-31228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-caitlin-clark","tag-data-viz","tag-napheesa-collier","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31228\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}